We've long had the legend (based on some fact) about some trolleys, streetcars, and other rolling stock being "preserved" without trucks by adaptive reuse as "chicken coops," only to be rescued years later for preservation or at least stabilization for potential future preservation. This is so common that many transit preservationists routinely use the term "chicken coop" to describe such a reclaimed body project, and one long-ago listing project of traction cars in some form of limbo was named "The Chicken Coop Project."

Now I've been challenged by a chicken hobbyist magazine.

Are/were any of the project cars out there now (or even cars now running) actually a real chicken coop in a past chapter in their lives? Are there photos on file of the chickens setting on seats or hay-stuffed bag racks or perched on the farebox or railings, shovelfuls of chicken droppings being shoveled out before removal from the farm, etc.?

Searching "chicken coop" here isn't enough. I need to find proof to the level of photos of the chickens walking in and out, or eggs on the seats!

Can anyone come through with "smoking gun" evidence that their particular car once actually housed Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds, Austrolorps, or whatever?

Non-traction rolling stock also eligible, mind you..............

Oh, and just for laughs, here's a "chicken coupe"................ chicks really like it.....

Two of my cabooses retrieved from Boulder had eggs inside them.....i didn't try them tho

Mike P

Five Mile Beach Electric Rwy. (Wildwood by the Sea, New Jersey) trolley no. 24 was formerly a pigeon coop, after its days as a tourist cabin were over. It is now at the Electric City Trolley Museum and Station in Scranton, Pennsylvania, being restored to its original condition as a 3rd Ave. Rwy. (New York City) car.

Third Avenue 651/ Wildwood Car 24 is a Brill 12-bench open car built in 1908 for the Third Avenue Railway Co. NY City. It was sold to Five Mile Beach of Wildwood, N.J., where it was renumbered 24, gained a center aisle and ran in seasonal service until 1945. The carbody was retrieved years later and major restoration has been underway, including obtaining 22E "Eureka"-style maximum-traction trucks from Lisbon, Portugal.

The trucks have been regauged to RR Standard gauge and are under the car which is still under restoration.

Remarkably, Five Mile Beach in its bus era acquired ex-Fifth Avenue Coach double-deck (open top) bus 1234 (Yellow Coach Model Z?) which the owner drove on an irregular schedule along the bus route. It needed a conductor, of course, since it is rear-entrance. The bus is now at National Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood MO.

http://www.ectma.org/collection.html

Phil Mulligan

Click on hyperlink for a picture of the bus.

Do pigeon roosts count? The body of a Shamokin & Mount Carmel Transit Co. car still survives in Ashland, PA, where it was for many years the headquarters of the local pigeon fanciers' club.

South Pacific Coast caboose 47 (Carter Brothers, 1880) ended up on the Carson & Colorado, and was found in Keeler CA being used in part to house goats... not chickens but at least live stock... it is now part of the SPCRR collection at Ardenwood Farm.

Somewhere in my files I have a pic from a 1960's newspaper clipping of an old City of Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) streetcar being used as a chicken coop. The operative word here is 'somewhere'...

On the flip, after the War a whole squadron of Lancaster bombers were flown to an airbase at Pearce, Alberta (Canada), northeast of Fort Macleod for disposition. Most (with full fuel tanks) were sold to local farmers for pennies on the dollar who in turn used them as a goldmine of parts...and turned the fuselages into chicken coops. There is a dedicated group in Nanton, Alberta that has restored a Lanc that is still finding bits and pieces on farms to this day.

73
RWC

There really are chicken hobbyist magazines?

Poultry is just another word for chicken- Jack Nicholson's character in Goin' South.

Sometimes the transition from human use to chicken use is reversed, I know of someone who lived in a converted chicken coop in a backyard in Denver for the first three years of her life, 1946-1949, due to housing shortages in the immediate postwar era. Really.

https://backyardpoultry.iamcountryside.com/

https://www.chickenwhisperermagazine.com/

https://www.facebook.com/PracticalPoultry

http://www.fancyfowl.com/

https://www.hobbyfarms.com/cks/

I haven't checked the Statement of Circulation for any of them yet, but I'll wager that they have bigger circulation than Trains, Railfan & Railroad, Classic Trains, Railway Magazine, etc.

I mean, fer cryin' out loud, Britain has both a Steam Railway magazine and a Heritage Railway magazine........

If you really want to be cynical, why would there be magazines for model railroaders? Model railroads are just personal vanity projects, right? Can you imagine how utterly mad we rail enthusiasts must look to people with REAL "hobbies"? Don't all trains "look alike" and all that?

