Car 38 - Seashore Trolley Museum's Laconia Car Company-built Collection

In the hands of Seashore Trolley Museum member volunteers,

Ed Dooks and his granddaughter Chelsey Pino, as they work

in unison to carefully peel away the paper from the newly

applied the Laconia Car Company decal on the side sill of the

Laconia Car Company-built, and then newly restored,

1906 electric locomotive from the Atlantic Shore Line Railways,

No. 100. Image by PWM 6-30-2009

The Laconia Car Company was located in the center of

Laconia, NH. Over the years, it expanded and took up 7 acres

of land. There were woodworking shops, foundries, set-up

shops, storehouses, and paint shops. The extensive

four-story brick building was dedicated to the iron foundry, which was

connected with the car fabrication business.

     This blog is all about the Portland-Lewiston Interurban, No. 14, Narcissus.....which was built in 1912 by the Laconia Car Company. From time to time, a blog post will extend its coverage of related information to include electric railway topics that enhance understanding of the collection of the Seashore Trolley Museum. This post will be one, in a series, that digs deeper into the Museum's collection of Laconia Car Company-built vehicles.

     Laconia Car Company was one of the important electric railway streetcar manufacturing companies at the turn of the 20th century. Seashore Trolley Museum has ten accessioned electric railway representatives from the Laconia Car Company among its collections. The Laconia collection at Seashore Trolley Museum is diverse. Starting with two early single-truck models from 1895, with a 1902, double-truck, streetcar, a 1904, double-truck, 15-bench, open car, a 1904 postal service/express car, a 1906 wooden interurban, a 1906 wooden steeple cab locomotive, a 1912 wooden interurban, a 1914 semi-convertible, and a 1918 semi-convertible.  Not all of these vehicles have been restored yet.

Three of these Laconia vehicles in Seashore's collection are listed in the National Register of Historic Places; 1904 Portsmouth Dover & York Street Railway, No. 108, wooden Railway Post Office/Express, 1906 Atlantic Shore Line, No. 100, wooden Steeple Cab Locomotive, and 1912 Portland-Lewiston Interurban, No. 14 - Narcissus, wooden Interurban Coach.

     This post will focus on the second car acquired by the early members of, what has become, the Seashore Trolley Museum.

1906 - No. 38 - Manchester & Nashua Street Railway

Wood Interurban (Suburban) - Double/Air

Laconia Car Company - Seats: 40   L: 41' 0"  W: 8' 5"  Ht: 12' 1"  Wt:
Date Purchased: March 21, 1940

No. 38 on Seashore Trolley Museum's mainline 9-16-2006 PWM image

     The second car ever acquired by Seashore was No. 38, built by the Laconia Car Company in 1906 for the 18-mile run between the Merrimack Valley cities of Manchester and Nashua, New Hampshire. It also saw considerable service between Manchester and Derry, and later was operated on the suburban run from Manchester to Goffstown. Car 38 has a railroad roof and double-width windows, an early forerunner of today's picture windows, and seats with green plush upholstery.

Acquired by Seashore when the rail lines in the Queen City were motorized in 1940, No. 38 has been thoroughly restored with polished cherry woodwork and new upholstery. The rather poorly designed and desperately battered Laconia 9B trucks have been extensively rebuilt, thanks to a generous grant from the Norcross Wildlife Foundation, which also supports historic preservation. Worn surfaces were built up, oval bolt holes were filled in and redrilled, and new bolts and other fasteners were installed, though most of the original fabric was faithfully retained. Historic Cars: The National Collection at the Seashore Trolley Museum by Ben Minnich. 

     The video below is a short clip of No. 38 operating on Seashore Trolley Museum's mainline on September 25, 2009.

     From a 1987 interview conducted by Edward Dooks, see and hear the founder of Seashore Trolley Museum, Theodore Santarelli de Brasch, talk about how No. 38 was acquired and brought to Seashore Trolley Museum in 1940. The first minute of the video below is an intro then he tells the story of acquiring No. 38.
To watch the full interview of the beginning of Seashore Trolley Museum by Theodore Santarelli de Brasch - Click Here

     Edward Dooks, a long-time Seashore Trolley Museum member/volunteer, conducted, recorded, and transcribed, recollections of  Seashore Trolley Museum members' experiences involving the Museum. In addition, Ed recorded, collected, and transcribed recollections of local neighbors to the Seashore Trolley Museum. Here are some of those transcriptions, as they relate to the acquisition of No. 38 in 1940.

