What powers the car? There doesn't appear to be any trolley wire. Also, since it doesn't show up in Preserved North American Electric Railway Cars, I would guess that it's one of the open-air cars that came from Brazil about 40 years ago.

You're correct; it's an ex-Rio single-truck open car that came over from Brazil in the 1960's (IIRC) and for a couple of decades was in operation at what was then RELIC in South Elgin, IL. It was privately owned, though, and moved to Middletown when its owner did. Recently he acquired one of the tow-along portable generators from Charlotte Trolley which that organization had no more need of, and that's what's powering the open car now.

Thanks for the update--unless RELIC had more than one, I rode that car along the banks of the Fox River. At the time it still had the fare registers from Brazil in place, and they had direction indicators reading "Volto" and "Ido". The conductor would point them out and say, "But nobody knows Portuguese around here, so we don't know whether we're coming or going." The words were close enough to Spanish for me to translate, but I kept quiet--no need to be a know-it-all and spoil his schtick. I remember the crew had to drop a special steel adapter into one of the switch frogs because the car had streetcar-profile wheels.