I have been long curious what happened to the Paul Smith Railroad interurban car. I first learned about it in a mention in some railfan magazine in the early 1980s, when mention of a surviving interurban car was made.

Following the recent Adirondack RR threads, which is nearby to Paul Smiths, I looked into this subject and found a link (below), which says the following:


Does anyone have photos of the car before it was destroyed? I heard it was still on its trucks, and were these scrapped too?
https://localwiki.org/hsl/Paul_Smith%27s_Electric_Railroad

I spoke to a member of Paul Smiths about 12 years ago. They said they dug a hole and pushed it in. There was a photo of it in a book about the history of the college written in the 1980's. In the picture, one end was damaged, the wood was decayed and worn. The car was sitting on the ground and had buckled.

Yep. I was disappointed too.

There's a photo of it taken in 1975 in Fairy Tale Railroad...looked pretty rough, sitting on the ground. Trucks were gone by then.

It was my understanding that the trucks and other metal components of the car went for a war-time scrap drive and that it was just the wooden body that was left behind. There were supposedly some attempts to preserve the body, but decades in the Adirondack winters had taken their toll and left very little to save. The car was demolished and the remains buried to make room for one of the current dorm buildings.

On a related note: I was recently in the area and noticed that where the railroad right of way crosses Rt 30 is very clearly visible. This prompted me to do a little more exploring using Google Maps and to my surprise, the ROW is very clear and easy to follow all of the way back to Lake Clear Junction. Now to study property ownership and plan a trip for some ground level exploration.

Having a railroad named after a person is rather unusual. The only other railway I can think of with this element in the road name is the Bamberger RR in Utah. Are there any others?

RJ Coreman

Paul Smith's is also a location .... so this isn't that unusual (Think Burlington or SF)

From mapquest:

"
Paul Smiths is a hamlet in the Town of Brighton in Franklin County, New York, on Lower Saint Regis Lake, in the Adirondacks, 10 miles north of Saranac Lake, located at 44°26' North 74°15' West.

The hamlet was named after the Paul Smith's Hotel (formally known as the Saint Regis House), founded in 1859 as one of the first wilderness resorts in Adirondacks by Apollos Smith. Paul Smith's College was built on the site of the hotel, and was funded by the
estate of Smith's son Phelps, who died in 1937."

Note that this topic is of special interest to me because I know someone who has a 'camp' (aka cottage) near there.

Bob H

How about "Pere Marquette"?

Isn't that another case of a railroad named for a city named for a person.

If memory serves me right, Ludington Mi was once Pere Marquette named in honor of the explorer.

Bob H