Ever wanted a nice cabin near the Mississippi River, just west of Alton, Illinois? How about a restoration project for your traction museum? How about both?

I was up near Alton yesterday, taking a lovely drive on the state highway that uses part of the old Illinois Terminal right-of-way from Alton to Grafton, when I found IT 103.

The 103 is the sister to the 101 which is operational at IRM, and the 104 which is in storate at MOT here in St. Louis. Unlike her sisters, the 103 didn't last long after the end of the Alton line, instead being used as a cabin.






Good news, the 103 is for sale, I forgot to take a photo of the "For Sale by Owner" sign, so I didn't get the phone number. If anyone is really interested, they can backchannel me, and I'll take another look next time I'm up in that direction.

Whew!!! While I would love to save such a body, I do not think this one is for me. Without looking at it in person, I see no trucks, no couplers, no poles, missing windows and end hardware, the fishbelly in the center of the car sitting right on the ground, and wondering if part of the other side or end has been cut away.

But still a neat find - and hope someone can make use of at least part if.

Bob Kutella

It's hard to tell from the photos, but I think both side sills in the "drop" center portion of the car body are intact.

I didn't get too close to it, so I can't comment on how intact the interior is. Probably obvioulsy missing seats, but I'm curious as to whether the partitions are still intact, etc.

Also, the car was a victim of the 1993 flood, so I'm wondering how that factors into its condition and long-term survival.

Having worked on the step wells of IT 101 many years ago, as I recall, there is really nothing structural under there. The car has a straight center sill. The drop in the side is simply an extension of the side sheet, with an angle to stiffen the bottom edge, The step well has about as much structure as the sides do, but it’s simply flat plate.

Then again, since these are the ugliest cars on the face of the earth, it’s probably better it stays hidden in the house.

Well, there have been worse-looking cars out there...



Photo from Dave's Rail Pix. I was actually trying to find a photo of one of the Wilkes-Barre center-door streetcars but couldn't. Oh well.

That car is from a failed Indiana Shortline, featured in Elmer Sulzer's "Ghost Railroads of Indiana"

I can't remember the name, but the line was built as an interurban that was never electrified, and instead they bought these cars.

This car is a double truck car built by the Barber Car Co. of York, Pa. To my knowledge, they were sold only to the Sunbury & Selinsgrove Electric Railway in central Pennsylvania, as a principal in Barber was also a majority stockholder in the S&S. If you can imagine it, they also built single truck cars that looked like a chicken coop on wheels!

As for the other car Frank mentioned, I believe he was thinking of the Wilkes-Barre & Hazelton double-truck center door cars. They had one compartment with wooden benches for dirty coal miners and the other end with rattan walkover seats for the clean folks. Their ends were tapered and raked up like the prow of a ship. Ugly!

I have no idea what Wilkinsd is referring to, but I'm only popping in here to confirm that the photo Frank Hicks posted is indeed Sunbury & Selinsgrove Electric 115 (first), built by the ill-fated Barber Car Co. at its Hummels Wharf, Pa. "plant" in 1913; it was the one and only car built by said plant and was actually completed by the S&S as part of the receivership of the company's bankruptcy. The S&S also had six other Barber cars built at their York, Pa. plant; they were pretty bad looking, but not quite *so* hideous as 115. I can identify the building in the background of the photo in Sunbury, Pa.; I also own a postcard of the photo; and I wish I had been around to beat this ugly monstrosity with an ugly stick, or torch it.

Before you challenge me, this car was retired prior to 1926 and a second number 115, a Brill double-truck that ended up on the Third Avenue Ry. of NYC replaced it in 1926.

Sorry, but that was my home-town "interurban", after all............

It's lucky that one Barber car survived, albeit one that isn't quite as ugly as the one in the photo and doesn't retain its original Barber truck. Southern Iowa #9 is preserved in operating condition in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. It was converted early in life from a single-trucker to a double-trucker if memory serves. Neat car, and well taken care of by the Old Threshers trolley outfit.


