Too far gone for me, just curious if anyone has any info. on it though.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-Full-Si ... 0#viTabs_0

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I like the vent windows and hardware.

A center door car? Front end looks like a Boston car.

Wesley

Looks like a 7000-series Baltimore trailer.

Looks like it was converted into a work car, possibly a line car?

The auction is now closed, any one know if it was saved/ parted out?

The consensus of several "walking encyclopedias" here at the Balto. Streetcar Museum and Md. Rail Heritage Library, one of whom hails from Bel Air, is that this "chicken coop" is long known to have been a former 7000-series center-door trailer, one of 100 built in 1920 by J.G. Brill for United Railways of Baltimore. The problem is that there were (and remain) almost no cars that were powerful enough to pull a trailer; as author Michael Farrell said in Who Made All Our Streetcars Go?, "The 1920 trailer trains were said to be very difficult to get moving and almost impossible to stop." All were retired and disposed of by or in the 1930s, so this body has been a "building" for perhaps eighty years or so!

The BSM has long had possession of another 7000-series trailer body, which has slowly been returning to Nature in the weeds behind the cast iron Lombard Street Bridge in storage near the Ma & Pa roundhouse. Given that neither of these cars has/had seats, trucks, windows, or anything else of fundamental value, these have to go WAY down the priority list behind continued maintenance/restoration of better cars.

I'm now awaiting a restoration shop expert to arrive here to apprise whether any of the hardware, roof work, etc. may be worth salvaging, and whether it's worth an expedition to Bel Air and how much the seller may want for them.

UPDATE: The "powers that be" have chimed in and stated that they are aware of the existence of a FAR more intact Baltimore 7000-series trailer (with windows, doors, hardware, etc. and under cover) than this, closer to Baltimore, SHOULD anyone be crazy enough to want to pursue this line of "chicken coop" preservation. Meanwhile, someone else has reportedly inquired of the owner/demolition contractor about the hardware, after having checked with the BSM to see whether or not they were pursuing it.

UPDATE II: The BSM has in storage all the seats that came out of "what's left" of this car, which was "only half a car to begin with," having been cut behind the center doors. Further. the head curator tells me that there exist TWO intact 7000-series trailers elsewhere, with wheels, seats, and hardware.....

For those keeping tabs, I'm told the auctioned relic was first a diner, then a lawn mower repair shop...... and a guy sitting behind me once ate dinner in that car....

Streetcar trailers are definitely a rare commodity in preservation. Most street railways quit trailer operation quite early and few were preserved: there are only a dozen extant in North America and about half are "shells" like BSM's car. Of the remainder, streetcar trailers that are in decent shape, only Seashore and MOT possess an appropriate motor car equipped to pull trailers and MOT's "trailer pullers" are very poor condition.* But Seashore has a motor-trailer set from Cleveland and it's conceivable that they may have a motor-trailer streetcar train in service at some point in the future.

*There's also a CSL trailer at IRM, a PSNJ trailer at Branford, and a Denver trailer recently cosmetically restored by the Aurora History Museum, but none of these three organizations has a streetcar from those systems equipped to pull trailers.

IRM also has a reconstructed cable car trailer, which were probably pulled by single truck motors like the one also at IRM. The CSL steel trailer might not look so bad pulled behind the West Towns MU streetcar/light interurban, though that probably would have never happened outside of a museum experience.

NTHT's former El Paso Electric Railway No. 111 was originally built as a Stone & Webster 12 window turtleback trailer. Performance was reportedly highly unsatisfactory so the car was converted to a regular streetcar and transferred to Fort Worth, TX.

never thought of doing a "half trailer"? putting one powered truck on? North Shore had done that. Well a streetcar had to do a LOT of starts and stops.

he said it had to be gone in 2 weeks, any updates to this?

Since the CSL trailers were hauled by Old Pullmans and 169 cars it wouldn't be too out of place to set up the 144, 460 or the 3142 to do that even though those cars were never so equipped.

That's what the CTA 4000s were. They were their own trailers. Nothing about this arrangement kept two of them from pulling additional trailers, such as an Alco S1 and caboose in the case of Michigan Transit Museum.

Well, based on the fact it said it was "built into an old building we are tearing down" and, "it needs to be gone in two weeks" I'm going to guess that it is set to be torn down in less than two weeks. All I'm saying is if someone is going to make a move, they'd better do it, quick.