Chickens, by contrast, have sweet personalities (well, most of them), are cheap to feed and care for (or can be), and make you an occasional fresh breakfast. Or can be dinner, if you care to go that way.

It used to be utterly astounding to go to a large book store or city newsstand and see literally thousands of periodicals, devoted to everything from weddings to home brewing to the culture of/travel to specific countries to cowboy fashions, niche categories of music, every fathomable type of cooking, every imaginable craft/hobby, all sorts of political/social commentary, every fathomable sport or mode of transport or pet animal, etc. (In the 1990s there was a magazine devoted to collecting Beanie Babies.)

The thing that keeps any periodical alive is the either a devoted audience willing to pay for it OR its ability to sell advertising. Advertising pays for the paper and printing; the subscriptions (hopefully, or at lest try to) pay for a staff and for the stories and photos taken by free-lancers. The vast reduction in newspaper and magazine size/quantity of recent years is a direct result of alternative advertising--online, social media, etc. Classified ads and legal advertising used to keep newspapers afloat; with Craigslist, that's gone. Also gone are the department stores that were obligated to take out nearly-full-page ads in city/local newspapers.

No doubt. About ten or twelve years ago there was a movement to remove poultry from the list of "farm animals" built into most suburban zoning codes. That caused a rash of interest in keeping small flocks in suburban backyards, much to the dismay of neighbors. There was a whole flock (pun intended) of mini chicken coop products to serve this new market, and those outfits needed someplace to advertise.

I seem to recall being told that Chicago & West Towns 141 at the Illinois Railway Museum spent time as a "chicken coop" after retirement, but on this web page:
http://www.bera.org/cgi-bin/pnaerc.pl?detail=1253
Frank Hicks only says "shed". It would be interesting if anyone has pictures.

I spent a little time on the web searching for images of "streetcar chicken coops" and only came up with two pix, neither of which show actual chickens

A photo of British Columbia Electric 153 calls it a chicken coop, but the web site dedicated to the car's restoration says the carbody was used as a bunkhouse.

https://transitheritage.ca/archives-and-vehicle-preservation/restoring-bc-electric-streetcar-153/

However, the official web site of the Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum says that their car "spent sixty-five years as a chicken coop", and has a small photo, but alas, not a chicken to be seen.

https://www.sftm.org/index.shtml

I don't doubt that somewhere, sometime, an old streetcar housed chickens, but with the advent of modern poultry production, raising one's own couldn't compete with the store prices, and one by one they fell into disuse, most before railfans had cheap film to waste on this subject. Meanwhile, "chicken coop" came to mean any small building, whether it housed chickens or not.

I wouldn't know. My grandma kept her chickens in her garage.

I can do better than showing what once was, I’ll show what is right now, in an Australian museum.

The Launceston tram network in the Australian island state of Tasmania, ran from 1911 to 1952. Launceston is Tasmania’s second city, but is pretty small, having a population of 112k today and about 45k in 1950. It’s tram network was small, reaching 13.8 miles and 29 trams at its maximum extent.

The Launceston Tramway Museum is fascinating. Set up in the first tram barn, which was closed after a flood in 1929, they’ve collected a representative example of trams. As such, they have several restored and under restoration, and all trams of the network are accounted for, having been sold off as bodies, with most scrapped, burnt in fires, or lost in other ways.

As an example of the trams’ post-service existence, one tram body, that of No 23, is kept in the condition in which it was found, and it makes a wonderful display, when contrasted to the immaculately restored classmate nearby. It was set up as it was on a farm, which ended as a chook shed., I’ve attached images of the display, which shows the tram as found, complete with chicken wire covering the saloon windows, tin sheets enclosing the open ends, and chooks on the roof. The accompanying information boards are really well done too. I’ve attached an image of another tram of the type, as restored, awaiting its truck. As the museum has two other cars of the type, so No 23 is safe as a chicken coop forever.

That Launceston display is a brilliant piece of historical interpretation and emphasises that such vehicles did have a life after they came out of service.
We have a similar thought of possibly restoring one of the single deck trolleybuses that used to serve our Town from 1926 back into its form as a caravan/living accomodation that it was used for between the late 1940's and the early 1960's. Would be a nice piece of social history (post WW2 housing shortages), something that one rail museum (North Norfolk Railway) has already done with grounded rail passenger car bodies, but for the 1920's/30's era.