Photo from Fallen Flags Photos

I have to wonder if we are allowing ourselves to get a bit intimidated by what in reality is a pretty straightforward fabrication job when we sweat this kind of stuff. There is almost nothing that can't be repaired on a lightweight steel or composite carbody structure with a Harbor Freight 3-way machine, a light plasma torch, and a decent wire welder. Charlotte 85 needed both ends replaced, new knee braces, a large chunk of one side reconstructed, and lots of underfloor and sidewall bits scabbed in. The Cincinnatti Curveside I hauled out of the woods for Marietta, GA had severe sidewall rot, which combined with early aluminum construction in a unibody frame, was strategically interesting in preventing the walls from moving around a lot while cutting out and patching in - but not essentially difficult, nor was rebuilding the rear door to Georgia style. I was sent shards of a single truck Birney body held together by rusty sheet metal with all the carlines fractured and both end frames partly missing and what was left mangled and both sidewalls bowed, but got it patched together well enough for a cosmetic restoration in a couple weeks.

Sometimes I think the chicken coops and basket cases are actually easier - less fiddly fabric to conserve, and everybody agrees on pretty practical standards. Locating missing hardware is the most challenging thing, but in structurally complete cars, pretty much the same difficulty there.

So, for about $1000 worth of tools, and off the shelf metal, not so terrible.

BTW, no reflection on Bob or the fine work he has done - he just expressed the sentiment in this instance that set me to thinking about our perceptions in a more universal way.

dave

Dave,

I don't think you can order Sharon radial drawbars from Harbor Freight. Or MCB trucks, or GE switch groups…

Considering that two of these cars are preserved, one at MOT, close to where it ran, and one at IRM in the big IT collection they have, is there really any need to expend the resources on another? Is this style car really so significant that any or every collection needs one?

One of the signs that the railway preservation community is starting to show some maturity will be when they stop having a knee-jerk reaction to save every trolley, steamer, or caboose that happens to still be languishing in a field somewhere. We have way too much stuff supposedly "saved" already, languishing in fields at supposed museums.

IRM has taken four, by my count, basket cases out of houses or other extreme circumstances: Sand Springs 68, Chicago & West Towns 141, Michigan Electric 28, and the Fort Wayne & Wabash Valley parlor car, the number of which escapes me at the moment. In each case the artifact represented a point in electric railway development that was not well represented in the collection, or anyone's collection, for that matter. Restoration of these chicken coops take an incredible amount of time and effort; Bob Kutella, to his credit, has stuck with the 68 project FORTY YEARS to see it to the point of operation.

Can anyone really make that argument for IT 103?

There was an ill-fated shortline in Indiana that had Barber gas cars, almost idential to the one Frank pictured.

When I get back to Kentucky tomorrow morning, I'll make a bee line for the book case and pull out "Ghost Railroads of Indiana" to give you the name.

David

Actually, the car had Westinghouse HL control. When built, the cars had Commonwealth Trucks and WH motors. Sometime after the abandonment of the Alton line, and after 101 and 104 were painted in the green and white scheme, the IT changed the trucks and the motors on the car. The trucks, if I am correct, are from another IT "standard" car, and so are the motors.

The Alton cars, with their WH motors and equipment were always oddballs on the alll GE Illinois Terminal.

I think a case could be made to preserve the 103 as-is, as a cabin. Since there are two other examples which are complete and preserved, it would be nice to see someone either buy it and continue to use it as a cabin, or to preserve it as a cabin in a museum setting.

Sorry to be unclear - I wasn't making an argument for this car, just for the concept that we shouldn't let what might appear to be difficult structural deficiencies intimidate us into thinking any project is impossible. It doesn't offend me at all if this car is or is not preserved by whoever - just interested in the reasoning VS perception of it. BTW, I think anybody who has read more than one of my posts must know that I agree with Dennis about emotional reaction displacing good rational decision making in this or any other business venture. Hence the importance of understand how relatively easy such work is on this sort of structure, relatively speaking.........

dave

I believe the trucks now under 101 and 104 are from 120-series center-door cars, which AFAIK were scrapped at the same time the other 100's were. The motors probably came from mainline cars; GE 205's (which the 101 and 104 have now) were used on IT office car 233, for one, and surely on other IT interurbans as well.