Scroll to third paragraph of this article and you will see reference to possible development of a "street car" museum. It's not clear whether the reference is to electric traction or to hot rods sometimes known as "street cars."

Sloan

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/ ... ext%7CHome

The facility in question, and photographed for the article is the old Colgage plant in Clarksville, Indiana. This is directly across the river from downtown Louisville. The neon clock has been a fixture in the local skyline for decades.

The old Colgate plant was originally an Indiana State Prison, and later encompassed part of the Ohio Falls Car Company, later a component of American Car & Foundry. This plant built many cars of the interurban era, including half of the Indiana Railroad highspeed order.

Some of the buildings survive from the facility's use as a car building company. Like Sloan, I would be interested to see what kind of museum they are talking about.

If it's going to be a streetcar museum, they won't have many actual cars to choose from. The only Louisville cars known to exist are two mule cars now at the Louisville Union Station and at Ky. Railway Museum and one Peter Witt style trailer dating from the 1920's. The PW trailer is privately owned and set up as a river side camp in Clarksville, IN and it has no trucks.

I produced a video "Streetcars of River City" that documents Louisville's streetcar and interurban history several years ago and, in the process, interviewed two of the best historians on the subject, George Yater and Jim Calvert who took me to many places related to those systems. Several car barns remain in Louisville but only those three actual cars. There was one Jeffersonville streetcar that had been converted to a diner but it was demolished later.

We also produced one on the Indiana Railroad interurban system which served the area until 1939 when the last cars ran to Louisville. One of those cars is at Illinois Ry Museum.

-Jim Herron

IRM has 2 Louisville-related Indiana Railroad cars. One is number 65, a Pullman-built high speed, one man car that ran into Louisville as part of regular service.

The other is 205, a Kuhlman-built suburban car that later worked as a Terre Haute streetcar and in Portland, OR. The 205 was built as Interstate Public Service #266 for suburban service from Louisville, up over the Big Four Bridge and to Jeffersonville, IN, Clarksville, IN and New Albany, IN.

The Halton County Radial Railway Museum in Canada also has one of the ex-Louisville PCC cars. I do not know if this was one of the cars that was shipped to Louisville, or one that was shipped to Cleveland directly from St. Louis Car Co.

Last I heard, someone was working on a Louisville Railway Co. history book. I have not heard any updates within the past year or so.

David -

Although the PCC cars were purchased for the Louisville Railway, and were not put into service, I seem to recall reading that one or two of the cars were actually test run and so DID actually run in Louisville. Whether the one surviving Louisville PCC (#509) was one of these cars, I do not know.

Les

Les,

I am aware that PCC era never fully came to Louisville. Only one car ran on the test loop behind the car barn, and another may have made it off the flatcar as well. The rest were never removed from their flatcars. A good chunk of the order was repainted at St. Louis car directly into Cleveland colors and shipped direclty there. CTS evidently painted the other cars in their own shops. Whether or not the Halton County car ever arrived in Louisville, it still is one of the few tangible reminders of electric traction in that city.

EDIT: The Car at Halton County is Louisville railway #509. A photo of it can be seen here:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=1415227

The car that actually made it off the flatcar was #502, photo here:

http://www.davesrailpix.com/odds/ky/htm/lville01.htm


David

Various histories of P.C.C. cars claim that the 1st 10 or 15 cars were delivered to Louisville, so 509 probably was. Before World War II, a Pittsburgh, Pa. P.C.C. car was tested in Louisville, with different Louisville destination signs.

In the linked photo, what are the double overhead wires to the left of the P.C.C. car for? I don't think that Louisville had trackless trolleys!
Could the photo really be in Cleveland, which did have trackless trolleys?

Louisville did have trolley coaches from 1936 to 1953. The 1936 coaches were sold to Cleveland, while the 1942 coaches were sold to Indianapolis.

I believe Louisville only had 1 trolleybus line, the Walnut street line. They even had a Ford gas-powered bus fitted with dummy trolley poles and sleet cutters to help keep the wire clear in the winter.

The trolley buses must have been serviced out of the same carhouse featured in the PCC photos, as the carhouse was also on Walnut St. The building has survived and is now the Louisville African American Heritage center, though the street name was changed in the 1970s from Walnut St. to Muhammad Ali Blvd.

There was one Pittsburgh PCC car that ran as a demonstrator in Louisville. Howard Blackurn's movies show it running on Broadway offering free rides. The scene is in our Louisville documentary. I think Howard's movies may be the only ones of Louisville streetcars except for a brief sequence of an Indiana RR lightweight making the last run in 1939 which has one or two Louisville cars in the background. Howard's film was shot partly in 1941 and partly after WWII.

-Jim Herron