Hey guys-

Are these the GTW commuter cars that many of you were trying to find in a posting earlier this year? They definitely look salavagable, although isn't the track gone in Alanson now?

TJG

Port Huron Museum
[img]http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/imagesRRHX/Stations/AlansonRailCars010603-2[JimFulkerth].jpg[/img]
tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

> Hey guys-

> Are these the GTW commuter cars that many of
> you were trying to find in a posting earlier
> this year? They definitely look salavagable,
> although isn't the track gone in Alanson
> now?

> TJG

These two cars are actually in Oden. They are indeed pretty far from any live track. I took some pictures of them last October, but now I don't remember what I did with them. From the previous thread, I think the owner has some plans to restore or at least maintain them.

Alanson is up the road a few miles. Someone thought there used to be a wooden carbody behind the depot. We looked, and it certainly isn't there any more. Oh well.

Did Grand Trunk use heavyweights for commuters?

Dave

Randall,

I scrapped the MOW box built on a pressed steel PRR flatcar and snatched the PRR N6b cabin car and put it on my hunting land in Missaukee County, MI, circa 1983 or therabouts. No # on flat, but cabin is 980720

Steve Zuiderveen

> Alanson is up the road a few miles. Someone
> thought there used to be a wooden carbody
> behind the depot. We looked, and it
> certainly isn't there any more. Oh well.


SZuidervee@aol.com

"Did Grand Trunk use heavyweights for commuters?"

The Pontiac - Detroit commuter service was operated with modernized, ice-air-conditioned heavyweights in several classes until it was re-equipped by the suburban transit agency in the 1970's with commuter cars made from UP long-distance aluminum coaches. A few of the heavyweight cars made it into the hands of tourist lines, and quite a few more were grounded at various places around Michigan as stores or dwellings, but these are slowly being scrapped. Some of these cars had wood roofs and trucks. One was recently reinstalled as a restaurant annex in Lansing (remember that, Hume?).

After 1984 the ex-UP cars were transferred to New York suburban service, and some appeared later in Maryland. Some were sold for excursion service out of Bellevue, Ohio.

A third, much weirder, class of equipment that was bought for this service but never used was the 1956 Budd PRR Keystone low-CG stainless trainset, which was later broken up and converted to at least one rolling restaurant in Walled Lake, Michigan.

Aarne H. Frobom
The Steam Railroading Institute
P. O. Box 665
Owosso, MI 48867-0665