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 Post subject: Interurban Car Body in Kalamazoo, MI?
PostPosted: Wed Oct 09, 2019 6:09 pm 

Joined: Mon Mar 20, 2017 5:26 pm
Posts: 612
Location: Pure Michigan
After driving past it for many years I finally stopped and snapped a photo.
It appears to be an old interurban car body attached to a an old bar/restaurant (Muleskinner Building) in downtown Kalamazoo.
The only information I can find on it is that it was a maintenance car.
Does anyone have any information about this car?


Image

The building was open to the public for a "Hidden Kalamazoo" tour in 2017; and one of the local radio stations took some interior photos of the car: https://k1025.com/muleskinner-building/


Yes, There Really is a Kalamazoo.


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 Post subject: Re: Interurban Car Body in Kalamazoo, MI?
PostPosted: Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:37 pm 

Joined: Mon Nov 26, 2007 2:54 am
Posts: 1019
Location: Califoothills / Midwest Prairies / PNW
The following text came from a discussion group that no longer exists, posted by someone named Walt:

Quote:
"The car had been one of two built in 1911 by McGuire-Cummins for the MUR. Both were assigned as "interurban sweepers" and were used in the towns which didn't have city systems. Because the line to Wolf Lake was operating when the interurbans closed in 1929, this sweeper went to Jackson for use on that line; there are many photos of it in the 1930s in the yard at the Jackson barn. It had been painted in the orange and green scheme (when I first saw the car it was just moved into Allen from Jackson and I had a chance to check it over carefully, and noted on the door edges the orange and green paint with the black stripe, just as we found on 28). This orange and green was on all of the motor cars that were part of their interurban operations, but not on any of the freight trailers, which kept their solid green to the end...including the trucks, of course.

Someone in Allen had set up a village of buildings they'd moved from various places - an old village sort of museum - and it was here where the car body ended up. I asked where they'd found it and was told it had come from Jackson."


MUR stands for Michigan United Railway. Car 28 is the Michigan car under restoration at the Illinois Railway Museum.


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