Besides the recent acquistion of several cabooses to serve as the basis for a caboose train, East Troy Electric also recently moved it's Green Bay Traction Co 1903 Niles coach out of it's carbarn storage location where it had been safely secured for a number of years. In roughly the space of a month,it was totally destroyed.




What's the logic here ?
Assuming East Troy had decided they had no further use or desire for the car, was any effort made to try and find a new home ? Would it have been that impossible for this car to have found a new place to reside and perhaps be restored even cosemetically ? Seems like a total waste, can anyone shed some light on this ?

Two questions:

1) Was this systematic demolition or wanton vandalism? Or an attack by the giant foot from "Monty Python's Flying Circus" or a plague of locusts that know karate? Seeing as the trucks seemingly vanished, I'm guessing systematic demolition.

2) Do we have any evidence that this thing was any more than a wooden shell that would have fallen apart if one had looked at it funny?

I am acquainted with one wooden-bodied "shell" where I was told outright "They made us take both cars to get the one in decent shape; the second gave us a few spare parts, and the rest is this winter's firewood for the shop."

My understanding is this was an intentional systematic demolition.

Was the car body sound ? As sound or unsound as any other 100+ year old wooden bodied interurban car. I personally last saw the car up close and personal perhaps 10-11 years ago (when still safely stored indoors) and judged it to be no better or worse than any similarily aged/stored bodies found in any similar museum. Certainly it was in as good, if not arguably slightly better shape, than the Sheboygan car which ET restored so nicely.

And of course, if an intentional demolition, than why in such a manner as Brother Mitchell suggests that it appears as if done by the giant foot from Monty Python ?

It appears as if nothing was done to salvage anything from this body at least in terms of woodworking. Unless there was some massive invasion of termites (which would also then have affected more than just one car in the collection), there had to be wainscotting, trim, etc that could have been salvaged for use elsewhere.

In the first picture, it looks like it was barely holding together. But it is still a shame that more effort wasn't put into keeping it. After all, they don't make 1908 wooden cars anymore.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Do not assume that - termites (or fungus) can often be very picky about what they eat, and a five foot jump from one car to the next may have been a good barrier.

--
Will

Speaking of East Troy, Wisconsin, that trolley looks like what Harley Davidson did to East Troy resident Buell Motorcycle Company last Thursday. :-(

Oooooooh crap. I heard it was out of the barn. I heard it was on the ground. I didn't know it was in pieces.

I liked that interurban and was hoping that I would be able to ride it some day. I remember measuring it twice in the 1990's when I begged entrance into the phantom lake barn. Furthermore, I am building a model of it and was hoping that they would restore it in the original paint scheme.

Does anyone know if the colors visible were the original or some later paint?

If anyone gets a chance and if it is all going into the furnace, grab a SMALL painted side piece and window piece so I can get an idea of the color.

This really makes me sad. I think this is the only Green Bay Interurban that survived. I think there were only five exclusively Wisconsin Interurbans that survived: it, the Sheboygan Car, and the 2 (IRM) +1 (Cottage) TMER&L cars. Yes, the North shore cars are nice and important but there are several fistfuls of them.
Such a shame that it made it this far to be crushed into kindling.

Charles

[quote="JohnCloos"]My understanding is this was an intentional systematic demolition.

Was the car body sound ? As sound or unsound as any other 100+ year old wooden bodied interurban car. I personally last saw the car up close and personal perhaps 10-11 years ago (when still safely stored indoors) and judged it to be no better or worse than any similarily aged/stored bodies found in any similar museum. Certainly it was in as good, if not arguably slightly better shape, than the Sheboygan car which ET restored so nicely.

quote]
I spoke with Glenn Guerra briefly on a summer day when he was working on the Sheboygan car in Plymouth. If I remember the conversation right, he said that it was restorable.

It is indeed a sad loss, made all the worse by the seemingly unneccessary need for it to have happened, at least in this manner.

I've had some back-channel discussions with a few people in and around the situation, and based on their statements (people I've personally known for some time and trust implicitly) we can put a bit more meat on the bones of the discussion.

First, this was indeed a planned destruction. The carbody was as previously mentioned structurally sound (within the realm of reality for a 100+ year old wood bodied interurban car). The car had sat on the ground for some time before being put on the shop trucks as seen in the first photo roughly 20 years ago. Certainly within that 20 year span the car would have had ample time to dry out from it's rest on the ground and one would think just the fact that it went from having it's full length spread out on the ground and then basically went to being supported at two points only while on shop trucks would prove the car body was basically sound (not great, just sound, let's be clear and give full benefit of doubt) There was some dry rot along the bottom as would be expected from a car which had sat on the ground, but this is said to have been no more than would be normally expected. Insect infestation (termites or otherwise) has been fully discounted. No evidence over the years of any such issue.

