In the thread about CK&S, I mentioned that a stray Red Arrow center door was owned for a time by the railroad. So far I have learned from sources at Rockhill that the car was PST 68, which has since been scrapped as a parts donor for PST 75 at Shore Line. At one point the car was at IRM. Since then the original trucks made their way to Electric City Trolley Museum and the car sat on PCC trucks from a CTA car. Feel free to add more to this story, including photos.

Related to this saga is the story of PST 63, now privately owned at Buckeye Lake. The original trucks for that car have boomed around and are now at WRM in California.

Wesley

Frank Hicks can fill you in more on this particular car, but I do remember that IRM eventually sold the car as a "Build your own Interurban Kit!" with the trucks, motors, control system, and brake equipment from a scrapped CTA 4000 series car. Instead of that happening, the car moldered and was eventually scrapped.

David is correct. The 68 was sold by IRM c1981 (maybe as part of the "great auction" held at IRM around that time? Dennis S?) but by that point many of its parts had gone to other projects. The trucks went to what was then Penn's Landing for their car 76,* the motors were assigned to Chicago & West Towns 141 (and should be propelling that car starting next year), the emergency valve went to CTA 3142, and the contactors were used as spares for CA&E 431. The 68 was sold with trucks, motors and control off of a CTA 4000. About eight years ago Branford bought what remained of the 68, stripped it for parts for their car 75, and scrapped what was left. I'm not sure whether the 4000 trucks and motors under the car were retained by Branford or not.

What Les mentioned about the trucks from Red Arrow 63 on the body farm in Ohio is right; for many years these trucks were under New York State Railways 157 in Rochester but were traded to WRM for a pair of Japanese curved-equalizer MCB trucks closer to what that car originally had. I'm not sure for what car at WRM these are intended. After being stripped at Magee car 63 itself was moved to Ringoes, NJ where it sat for a time and even got lettered Princeton Fast Line on one side, lettering which it still wears.

*Dennis might recall more about this but I believe these trucks were regauged for IRM by the Milwaukee Road in their shops.

Lots of bad blood spilled over those trucks. Dave Shore was a big booster of this car; memory fails me, but he may have been the reason it was acquired. Dave, or someone else, talked to Herb Hanson (who was on the BoD of one of the transit authorities that was a predecessor to Metra) about getting the Milwaukee Road to do the work to re-gauge the trucks. Herb apparently said, "I'll take care of it", and someone thought that was a commitment to pay for it. Not. Big hullabaloo ensued when the bill for the work arrived. This was just at the time I ceased to be very active, but I have the impression that this was the event that started people looking into the various financial dealings between Herb and IRM, a subject I don't want to get into here.

Anyway, the car became an orphan... no real support for it amongst the membership other than Shore; no real reason it had to be in the collection. Dave had spent a lot of time around properties other than the Chicago area, and was always pushing to make IRM's trolley collection a national collection, as was the steam collection, and as the internal combustion collection would develop. Most of the traction fans took the position that we can tell the developmental story well enough using examples from local properties, and the was no need for these outlanders. I don't want to argue the point, but the end result was the car was put up for sale to try to recoup the costs of the truck work. It appears it never sold intact.

More info from someone involved with salvaging PST 68 at CK&S:

Saw the thread on car PST 68 on RYPN. PA Trolley Museum picked some parts off of it
while at the CK and S as well. The CTA trucks under it were traded
to Northern Ohio. And in the great what goes around comes around,
the trucks that IRM sold for use under PST 76 are now at Branford under
PST 75 (the trucks for 75 went to PTM), having been replaced on PST 76 by
its own original set, regauged. The last pieces of 68 that are not
being retained left Branford in the past two weeks as scrap.

Wesley