WHEN HAUTEANS RODE THE ELECTRIC CARS.

Apparently, that's the noun describing residents of Terre Haute, Indiana, according to a report filed by Tribune-Star correspondent Mark Bennett, who paid the Illinois Railway Museum a visit.

The Illinois Railway Museum bought the streetcar in 1993 “to make sure it wasn’t lost,” [restoration guru Frank] Hicks said. Indeed, the museum rescued it from the rainy weather of rural Washington. It had sat in a forest for nearly three decades. Its last 18 years of activity were spent as Car No. 4003 on the streets of Portland, Oregon, from 1940 to ‘58.

The museum bought the car and restored its exterior to its original orange and dark green, instead of the dark blue and carmine red Portland colors. It also now wears its Indiana Railroad number, 205.

“It looks like it did in Terre Haute because we’re a Midwestern museum,” Hicks said.Car 205 lived multiple lives, with different numbers, owners and color schemes. Built in 1927 at Cleveland’s G.C. Kuhlman Car Company, the streetcar and five others initially operated in Louisville, Kentucky, running routes to the Indiana towns of Jeffersonville and New Albany across the Ohio River until 1934. Car 205 and its sibling vehicles then sat idle in storage in Scottsburg until the Indiana Railroad decided to modernize them for inner-city duty in Terre Haute. Mechanics in Anderson did the upgrades.

If the Hauteans are able to come up with half a million bucks, the car can be put in a state of good repair.