Orange Empire Railway Museum has obtained one of the San Diego LRV cars from its first order. It obtained car 1008.

This 600v DC car was built by Duewag-Siemens in 1981. This group of cars were retired in January of 2015,

The car has made one test trip at Perris. OERM has both direct suspension and catenary overhead wire. Modifications to either the car and/or the wire will have to be made before the car will become available for operator training and then scheduled operation.

A 35 year od car! Many museums, when starting up, obtained cars with less age on them. And Philadelphia's Kawasaki brand cars are still in use, with no immediate replacements in sight.

The SEPTA Capital Budget document for 2016, released the other week, seems to indicate a 2022-28 time period for the Kawasaki cars to be replaced.
Will believe it when I see it happen!

That should be a good car to use during the summer although it'll run up your electrical bill a bit.

So is OERM changing its name to the Southern California Railway Museum?

I remember murmurs of the potential name change a few years back but the new website (HIDEOUS!) seems to make it official. One of the reasons given for this was the perceived confusion caused by the name "Orange Empire," which while historically relevant for Riverside and its environs, was potentially conflated with "Orange County."

OERM's (SCRM?) first car brought to Perris was a San Diego Electric PCC, which is now nearing the end of its first restoration since arriving. Perris is just about equidistant from both downtown San Diego and Los Angeles, and given the scope of the collection, it makes sense to represent the region.

Edited to add, the PCC below was only about 22 years old when it arrived in Perris. In today's terms, that is like preserving something from 1994. A fair amount of the equipment on LACMTA's Blue, Red, and Purple lines is older than that.

MTS was still using the U2's up until fairly recently on rush hour trippers, Comic Con and when the Padres and Chargers were playing in town. They have sold most of the class to operations overseas. I have a friend that was an operator and he tells stories of the doors popping open and setting the brakes into emergency, and other tales. With the arrival of the new shorter, low floor cars they were no longer needed.

Two responses:
1)
I am told that the 1000-class cars in San Diego was taken out of service when the system was installing video camera, etc. for security and safety purposes. The new classes of cars could more easily have this equipment installed. However, it was considered uneconomical to spend the money to upgrade the U2s.

2)
Several years ago Orange Empire Railway Museum changed it official (corporate name) to Southern California Railway Museum; but, continued to operate (dba) as Orange Empire Railway Museum. This was in part a preemptive move to make sure no one else took that name. As Randolph Ruiz indicated the Orange Empire name was confusing to the general public. The have been discussions for probably more than a quarter century about taking another name.

Over the years Orange Empire has been renamed several times:

Orange Empire Traction Company (incorporated in 1956)
Orange Empire Trolley Museum (to indicate that the organization was a museum)
Orange Empire Railway Museum (after 1975 merger with California Southern Railroad Museum)
Southern California Railway Museum (as indicated above)

The name Orange Empire came from the Orange Empire Trolley Trip a tourist excursion that the Pacific Electric operated back in the 19-teens and 1920s. This day trip operated from Los Angeles into the Orange groves and the communities of San Bernardino, Redlands and Riverside. When the name was chosen the future location of the museum had not been selected -- except maybe a general idea of being east of the urban Los Angeles area.

The Board of Directors last evening (April 16, 2016) enacted a motion to begin a multi-year program to begin using the corporate name in addition to the OERM name; then bring the SCRM into prominence; and finally to drop the use of the OERM name.

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I have been an active member since I joined at age 18 back in October, 1967 -- 48+ years ago. Over these years I have served in various capacities: clerk to the board, member of the BOD, chairman of the BOD, and then once again as a member of the BOD. My most recent term expired this March and I chose not to run for another three-year term partially because I am close to retiring from my working life. I've also been involved with railway operations and helped with equipment restoration and repairs.

Thanks for the info on the name change. I'm going to miss Orange Empire. It has a cheery ring to it and one that harkens back to another time in both the history of the PE and the area it served (is there an orange tree left in Southern California?).

As for the website, is there any way to put the roster section back to the way it was with nice pretty pictures of the cars?

I also have a complaint about that, so you are not alone.

I will try to share the complaint/concern forward.

Brian -

Congrats to OERM on the LRV acquisition. As a former OERM member, I had always hoped to see one come to the museum eventually since SDTrolley were almost single-handedly responsible for sparking trolley (sorry - light rail) rebirth in the US. I have also long wished to see an SD40-2 or two preserved there as well. Maybe one from one focus Class 1 and an SD40T-2 from another?

I second Charlie's comment - I don't like the new website or logo either. I used to check the 'website updates' link frequently and enjoyed looking at pics of the newly added equipment as well as revisiting the 'older' stuff since it is unlikely I'll ever get back to SoCal. I do like the Gazette past issues being posted online since it's now the only way to 'see' OERM online directly. I'm impartial to the name change, both names make sense to me in the overall scheme of things.

Just my 2 cents.....

During the test run of SD1008, it was noted that the overhead wire needs tweaking and adjusting and (hopefully) not too much rebuilding. On the stretch of track from Barn 4 up to and including the "main line", where the car will be used, the pantograph guards are still present on all of turnout frogs, but some of them are not properly aligned. OERM looks forward to being able to use the car in the near future, but we are taking it one careful step at a time.

A big thumbs up here on getting 1008. But a thumbs down on the new web site design--not easy to use either on phone or computer.