As an Australian traction fan, it may not be my place to comment, but I'm particularly saddened by the destruction of this car.

If it had it been beyond hope, eaten out by termites or rotten to the core, I could see that there was no hope for it. Maybe this is the case; one can't know by looking at a picture. It does seem that a largely-intact car body, which survived for well over half a century since the closure of its system, has been destroyed for nothing.

Was there no other choice? Could it not have been deaccessioned and gone to another museum, or even to a fan who could have put in in a back yard? I know someone in Australia who recently bought a carbody and has set it up as his hobby room.

I'm sure all of these things were taken into account by the East Troy management, it just seems a shame.

Cheers,
Matt

A difficult decision, but even IRM has scrapped cars, more excess cta equipment.
I tend to cringe as much as anyone else.
You probably have to evaluate the work involved to restore and it could come down to complete wood replacement. That leaves no car left. Sometimes you have to look at hardline reality. That crumpled front end didnt look like fun to straighten. A fresh metal bent would have worked. What I hope is that there is plenty of photographic records and plans for the car. I don't know the thinking why ET would really scrap it
but if I were looking at it I know that the car would just about have to come apart and start replacing bad wood. Knowing you could build a new car from fresh wood the logic goes the elder car isn't saveable, except parts and pieces from it.
I hope any one representative from ET chimes up about the car.

Follow-up from some of the most recent posts.

Frank, my info on the F208 as a single truck car is from the IRM Roster on the museum's webpage. A revision or update is in order ?

Charles, I agree with you totally, the question of how many pieces of equipment vs types of equipment is at best a series of semantics/splitting hairs. The point is a
valuable and irrereplacable interurban was lost and to this point, I've found no credible evidence that any attempt was made to find it a new home elsewhere.

Les, I'm sure someone from IRM could chime in with more specifics, but as I recall the East Troy motor came to IRM during one of the past regime changes at East Troy which resulted in a number of cars going elsewhere as they reduced their collection to what was determined to be a more manageable size.

Dinwitty, I think we're all hoping for some official clarification, dare I suggest explanation as to what happened here. As someone suggested to me offline, their timing couldn't have been worse in that as a whole the traction community was scrambling to find homes (and funds) to relocate the LSE museum collection, but even with that, from LSE's official announcement to final sale, that was only within the last 2-3 months. Personal opinion, it's got to take more than a couple months to decide you don't want or need a car, and ultimately get to a pile of 100 year old toothpicks.

Something just doesn't add up, and I hope someone from ETER will chime in.

John -

A sidebar on the issue. I was going up to Wisconsin this past Friday and checked out the East Troy Electric Railway Museum's website. I was surprised that they showed trains running on Fridays in October. So I decided to make a detour and ride the line since the last time I was there was when it was a freight only operation. Unfortunately, there was a sign on the door stating that due to the inclement weather, all of the trips for the day were cancelled. I do admit that there was a light rain falling when I was there. Still, I question the cancellation of scheduled runs.

Les