Transcripts from 1988 interviews conducted by Ed Dooks. Interviewees:

A = John Amlaw, one of Seashore's original members

B = Henry Brainerd, one of Seashore's earliest members

A: We were on a fan trip over to Manchester and everybody liked those "rapid cars".  There were 2 sets of them. There were 12 altogether: 6 long ones and 6 short ones, and the long ones had been retired. They were up at Lake Massabesic as summer camps.

38 was originally numbered No. 4. It was renumbered in the '30s as 32. 38 had had a bad accident. The newspaper up in Manchester came out with quite an editorial about the miserable conditions of the cars and the terrific damage that had been done to this car. The MSR had 32 in the shops at the time being overhauled. They renumbered it to 38 and put it out in the street and said, "Now the newspaper is telling about all the damage that was done. How come if it was the car out in the street today?" It was a different car, and if you opened the inside panel on the left side of the doors on 38, in the body itself (bulkhead), you'll see the old number 4, the new number 32, and nothing about 38.

No. 32 disguised as No. 38

Fan trip 1939

Seashore Trolley Museum Collection

Dooks: How did you get 38?

There was another trolley fan trip and several people had seen what we had done with 31 and they said, "Well, suppose we buy 38. Can you take it over with 31?" And we said, "Sure."  That originally started as a separate group led by Gordon Pilkington (from Danbury, CT, and Roger Borrup) who came to us and said, "It hardly seems worthwhile to have two competing groups when we could pool our assets and thereby have twice as much track and wire and other supplies for the same amount of money instead of having two separate locations." (They also found how much was entailed in paying for it, moving it, and finding a place to keep it and all the details involved.), some of his people were members of Seashore, so everyone agreed it was a much better idea if we made it a cooperative effort and just had one group. (The other group was mostly from NH and CT)

Gordon Pilkington had not at that time even gone to the Manchester people to buy the car or to arrange for buying it, so we took over that end of it and went up to see Roger Moscroft who was the Executive Assistant of the Manchester Street Railway, or the Power Company which owned the Street Railway.

Dooks: To get to Manchester Public Service my understanding from Ted (Santarelli de Brasch) was that you had a big problem trying to get the people to talk to you. They kept putting you off and he mentioned a way that they were able to get to the President of the company.

A: All I remember is that Roger Moscroft was sympathetic to us and I think he was the one who interceded. Their offices were up at (I think) 1000 Elm Street and they were in the same building, the same set of offices and a different floor as the power company up there, and the manager, as I recall was probably 70 years old at the time, wouldn't see anybody, but as I said, Roger Moscroft saw him for us and arranged for an interview for us to go up and talk to him.

We agreed we would buy one of the cars. The only drawback was they were afraid that if there were a bad accident or fire and the car was destroyed we would then hold them liable and want them to replace the car. So I told them that we would take in order either car No. 38, or 36 or 42, or 44, or if by any

ill fortune, none of them were available, simply return our deposit. Under those conditions, the company gave us the contract and the price was $75 for the car body plus trucks and $50 for each of the (4) motors. We were not able to raise money enough to buy the motors, so we agreed to buy the car itself and the two trucks.

(When questioned about some difference in figures for the cost of 38 he said, "That was 48 years ago, and the original books I think were lost when Eliot Sterling took them out to his house because we had a nice dairy. It was a beautiful book, about 'that thick" and about 'so big' with plush covers on it and leather bindings, but he lost that completely and that gave all the story of the first days of Seashore; who went up there and what they did on those trips. It would have been worth its weight in gold today.")

At the time the company went out of the streetcar business and went to buses, Goodman, the junkman (later A said ran a second-hand place and junk shop in Manchester) who bought the cars (to break them up), was at the carbarn. Roger Moscroft came down and said, "You've got everything in this building and the ones across the street except car 38." And Goodman asked him, "Now how about this car? Isn't this the one I don't get?" And Moscroft said, "That's right, This car and everything in it was bought by these people and they're going to take it over to Maine to preserve it, so don't touch anything on it." (later A says Moscroft said, "That car is theirs, everything just the way it stands." So he gave us the motors.) There were 3 or 4 of us there at the time looking over 38 to see what needed doing to it.

A: Incidentally, he offered us car 18 for nothing if we wanted to take it. It was a work car and he was just saying that it was so well built and maintained so well that he hated to burn it up, but we couldn't afford to move it at that time.

We used to go over there occasionally and work on the car even before they did away with the streetcars. They put the car on the track at the back of the barn where we could get to it and wouldn't interfere with anything and we would clean it and paint it and repair it. At the time 36 was going to be scrapped so we transferred the better stuff from it over to 38, such as cracked windows we replaced or torn seat cushions or broken panes of glass and things like this, and afterward, someone bought 36 and took it down to Bedford, NH.

