The demise of the Orlando & Mount Dora Railway has no affect on the Edwards firm, my company has had no affiliation or partnership with the O&MD. I was the owner/operator of the Mount Dora Scenic Railway, from Dec 18th, 1998 until Dec 1st, 2001.
I re-founded the Edwards Railway Motor Car Co. in Dec 1997, re-organized last year under the streamlined name "Edwards Rail Car Co." In the case of the Strafford car No.165, my firm contracted with a mid-west company to rebuild the car into a Edwards Model-20 look-a-like, including removal of traction motors and fabricating the front truck into a "power truck" using a gasoline engine and automatic transmission for propulsion. That car (now M-201) has been in daliy service since Dec. 1998 and we have been very pleased with how the car has held up and how well it worked turning a Strafford car into what she is today. The Edwards firm sold the car to Dr. Bill McDonald, of Rutland, Vermont, he in turn leased the car to the Mount Dora Scenic Railway and then to Orlando & Mount Dora Railway. He is still in ownership of the car and it is now stored on a Florida Central Railroad siding the Edwards Company leases, in Mount Dora, Fl. I would like to make it clear that the Edwards company has never had any intention of building cars on the frames of Strafford cars. Most all of the original Edwards drawings and mechanical data survived and we build new cars from this information...."we can't build them better, but we can build them as good as". The Strafford car was a "one-of-a-kind" in order to facilitate placing a car in service as soon as possible. We also take in restoration work and are almost finished with the restoration of a original Edwards car built in 1923, owned by a private individual from Montgomery. We have also won the bid to restore a 1924 Dallas streetcar from McKinney Avenue. In June of 2000 we deliverd to the West Virginia Central Railroad the first Edwards car built since 1942, built all new from the ground up. It operates today, as the M-3 and is known as the Cheat Mountain Salamandr, on the most scenic rail line we have ever seen. (www.mountainrail.com) Presnetly we have for sale a 1930 J.G. Brill Model-55 and a original Edwards Model-25 motorcar built for the Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay. Our plans are to branch out from mechanical drive systems and we can now provide our cars with electric traction motor propulsion and will soon make available 1920's style electric streetcars. It is not our intention to try and re-invent the wheel, but to simply re-create the quality workmanship and reliablity originally developed by our firm back in the 1920's and 1930's. Please visit our website at www.edwardsrailcar.com

Kind Regards to all,
Steven Torrico, Owner
Edwards Rail Car Co.


edrailco@aol.com