Their website seems to have expired. Anybody know if there's a new one?

WARNING: This may be a delayed April Fools' Day joke, or a "sour grapes" remark.
A rumor spread at the East Penn Traction Club meeting 4/3/9 has it that the Cleveland project, like many Ohio trolley museums, is in final trouble, and the cars are already headed to various other, out of state places. Arden was mentioned as one of them, since there is an old restored Pittsburgh car in the collection.

Can't speak to their current status, other than to say that my personal attempts at contact over the last month have gone unanswered.

I've been trying to get in touch with someone to see if the collection would be open/available during the Steam Festival weekend at the end of July, thought I'd swing down to Cleveland in a round-about trip back to Chicago after the festival.
Several attempts at contact unanswered.

As noted, the website (which showed great promise) is basically all but dead, having not been updated for quite some time. There was another Flickr photo stream last summer, some of the cars were moved outside of the storage facility into the sunlight.

This group had some great promise (along with a new site, there was the potential for a new carbarn, and possibly trips over the Cleveland RTA in the future. Hope this is a temporary set-back.

Any updated info from folks in the know is greatly appreciated !

lsery.org is parked; that itself might just mean they forgot to renew.

Trolleyville USA site is still up http://www.trolleyvilleusa.org/

This "interesting" trolley pole suggests a warm relationship with the RTA...
http://aetomic.com/cgi-bin/emAlbum.cgi? ... img=3&tn=1

Given the quality of this collection and its apparently strong ability to find indoor storage, I'd be surprised if it just "went away". Is there just a lack of appreciative volunteers in the Cleveland area? Or are they all fractured and factionalized?

Unfortunately those shots of the ex-CA&E cars running on the Cleveland RTA are almost 6 years old at present. When the Trolleyville collection was moved to the lakefront, there was at least one unofficial "late night" run with one of the ex-CA&E St Louis steel cars. Suggested at the time as a harbinger of things to come,, still waiting unfortunately....

Is there just a lack of appreciative volunteers in the Cleveland area? Or are they all fractured and factionalized?[/quote]
The Northern Ohio area is the "poster child" for all of the above problems. With all of the potential in the area it should be one of the best areas for preservation. Instead it is one of the worst. A few of us have worked at bringing everyone to the table including the state, and well it just doesn't work! A few of us still hold out hope and will contiune to beat or heads against the wall. (wasn't there a comment or 2 on here the other day about Ceramic head plates, that due to light weight let you beat your head more with less stress and wall damage?)
Yes I have a front row seat to this and know of what I speak!!

It appears that the rumors are true. The Pittsburgh Railways high floor will be arriving at the Pa Trolley Museum on May 7th. As I understand it, the remainder of the collection is going up for auction.

What a shame all of this collection is being broke up. Not more than 30 miles from the collection is 40 acres inside of a wye, owned debt free by a 501C3 that would be a perfect place to build a building and house the collection. With all of the poles removed when the collection left Olmsted Falls it would not take much to some of the track under wire.
The $ 300,000.00 to build the building and add some track isn’t even the big problem. The big problem is all the groups in this area won’t work together or even try to. Trying to talk to anyone involved with the equipment in question was nothing but a waste of time. They knew it all and couldn’t be bothered with anyone else.
All certain members of these groups need to do is spend some time on a website such as this, look at what works elsewhere and try and figure out how to make it happen in Northern Ohio. This would involve checking Ego’s at the door and come up with a solid business plan and start working towards it.
Oh well just another case of lost opportunity in rail preservation.
Anyone here have any ideas?
You would think there would be some way to get everyone to "play" well enough together to make something positive happen. No one has to be "best buds", just at least talk about some form of a plan.

To add fire to the rumor mill, their website which had been up and running as recently as last month, is now completely gone. Not a huge loss since it hadn't been updated in a couple of years, but it does seem to be another indicator that things didn't go as they had hoped in Cleveland. Interestingly enough, there is a benefit walk-a-thon scheduled for May 30, which is noted to start at the museum, yet the link to the museum's webpage doesn't work since the website is gone. http://www.mrsnv.com/evt/home.jsp?id=2239
Perhaps all of this is a very recent development ? Or perhaps the museum is downsizing and reallocating assets to narrow their focus and collect a few desperately needed dollars at the same time ? Someone must know.

There are a number of very rare cars in the collection, near and dear to me as a Chicago area resident are all the CA&E cars (Including a Pullman and the curved sided St Louis cars{the last "standard" interurbans built in the US}) There are also the last
two Aurora Elgin & Fox River Electric lightweight cars (sisters to IRM's AEFRE 306)
These cars ran both on Speedrail in Wisconsin as well as the Shaker Hts Rapid Transit after leaving Illinois in the early '30s.

Timing is never a good thing, and the current economic crisis cuts even deeper than normal, but it would be nice to see some of these cars "come home" if the demise of the LSERy is indeed true.

This is very disturbing news. Here was a successful businessman, Gerald Brookins, who did everything right when it came to establishing an operating trolley museum. It was the most financially stable trolley museum in the country with a superb collection of cars that were immaculately restored and operated in a beautiful park like setting. It certainly appeared this legacy that Mr. Brookins gave us would be around many future generations to enjoy. And now it's dead with the collection being auctioned off like old dusty furniture at an estate sale. If this fine operation couldn't survive with all the assets it possessed, what does the future hold for others that are not nearly as well off? I'm very sad to see a man's dreams come to this.

Charlie

I agree with Charlie, a great collection, with vision , broken up, and lost to the public. I hope there are enough institutions to move the cars to new homes.

Ted.