Connecticut Company: Trips

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Trips

This weekend was a busy weekend for some of us at the museum. On Saturday, Xian Clere, Art Mitchell, Camilo Santiago, Matt Januska, and I went down to Saybrook Yard off of the Valley Line where a New Haven Club Car was located that was offered to the museum by the Railroad Museum of New England. The Club Car is 86 feet 9 inches long, and 13 feet tall and was built in the 1950s. The exterior is in great shape, however, the interior of the car is missing all of its fixtures (seats, tables, etc).

Later in the day back at the museum, I found John Pelletier organizing Connecticut Company Car 65. Car 65 was built in 1906 by the Wason Manufacturing Company. Car 65 was the museum's first car acquired in 1941. The has been sitting in storage for many years after restoration was begun on the car and then abruptly stopped. John has begun restart the work on the car to piece it back together.

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About this Site

"Connecticut Company" is NOT an official blog of the Connecticut Trolley Museum. The articles posted within this site are the views of the contributors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organization.

This blog site is named after the original Connecticut Company or ConnCo, which ran trolleys throughout Connecticut from 1910 to 1948. ConnCo was a subsidy of the New Haven Railroad. By 1948, ConnCo converted all trolley operation to buses, and the era came to a close in Connecticut.

However, eight years prior, in 1940, the Connecticut Electric Railway Association was formed in an effort to preserve a streetcar from Hartford. In 1941, CERA saved its first car, ConnCo 65 from the scrapper. When trolley service ended in 1948, CERA saved 7 more ConnCo cars.

Today, the Connecticut Trolley Museum is the oldest incorporated museum dedicated to railway preservation in the country. Although not the largest, CTM's has a collection covering many of the major types of trolley cars including streetcars, interurbans, elevated cars, and work cars from the Northeast, Midwest, Deep South and Internationally as well.