The two Charleston trolley carbodies, joined at the hip and used as a residence since 1934, were seperated and seperately moved into covered storage today. I will post some photos in a few days.

dave

Sounds pretty encouraging! Is there a plan for their preservation and/or reuse, or are they being kept around just on speculation for now? And who owns them? Thanks in advance.

Hello Frank - I believe there is a plan for a plan for their preservation, and eventual restoration. They are owned by a local real estate development firm. Historic Charleston Foundation was attending - they will no doubt offer some historic advice for whatever comes about. The neighborhood they were in is a nice older 1920-40 sort of area near town with bungalows and cottages, rapidly appreciating, and the trolley house at maybe 700 square feet was way too small, and falling into disrepair. The carbodies are in much better shape than Charlotte car 85 was when we found it back in 1987.

By the way, one car had a readable number: 302.

dave

The two cars saved are Cincinnati Car Co. products delivered in 1918 to the Charleston Consolidated Railway, Gas & Electric Co. The cars were ordered to provide increased service on a line extension to the Charleston (SC) Navy Yard during WW I. Numbers 301 thru 310 (order #2340) were originaly trailers with Nos. 311-316 (order #2355) motor cars. There is an undated photo (probably taken in the early 1920s) showing one car with a front entrance door cut into the carbody, thus indicating that it was modified for one-man operation. There is no record if any of the other cars in the series were similarly modified but I suspect there were. It is also likely that after the war some of the trailer cars were motorized although we're not sure whether No. 302 was one of them. I suspect close inspection of the interior and underbody will reveal whether No. 302 and the other car saved were motorized (e.g., telltale signs of resistor grid mounting points, air compressor mounts, holes thru the floor for control wiring, etc.)

When I reflected on these cars (I've been communicating on them with fellows in SC for a while now) it dawned on me that besides having regional and local historic significance (there are no streetcars from the Palmetto State preserved to my knowledge, and darned few cars from the deep south preserved either) the two cars also possess national historic signficance. The only cities that come to my mind that had built pure center entrance cars at this late date (1918) were major cities like Boston and Cleveland. By 1918 most large city systems were either building big Peter Witt style cars or were going to the lightweight all-steel design. Virtually all had front entrance/exit doors in them depending on the city. Certainly for a small city operation like Charleston, I can't think of a pure center entrance car being produced at this late date. These cars are rare birds, indeed!

Thanks!

That's an interesting point. If the car with the unknown number was one of the motor cars, that would make it quite historic as you point out. However center-entrance trailers were not unusual and were constructed well into the 1920's for a large number of city systems. Several early-1920's center-entrance trailers are preserved at BERA, HCRR, IRM, and MOT among one or two others.

Thanks for the information on the cars' heritage!

A cursory look seemed to indicate air brake plumbing on both carbodies - but there was house plumbing too, so more excavation needs to be done. Neither carbody was stripped of its house interior before removal. Of course, an operating streetcar complete with kitchen and bathtub would be unique.

dave

To those of you who're interested, the local newspaper in Charleston managed to find the wife of the man who originally constructed the "trolley house". She's 97 years old and living in a retirement home. The article also briefly covers the move of the trolleys and the developer's plans for restoring them.

The article is accessible on-line at:

http://www.charleston.net/stories/?news ... =localnews

Hi Frank:

I agree that there are a good number of CE trailers preserved. But as I mentioned, all of the preserved trailers are from the larger systems like Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, etc. Most of these larger systems experienced their largest ridership numbers in the 1920s and trailers and two-man cars on the heaviest "trunk" lines were common. Even TCRT in Minneapolis & St. Paul experimented with two-car motor-trailer trains when they started building their lightweights in the 1920s. Their use was discontinued during the depression.

However, I don't consider Charleston to be a large city in the 1920s and 1930s, and the city's population was nowhere close to that of the big eastern and midwestern cities that used trailers. That is why I think their construction and subsequent use in the "Holy City" makes these two cars relatvely rare.

Thanks!

Apologies for the delay - i thought I would help Hume and built the pictures into a brief using microsoft publisher. He is trying to open the files now. Hope he succeeds.

dave