The car was judged by many knowledgeable types to be restorable. Operational vs cosmetic is another discussion, anything is restorable to full operation if you have unlimited funds and aren't overly concerned with the percentage of remaining original fabric. It has been suggested that the beautifully restored Sheboygan car in the East Troy collection not only was in worse condition than this car when that project was started, but also had far less reusable original fabric for a restoration.

The car was said to have been possibly offered to the museum in Green Bay, which on one hand seems like the natural spot, on the other hand, given their change of direction over the last couple years and large scale deaccessioning of equipment (much in a similar state of disrepair as this car), it seems that an offer to those folks would at best have been a token effort.

Again, it seems strange to me that this car could not have found a home, and even in a worst case scenario, that no effort was apparently made to salvage car body components for use elsewhere (window/door frames, trim, etc)

While by no means an apples to apples comparison, the recent LSE auction in Ohio serves as a model as to what CAN be done with a number of museums working together. As we're all too well aware, that hasn't always been the case. Sad after all that we as an industry have been through over the decades something like this still can, and has, happened. Maybe not all the lessons we've learned have stuck ?

Just one man's opinions and observations.

I walked around the car when it was already on the ground several weeks ago on a visit to the Elegant Farmer which is adjacent to the car barn.

I am not a preservationist, and can't tell if the car was restorable, but, I know that there was little left to restore. The car was unrecognizable as an interurban. The interior was in terrible shape, doors cut in the sides, etc.

It would probably be less expensive to recreate this car from scratch than to use what was there. Should a museum spend tons of money to ultimately get a display? The restoration would have left, in my opinion, very very little original material. At what cost should a restoration like this be funded - to the detriment of the remainder of the collection? What should a museum save knowing that 100 years from now there will be hordes of 50 year old light rail vehicles/rapid transit cars, etc worthy of preservation that are new today and museum pieces tomorrow. You can't save everything - nor should you try. It's all economics, space and time. This car was probably best remembered in HO scale.

Scrapping a car is a difficult choice. What I saw makes me believe that East Troy made the right choice.

Bob S. E. Wisconsin

I'll preface this by saying I personally was not on-site during the specifc timeframe of any of this and am simply reporting based on on-site reports from very knowledgeable people and photos.

To start, I don't see how anyone can say the car was unrecognizable as an interurban. The first photo clearly shows a recognizable car body.

Now this is while the car is still on shop trucks,if as you're saying once the car body was on the ground it was no longer obvious as to what the car was, clearly a large amount of demolition was necessary to reduce it to the pile of kindling seen in the second photo. In other words it stands to reason that at some point between photo 1 and 2, the state of the car was greatly diminished.

Also there are no openings cut into the visible side in the first photo. If memory serves, this car was saved from a former use as a lakeside cabin, so it is not unlikely to think the car might not have had such openings in the unseen side of photo 1. As regards an interior being in bad shape, that should be expected for a 100+ year old car that had seen adaptive resuse. Again as noted, current and former members of the East Troy group feel that this car was in better shape than the Sheyboygan car before Glenn Guerra started that restoration.

I'm not saying the car was preservable, or even should have been. Obviously at some point many years ago the East Troy group (or more specifically a former version of the same) saw enough of this car to save it with an idea for future restoration. Once the car was stabilized enough to be put on trucks and stored indoors (roughly 20 years ago), those actions did nothing except to further that possibility, not take away from it.

My questions are simply,,
1) What changed to make this car so unworthy of having a home (at East Troy or anywhere else) that it was dismantled this way ?
2) Assuming for sake of argument that the above was necessary, why was nothing saved from the car, again asking specifically about trim, window/door frames, hardware, etc.

One of the earlier posts bemoaned a short list of Wisconsin specific traction equipment having been saved, noting a total of only 5 cars.

By my count, there are at a minimum a total of 31 cars, and you could make an argument for 32.

East Troy has 10 cars:
Milw St Rwy Single Truck Parlor Car 200
Sheboygan Light & Power Interurban 26
Milwaukee Electric Streetcar 846
Milwaukee Electric Streetcar 978
TMER&L Line Car D23
TMER&L Self-Propelled derrick car L6
TMER&L Steeplecab locomotive L8
TMER&L Steeplecab locomotive L9
East Troy Electric Single Truck Open Car 21
Milwaukee Electric Horse Car

Staying in Wisconsin proper, you "could" add to this list the Birney car in Appleton which has been a very nice cosmetic restoration, although it is in fact a converted Tulsa car.

