[PRCo] Re: Lake Shore Electric Ry. may auction its trolleys

[Herb Brannon]

I was just at the Northern Ohio Railway Museum to look at their
collection of rust last weekend. They are hoping to get two or three
of the Lakeshore/Trolleyville cars so they can begin operating their
"museum".

Word is also circulating that the current owners of the
ex-Trolleyville fleet just gave up on trying to raise funds for their
operation. The City of Cleveland and the Greater Cleveland Regional
Transit Authority have actually gone "above and beyond" to try to get
this operation started. However, when the ball gets in the owners
court, they are either unable or unwilling to play the game. I know,
for a fact, that RTA has given a lot of kilowatt hours of electricity
and pantographs to that group so they could run some of their
double-end cars for the public on RTA revenue tracks.  I think the
owners may have thought that the city government, county government
and RTA would put it all together for them to "play" with. There has
never been any attempt to raise capital or to obtain capital to begin
this project. Looks like some more of those "business" types who don't
know "business". Too bad, it could have been a really nice operation.

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 8:35 PM, Bob Rathke <bobrathke at comcast.net> wrote:
> The following article was sent to me by a friend in Cleveland, and is attributed to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Photos of some of the trolleys in this article are embedded in the e-mail, but I'm not sure if they will appear on the Dementia post.
> Bob 5/26/09
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>      Lake Shore Electric Railway Inc. may be forced to auction 30-plus trolley car collection
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>      Many of the cars stored in Cleveland were once on display at Trolleyville U.S.A. in Olmsted Township, which closed in 2002.
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>      The PDA hand crank shows workmanship of a bygone era aboard one of the many trolley cars being stored in a warehouse near the Great Lakes Science Center.
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>      Another big idea for downtown Cleveland derailed before it left the station.
>      A nonprofit group with a warehouse full of old trolley cars is nixing plans to build a tourist-attracting rail loop downtown and a trolley museum nearby.
>      Instead, Lake Shore Electric Railway Inc. wants to put a 30-plus car collection up for auction as soon as July, said Mark Ricchiuto, group spokesman and an executive with Marous Brothers Construction.
>      Civic and elected leaders supported the project, he said. But the economic recession stanched fund raising. The stalled Flats East Bank project hurt as well, he said.
>      The nonprofit group wanted to build a short trolley loop near the east bank and up through the Warehouse District, Ricchiuto said.
>      But Lake Shore Electric can't wait any longer to deal with its debts and mounting costs, Ricchiuto said.
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>      Seats are available on this trolley car owned by Lake Shore Electric Railway Inc. In fact, the entire collection of trains is likely to be up for sale soon.
>      Dennis Eckart, a former U.S. congressman and a board member for the railway group, called the project "a bridge too far."
>      "The real value was getting them out of the museum and back on the track," Eckart said of the trolleys. "That became a financially insurmountable hurdle."
>      Most of the collection sits in a city-owned warehouse on Cleveland's port, north of the Great Lakes Science Center.
>      The cars have sat for several years in the warehouse, under a $1-a-year lease with the city of Cleveland.
>      That lease has expired, as has a lease the railway group held on a city-owned parcel south of the sprawling municipal parking lot at East 9th Street.
>      The group hoped to build a storage barn and museum there, at the terminus of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority's Waterfront Line.
>      "They had a unique asset with the collection of historic trolleys," said Cleveland Planning Director Bob Brown. "It was worth giving it a try. But you know how many museums come and go. It was well-intentioned, but they weren't able to raise the money."
>      Many of the cars had once been on display in Trolleyville U.S.A. in Olmsted Township. The late Gerald E. Brookins assembled the symbols of a bygone era and ran some of them on a short track on weekends.
>      When Trolleyville closed in 2002, the nonprofit group formed to preserve the cars and also crafted the downtown proposal. Chip Marous, president of Marous Brothers, headed the effort.
>      A number of cities, including Tampa and Dallas, have drawn crowds to rail lines featuring old trolley cars, Ricchiuto said.
>      Eckart hopes that the auction will yield enough money to restore one or two of the cars for nostalgic use on an RTA line.
>      "But that will be driven by what the market tells us," Eckart said.
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-- 
Herb Brannon
On America's North Coast