I am reposting this 'cuz it got bumped to the second page so fast, I don't think many people saw it.

I am confident that one of our readers will be avble to help me with a research question for an historic appraisal I am completing. One piece of equipment in the group is the PC 7 business car, presently at the Mad River and NKP and part of the estate of Ted Church. I have been able to track that between Ted and the railroad, it was owned by a third party, who may have been the mayor of a city in Pennsylvania, and that city may be Meadville. Anyone out there know when PC 7 (ex NYC 11) was sold, if by PC or Conrail, and who this owner was?


We have pretty much narrowed it down to the mayor of Red Bank, NJ; it may have been a part of that project where the military base bought a bunch of ex PC car to make extra base housing. Does anyone know of any dates and the mayor's name?

Steve Zuiderveen

Do you (or anyone on the board) have a list of the dispostion of the other cars from the Ted and Sally Church collection. Also, are there any plans for PC 7? They registered the reporting marks TSCX for their rolling museum made out of four express cars converted from troop sleepers (2 each nee-NYC and EL). When did they pass on?

Additionally, did that military base plan actually happen?

Many thanks
Tom

Ted Church passed away a year or so ago, a few years after his wife of many years Sarah. He was well into his 90's when he died. He had taken early retirement shortly after the Penn Central merger. At the time of the merger he was clearance engineer for the Lines West of Buffalo. He was also a skilled carpenter, and had been a high school shop teacher before he "went railroading", one summer and never looked back.

The four TSCX display cars, containing much of their personal collection,were left to the Mad River and NKP Museum in Bellevue, OH, along with the former PC 7, which was 1927-built by Pullman and was renumbered over the years to NYC 11, from NYC 8 and NYC 1. TSCX , a non-railroad owned reporting mark, was registered to the Ted and Sarah and reflected their initials. They had one of the very few "personal" AAR reporting marks.

I am not sure where all his collection ended up, however, over the years he and his wife Sarah owned a combine, NYC 290, which they purchased from the scrap yard less than 6 moths after a Beech Grove overhaul. They also had NYC 344, another combine; a coach NYC 2600; two 6 double bedroom lounges, NYC Mirror Lake and NYC Chittanango Falls;a 11 double bedroom car, NYC Port Clinton (which I believe went to the WNYRHS) ; and the aforementioned PC 7.

Two of the express box cars were NYC 9210 and E-L 96. I was with him the day he purchased the EL 96 from the scrapper -- it was so recently out of overhaul that you could still smell the varnish on the wood lining) I am not sure where the other two troop sleepers came from, but I am pretty sure one was former C&O or B&O inside door car that Church had modified to a outside box-car style door in order to match his other cars. I don't remember the origin of the last troop sleeper/express car -- perhaps it was also NYC.

The Roaring Camp coach was the ex-Amtrak/IC 2640 and the LaGrange, an ex-SCL (Amtrak) diner. They owned a LEF&C wood caboose, which I believe is still at the LSRHS in North East, PA. They also owned an NYC 5015, an ACF-built NYC lightweight 20th Century Limited RPO, which recently left Cumberland for somewhere in Michigan. The Church's owned a stainless steel coach for a while, which I believe was a former MKT (Amtrak) Pullman-built car. They also owned an ex-UP (Amtrak) lunch counter car, and a NYC 9100-series baggage car are both of which are presently at Bellevue, OH. In the literature, he is credited with purchasing the ex-Amtrak Times Sqare (ex Rock Island Broadmore), although I do not remember the car as part of his collection.

There are probably other passenger cars which don't come to mind right now, including a couple freight cars. He was involved, back in the 1970s, with the Midwest Railway Historical Foundation, and the locomotive ex-GTW 4070, which operated for a couple of seasons out of Conneaut Lake Park, near Meadville PA. I don't remember if he ever took the PC 7 to Conneaut Lake Park, perhaps he did, which might explain Steve's Meadville-ownership question.

For a few winters in the early 1980s, after Conneaut Lake Park, the Churches wintered on the NYC 7, which was at the time, on a short-line in Georgia. They had a part ownership in the shortline. He owned a former MILW F7A, which I believe ended up in New Castle, PA, after being stored in Bellevue for many years.

In the mid to late 1960's he purchased the former E-L #6 (American Life) which he soon after sold to 4 members of the Midwest Railway Historial Society in Cleveland. A 6-6-4, the American Life is now at the museum in Bellevue, OH, as well.

Hope this at least partially answers your question.

Steve,

The cars in question were at Fort Monmouth, N J in the 1970's stored on a siding along the CNJ branch that bisected the base. Fort Monmouth was pretty open in those days,a nd the cars were visible from outside the base, so I am sure there are slides of them around in someone's closet.

I was probably about 10 years old when the cars left the base. I remember seeing them in transit, which means somehwere there are probaly 126 slides of them in my closet.

I'm still hemming and hawing about buying a slide scanner and cataloging that closet. The older I get, the more interesting those 30 year-old images become!

The link below mentions a SCL sleeper called "Fort Monmouth" now in Yakima, WA. Could this be one of those cars, since the post also says SCL never had a car of that name?

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001Miz

Rob

Thank you very much for the information on this thread. I have heard on another message board that the NYC 5015 is heading to the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, MI along with Steve Zuiderveen's Ex-Michigan Interstate nee-Ann Arbor railroad caboose. http://www.ozarkmountainrailcar.com has an 11-bedroom sleeper listed for sale from the North East museum - perhaps this is the one that was in his collection.

On that note, does anyone here have a current or all-time roster of the Lake Shore Railway Museum passenger car collection. They have also had two heavyweight pullman sleepers listed for sale in addition to the car mentioned above. My contact there passed away a few years ago.

Many thanks.
Tom Cornillie