PRESERVATION RAILWAYS HAVE THEIR BASKET CASE PROJECTS, TOO.

Last month, we saw some model railroading projects that included swap meet purchase, acquired cheaply, that will require a good deal of work before they run.

Preservation railways also take on basket case projects, as that is frequently the condition in which old and rare examples of the railroading art present themselves.

Such is the case with Car 162 at the East Troy Electric Railroad.  It might be the oldest extant car from a 1915 order Brill built for the Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railway.  Sister car 160 is in regular service at Illinois Railway Museum.  Builder records suggest 162 was finished and delivered first.

The car was in the collection of a Connecticut museum for many years, where it was stored outside, and museum curators recognized they couldn't conserve everything, and perhaps cars representing railways closer to home ought be conserved first.  Thus it arrived at East Troy, and it is in the well-equipped repair shop to be worked on until the active-service cars rotate in for their winter overhauls.

A few city and interurban cars still turn up as somebody's summer house or deer camp.

LaCrosse Depression-era car 56, with a relatively modern car body, was one of the last cars built with maximum traction trucks.  It is on the list of projects to be returned to operation.  Behind it in one of the storage barns (all cars in the East Troy collection are under roof) is South Shore 23, still in its as-rebuilt condition with picture windows.  Sister cars 24 and 25 are the railway's diner train cars.

Michigan Railways car 28 came to Illinois Railway Museum by the vacation home route.

It is in the museum's electric car shop and has been receiving cosmetic and mechanical restoration.  Many of the Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan interurbans operated these heavy steel combination cars, but there are very few in preservation (Depression abandonments and wartime scrap drives took care of that) and even fewer in operating condition, although there is encouraging news out of Indiana on one such car.

Sometimes, the museum restorers have to scrounge, which has long been a watch-word of model railroaders, particularly those not working in HO or N scales.

Look closely at that baggage rack, in restored Sheboygan wood interurban car 26 running regularly at East Troy.  It fits the bulkhead, and the design harmonizes with others along the side walls.  The iron work spells out "NSWGR," referring to the New South Wales Government Railway, of Australia.