At IRM, we find the motherlode, a total of 21 pieces of equipment.
Chicago & Milwaukee Electric Streetcar 354
Milwaukee Electric Streetcar 966
Milwaukee Electric Streetcar 872
TMER&L Heavy Interurban 1129
TMER&L Heavy Interurban 1135
TMER&L Steeplecab locomotive L10
TMER&L Steeplecab locomotive L3
Wisconsin Electric Power Co Steeplecab locomotive L4
Wisconsin Electric Power Co Steeplecab locomotive L7
TMER&L Portable Substation #12
TMER&L Double Truck Sweeper B48
TMER&L Side Dump Motor D13
TMER&L Locomotive crane D16
TMER&L Line Car D22
TMER&L Single truck side dump car F208
Wisconsin Electric Power Co Flat car M26
TMER&L Flat car E117
TMER&L Flat car E58
TMER&L Box/Express Motor M1
TMER&L Container car M37
Village of East Troy Box/Express Motor M15

Pretty impressive roster, although not to beat a dead horse it would be nice to still see that Green Bay car listed !!!

Any others ?

John -

How did THAT happen? Wouldn't the logical place for the M15 be East Troy?

Les

Hi John,

I think you are missing my point. I really think that the Green Bay interurban was a large loss from the standpoint of company representation and car type representation. 2/3's of the cars of the cars on your list are work equipment, and most of the rest are streetcars. These are all very nice and important. However, when I read Badger Traction and TM, it seems like there were 10 passenger cars for each piece of work equipment. I would suggest that the passenger cars were usually the vast majority of cars on the electric railways and street railways, the ones that the public had the most contact with and affection for, and apparently the least likely to be saved. When I go to East Troy or IRM, I want to ride an Interurban first and a Trolley second and work equipment is a distant 3rd. Furthermore, many of the interurbans in Wisconsin died a decade before the streetcars in their respective cities did and so were less likely to survive the decades.

So "we" had 5 Surviving Wisconsin Interurbans: TMER&L 1129 & 1135 at IRM, a TMER&L parlor car that is a cottage in Ontario (http://www.trainweb.org/elso/LPS23COT.HTM), and the Sheboygan car & Green Bay Car at ET. All of them big, public attracting, passenger hauling interurbans from a prior era. Of those 5, 4 were accesable to the public, but only one is running (the Sheboygan Car). The TMER&L's & Green Bay car were awaiting restoration. The last is a private cottage and will never run again without a half a million IF the owner could be persuaded to sell/donate. And now since the Green Bay Car is completely gone the count for Non-North Shore Line Wisconsin Interurbans is: 1 running, 2 stored, and 1 cottage.

Returning to my original point, there aren't any other Fox Valley (Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Neehna, Menasha, Appleton, Green Bay) Trolleys or Interurbans left that I or others know of*. That was it. It was the sole representative of an entire system.

So good luck for the rest, shame "we" couldn't have saved the Green Bay. I've donated money on 3 occasions to help rebuild the Milwaukee Streetcar at East Troy AND WOULD HAVE DONATED MONEY for the Green Bay Car had they asked/or announced a need.

What a shame.

Charles

*I've heard a rumor that a Green Bay Birney survives in Denmark Wisconsin but haven't had the time to go hunting for it. The last Manitowoc Trolleys/cottages were hauled away to points unknown in the 1950's. I've read about the Ashland Birneys as camp cottages but don't know if they survived. Outside of Milwaukee and the North shore Line, very little survived. Now it is just the Sheboygan car.

And I know that there are 3 Chicago Trolleys in Weywewega, Wisconsin.

Very nice list! In the nitpicking department, I would point out only that F208 is a double-truck, rather than single-truck, dump trailer. It may be the only Diffco dump trailer preserved but is something of a cobbled-together piece which includes significant portions of trailer F208 (which was later motorized and renumbered D15, and was acquired by IRM form TWERHS in that form) and an ex-C&LE dump motor which later went to the P&W and was acquired from Penn's Landing in the 1990's.



Off the top of my head, I can think of LaCrosse Birney 12, which used to be at East Troy but is now owned by its home city's historical society; Milwaukee city car 861 at Seashore; and the diminutive street railway freight trailer from Waupaca which is owned by a model railroad club in that town. If you're counting more recent Wisconsin equipment like the East Troy open car, there are also the PCC's that have been seeing regular service in Kenosha for the past few years - not sure whether you'd want to count those or not, though. I'm told that the body of a lightweight double-truck car from one of the smaller Wisconsin city systems (maybe LaCrosse?) is privately owned in southern Wisconsin but I haven't been able to find much solid info on this car.