Not long ago, I saw where there'd been a trolley museum in the area of Grand Mound/Rochester, WA. It's just north of Centralia, almost within sight of what at the time would have been the Milwaukee Road main line. Nobody in the area at the time that I've met remembers it being there.
This would have been in the 60s. Today, the area appears to be covered in trees and you can't tell it'd ever been around. Nobody seems to know how long it lasted but it appears to have been but a memory by the early 80s.
Local Fire chief and Trains regular contributor Robert Scott ran across these clippings, the first I'd ever heard of it:






I know it's a long shot, but does anyone have any info or history on this? I'd especially like to know if any of the equipment survived.
I assume it's the old story of "wouldn't it cool to put a museum here," without any long-term plan?

Lee,

Here is a link to the PNAERC database for Trolleyland.

All three BCER cars returned to Canada in 1975.

http://www.bera.org/cgi-bin/pnaerc.pl?sel_owner_once=Trolleyland+Electric+Railway&sel_match_fld=&sel_match_val=&sel_range_fld=&sel_range_low=&sel_range_high=&sort_dir1=ASC&sort_dir2=ASC&pagelen=200&sel_submit=SUBMIT

Wesley

Quoting a 1968 publication: "Trolleyland Electric Railway is building an operating museum primarily for interurban equipment. Some track has been laid and some overhead has been strung. Electric operation has not yet begun." Besides the BC Electric cars they had Great Northern caboose #X-592, Portland Traction flat car #2050, Portland Electric box car #1711, 18 ton Plymouth C/N 4082 and 20 ton Davenport C/N 2352.

It was a privet operation that failed because the owner wanted everything his own way and couldn't play well with others.

The earliest mention of the operation I can find is 1963. The last mention is 1977. In 1975 the trolley bus was bought back by METRO where it is operable as part of the herritage fleet.

Thanks for the info, I couldn't find anything on several attempts of searching online.I can imagine that is likely what happened, as that's a common thing for small private operations like this that seem to vanish overnight.
It's just so odd because I don't know anyone who even remembers this when it existed and most of the train buffs in the area who lived there at the time had never heard of it before. Were it not for one local who had heard about it when he was a kid (after it was gone) who found these news clippings, I would have assumed someone was messing with me by saying there was a trolley museum in a spot that even today is in the middle of nowhere...

Hardly the middle of nowhere. It was right next to I5 between Tumwater and Centralia. The equipment was clearly visable from the freeway.

I can walk to where this is from my home. It is in the middle of nowhere, even today, certainly compared to any appreciable towns or communities.
Was it? Today there are a lot of trees between there and I-5, but the photos I see in those news stories make it unclear if there were trees then or not between those points where you could have seen it from that location.
And for that matter, was I-5 even complete through there at that time?

Yes I5 was there then. It was 4 lains. There were no trees near the site at the time. I worked past there on a Milwaukee tie gang in the Fall of 1973. Walked over to Trolleyland to take a look on a break.

Where do you have Trolleyland located? To the best of my memory it was just north of 183rd Ave NW between Case Road and the Milwaukee.

I was looking at some old railfan newsletters yesterday and found a few references to Trolleyland. The first track was layed in 1964. By mid 1965 the track ran from the Milwaukee around two sides of the parcel of land and a passing track was finished. In June or July 1965 the Milwaukee delivered the three BC interurban cars on their own wheels. The Milwaukee track was broken and connected to Trolleyland and the cars were shoved in. At about this time they made their first operation using the Plymouth.

Good info. I would say I didn't know this, but other than the location (which I have to accept is accurate as you cannot see any signs of the tracks there today) and everything in this thread, I still know nothing else about it.
Had those newspaper articles not popped up and I made aware of it, I never would have known about it at all.
I've not met anyone who actually visited the place or can even say they saw it when the tracks and equipment was still there.

I think you have about all the info you are going to get. Andy Hanson was the owner and I never met him. Nobody I did meet had a good word for him. He and another man bought two of the ex-Yakima cars from Portland. Somehow the deal went sour and Hanson was sued for the cars. Another story I was told was that when the Trolleyland site was being cleared out Hanson cut up all the rail so that "those guys at Snoqualmie" wouldn't get it. Here is what I have on the Plymouth and the Davenport:

4082 8/28/1944 Std JLB-2 Buda JK6 136hp B 18T G/M
St Regis Paper, Tacoma, Wash.
Trolleyland Electric, Prairie Park (Centralia), Wash - 1964

2352 4/1941 B 26” Std GM20 LeRoi 40000#
US Army #7665, Quartermaster Corps #2033, Camp Hahn, Riverside, Calif
J H Baxter Co, Eugene, Ore
C M Lorested & Co, Seattle, Wash.
Trolleyland Electric Ry, Olympia, Wash
J H Baxter & Co, Eugene, Ore – 8/1977

I first learned of this museum in the early 2000s when I saw a couple postcards of BCE interurbans, with the name of the group on the back, on Ebay. This is the first I heard of the Yakima cars getting saved in part due to efforts by an earlier group and am curious what details might be known or suspected about that situation.

All I know about the YVT cars is what Bob Hively told me. According to Bob he and Andy Hanson had a deal to buy two cars. Somehow Andy tried to cut Bob out. Bob sued Andy and got posestion of the two car and brought them to Snoqualmie. The only person involved that might still be alive is Rowell Martin.

#20 Streetcar steel J. G. Brill Co. 1930
Yakima Valley Transportation Co. #20 Yakima, WA
Portland Traction Co. #4008 1948
R. Martin Snoqualmie, WA 1959
Stored on privet property Snoqualmie, WA
Yakima Valley Trolleys Yakima, WA 07-18

#21 Streetcar steel J. G. Brill Co. 1930
Yakima Valley Transportation Co. #21 Yakima, WA
Portland Traction Co. #4009 1948
Bob Hively Snoqualmie, WA 1959
Yakima Interurban Lines Assn. #21 (leased) 1989
Donated to YILA after Hively’s death in 1993.
Yakima Valley Trolleys #21 Yakima, WA 2001
http://www.railwaypreservation.com/vint ... hrlich.jpg

#22 Streetcar steel J. G. Brill Co. 1930
Yakima Valley Transportation Co. #22 Yakima, WA
Portland Traction Co. #4010 1948
Bob Hively Snoqualmie, WA 1959
Yakima Interurban Lines Assn. #22 (leased) 1989
Donated to YILA after Hively’s death in 1993.
Yakima Valley Trolleys #22 Yakima, WA 2001
http://www.ktransit.com/transit/NAmeric ... 210-02.jpg

In the two linked photos above, the two cars are shown in different paint schemes. Which is correct for Yakima Valley Transportation, or did the cars wear these schemes at different times and if so, which came first?

Thanks.

Les