I was recently reading in Middleton's book, Traction Classics Volume II, about the high speed interurbans of the Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad (C&LE). These were the so-called "Red Devil" cars.

The Wikipedia post on these cars says they originally had aluminum side panels, some later replaced with steel. It also says there were some problems with the aluminum:



Of the surviving C&LE "Red Devil" cars today in museums, do any still have the original aluminum side panels?

CR and IC (C&LE) 111 at the Western Railway Museum has flat stainless steel siding on it. The siding is so heavy that it has resulted in distress in the body bolsters. As built the aluminum siding had ribs in it running the length of the car. I have never studied this in detail, but I believe that CRANDIC modified all the cars differently.

There is still aluminum in the structure of 111 and it is still deteriorating due to dissimilar metal corrosion. The car at Seashore is also still suffering from this problem. I am not familar with the cars at Shore Line and Worthington. One of the carbodies that went to Scranton (?) still had aluminum siding on it.

The corrosion between the steel and aluminum is probably a result of the aluminum alloy not being proper, failure to electrically insulate the joints, and not making the joints water tight.

Wm. B. Young, one of the insiders at Branford, had told us that our 116 could not be displayed as Cincinnati & Lake Erie because the sides weren't aluminum. Since it now has steel sides, it's only correct for it to be Cedar Rapids & Iowa City. After he died, the car was painted as a C&LE "Red Devil", but with a rule that no magnets are allowed near it.

The C&LE bodies that were at ECTM were cut up a couple of years ago. I believe only the ends of both bodies survived.

I do not know if the C&LE cars that went to LVT retained their aluminum sides or not, as none survived into preservation.

Thanks for the replies. Here's the scorecard so far.

Car#

111, Western Railway Museum (Rio Vista, California) -- Stainless steel side panels

116, Shore Line Trolley Museum (East Haven, Connecticut) -- Steel side panels

118, Seashore Trolley Museum (Kennebunkport, Maine) -- ?

119, Ohio Railway Museum (Worthington, Ohio) -- ?

Regarding the C&LE cars and aluminum side sheets, many years ago when I worked with Ed Blossom at the Magee Transportation Museum, and later at Dushore and Topton, we had two C&LE carcasses on hand. Both came from CRANDIC, and both still had aluminum side sheets. There were obvious signs of distress around each rivet and along the bottoms of the sheets on both cars. Ed made the comment to me that, in addition to the electrolysis issue, he recalled the cars being washed with a lye solution which he said exacerbated the corrosion. As for the distressed carbody bolsters, which were evident on these two hulks, Ed blamed it on the opposite joint rail on the CRANDIC, which resulted in heavy pounding of the body on the truck bolsters.

There were two ex-C&LE, ex-CRANDIC bodies that came into Electric City ownership around ten years ago or so, one of which had been owned by Ed Blossom and the other by Jack Keenan, if memory serves. My understanding of what happened is that the worse of the two (car 117) was scrapped in 2004 with both ends saved as spares. Then the following year the the other one (car 110) was unfortunate enough to be among the cars stored at Topton when everything there was unceremoniously cut up by a scrapper. I believe the ends of car 117 are the only pieces surviving from those two cars.

Rear of car 117: http://davesrailpix.com/hicks/htm/hicks385.htm