I came across this photo in a realty listing. The address of the property is 1011 Trolley Rd., Mohrsville, PA; most likely a Reading T&L car given the area. Their Birneys were numbered in the 500s. No idea what the status of the car is, if it's for sale, etc.

Looks well preserved on the outside! The windows look a little funky, though, especially the way the upper row doesn't seem to line up with the lower row. Can you read the destination boards?

You are indeed correct that RT&L's Birneys were in the 500 series. There were 16 RT&L Birney Safety cars numbere 500-511 and the issue I'm having is that #500, assuming that's its real number, was a duplicate number as were 501, 502, and 503 and are rostered as either 500a or 500b ect. The a's were built by Osgood Bradley and the b's were built by Wason both in 1920. My dillema is that the a's were retired in 1930 and likely scrapped but the b's were retired in 1947 as were all other RT&L Birneys to survive. The issue is that I cannot find any hinting to a rare Wason car in PA and I haven't been around long enough to know the difference between an Osgood Bradley and a Wason Birney. On a side note if it is 500b it would be one of two Schuylkill Valley Transit car remaining along with Oley Valley car #302 which was renumbered to 120 and used on the SVT from Dec. 1905 to sometime in 1906.

Interesting. And no, I can't make out the dashers. RT&L may have more surviving cars than any other defunct transit company out there, it seems they are everywhere.

Neat find! And if I'm reading Harold Cox's book correctly, *if* the car is indeed RT&L 500 then it is an ex-Schuylkill Valley Transit car whether it was the first or second car 500. RT&L 500(a) was an Osgood-Bradley built car identical to 506 in Scranton and was sold to Schuylkill Valley Traction in 1929, where it became SVT 500. The very next year it was sold to the Hanover & McSherrytown (not making that up) where it became H&S 101 and again ran for only one more year before that line was abandoned and the fleet was sold for scrap.

If it's RT&L 500(b), which seems a bit more likely (but I really can't tell from that photo), then it was acquired by RT&L in 1933 from SVT, where it was 504. SVT acquired it in 1929 from Plattsburgh [NY] Traction Company, where it was car 5, while Plattsburgh bought it a year earlier in 1928 from the Plymouth & Brockton Street Railway in Massachusetts, for whom it had been built in 1920 as car 355. Quite the boomer!

My recollection is that the car is 500b, a Brill design Birney car with narrow body corner posts. I have not seen the car for more than 10 years. There was one other such car north of Temple, PA at that time, as well as the two Reading Bradley Birneys (506, 511) on the Hicks list.

How many others are on the list? I know of this car, 506 which is at the ECTM in Scranton, the missing 510 that supposedly belonged to the Detroit Citizen's Rwy, and 511 that has become part of the Hotel Fiesol.

In terms of other bodies, ECTM also has #102, there is a single truck Brill #182 along the Maiden Creek, the two cars built into a residence in Oley, which I believe are Nos 95 and 302, and the currently missing 307.

I should point out, for those of you who would like to actually ride on one of these Reading units again, that the ECTM maintains an account for each car in their collection, and you can stipulate when you make a donation what you would like it spent on. So if you send in a check for $100, you can notate that it is to be used only on Reading car #102, and they will respect your wishes. This also helps to get favored cars moved to the top of the restoration list. Hint hint

I'm no expert, but it seems we may have a rare bird in the form of a Wason birney, or it at least bears heavy resemblance to this othe Wason specimen. http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/ak224.jpg I'm thinking perhaps 500b.What book are you refering to for curiosity, I'm going of of Harry Foesig's "Trolleys Of Berks County" from 1970.

"The Birney Car" by Harold Cox, fortuitously available online:

http://streetcars.telcen.com/books/birney/index.html