Is that really a trolley front or some old Twin Coach? That square cutout at the bottom looks like a radiator opening or something.

Andy:

Yep, I'd say that was a front panel off a twin coach bus. But, what does an auctioneer know or this fellow's bereaved wife, even?

Just as a sidebar, we've seen a lot of these estate sales lately where some pretty rare streetcar and railroad artifacts get sold and end up in some auction barn or, worse yet, on eBay. Example, the fellow who listed on eBay a K-10 controller with a starting bid of $10,000. I suspect he still has it. But we sure could use it in our museum, but not at that price.

Our museum almost lost a very nice photo collection from Duluth to a well-known auction site. Luckily we arranged eventually to obtain the photos for our Minnesota street railway photo archive. But what else is out there that will get scattered piecemeal, or worse, by ignorant family members?

My will specifies that all my railroad and streetcar artifacts goes to the Museum. How about you?

The photo reminds me of the time I was at a special event at the Monrovia (CA) Santa Fe station. From the plaform I could see over the fence of a nearby salvage yard. I spotted something that looked like a streetcar body, and went back when the yard was open. Imagine my disappointment to find it was a Twin Coach bus body. Twin coach did indeed build an experimental streetcar with its bus body, presumably with the traction motors where the engines would be, but it's highly unlikely to have been numbered 227.