B: I think I heard he wanted to buy all three of them and make them into one long dinner or something and he was a bit unhappy that we got one of them.

Dooks: When 38 was moved, we turned on the power and you say whoever was the operating man or power man when he threw the switch in to energize the trolley wire, he hoped that people that might be stealing the trolley wire would be on it and get the jolt. (His name was McFarland) 

A: Yes, they had stolen quite a bit of the wire, apparently for 5 or 6 nights and the police were unable to catch them, at least they didn't, and they didn't want to leave the power on. I remember there was a big switch up on the pole and that switch was off. McFarland came over to us and said, "We'll turn the power on so you can run 38 down to the railroad station." So on this particular occasion, he said, "I just hope they're up there right now!!" They weren't and we didn't read anything about a fellow being hit by electricity and killed. Dan Twomey and Ted Santarelli were on board.

38 on the siding in Manchester 1940

Seashore Trolley Museum Collection

B: He ran the car down from the barn, down to the railroad crossing in the freight yards, derailed it, then rerailed it on the railroad. In other words, rode down the pavement and derailed it and rerailed it on the railroad, ran it about a few hundred feet to where he had the flatcar, and then jacked it up and ran the flatcar under it/ It was unloaded in Kennebunk on a siding. (The body was moved to Seashore but) the trucks remained in Manchester. Chase Transfer supplied a little bit of a trailer and moved it from the railroad to Seashore and set it on blocks more or less over the end of the track but partly blocking the road on the ASL roadbed. As it went by the Kennebunk Inn, two ladies from Manchester were sitting on the front porch and one of them said to the other, "Oh, there's one of our Manchester trolley cars coming by.

38 being jacked up for placement on the flat car in Manchester 1940

Seashore Trolley Museum Collection

No. 38 on the rails - destination Kennebunk, Maine station, then a trip to

Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport. 1940 image from the

collection of Seashore Trolley Museum

Loaded at the Kennebunk railroad station siding, 38 traveling

to its new home, Seashore Trolley Museum 1940

Seashore Trolley Museum Collection

We got to the Log Cabin Crossing. (It was called Biddeford Road but was renamed Log Cabin Road later because there were one or two other streets called Biddeford Road or Old Biddeford Road and it was confusing. There was a tourist cabin with fake log cabins that was called "The Log Cabin" and so the road was named for that."

(I wasn't there) And then we got to the railroad crossing. At the time, the only protection was the train's whistling and someone had checked with the B & M dispatcher and found no trains were expected and we got over the crossing. It barely cleared the crossing when a freight train came by and then I think they had to use something to lift the telephone cable to get the car under it.

The next time I got back to Seashore, the car was standing on blocks, lined up over the end of the track and it stayed there a year too, I think it was the 4th of July weekend of '41. I remember I found sleeping in that was much more comfortable than sleeping on the bench of 31 and I found you could take a seat cushion, and prop it up in the aisle on a wooden soapbox. It was much more comfortable sleeping than out in the chill of 31.

That summer of '40, there was a forest fire and I think the fire engines cut slightly, having to detour around where 38 stuck out over the roadway. The right-of-way belonged to the power company, then Cumberland County Power and Light before it became part of Central Maine Power. Sometime in '41, they said, "We damn well had to stop blocking the roadway any longer."

I think I remember that I was in on negotiating the trucks brought over and we had to make a deal with somebody and had to enroll him temporarily as a member to make it legal for him to bring them. We got them over there and they were placed right way round, lined up at either end, one on the track out on the roadway. I was there. Well, the day we actually did it, we had barely enough blocking (materials) and we first jacked up the end that was over the track and we had to get it damn high and we didn't really have enough blocking to follow up the jack, so we had it way up in the air and just on the jack with no protective blocking. The jack was pretty well extended and we could just about get the truck under the low platforms. (They stepped lower than the main body.) We got it under and let it down and put the kingpin in.....We got it down on July 4, 1941. I remember I was crawling under the car and the car not actually swaying but up pretty precariously on an extended jack, and I remember sort of thinking, "Well if anything happens, I'm a goner." Nothing happened, thank goodness...We got it up on the permanent track and took up the temporary rail that we laid then we had it on our land, clear of the roadway.

No. 38 at Seashore Electric Railway (Seashore Trolley

Museum) - top image circa 1946. lower image-probably

earlier. Images from the collection of Seashore Trolley

Museum

No. 38 outside of Shop #1. Circa 1956

Collection of Seashore Trolley Museum

No. 38 on the Town House Restoration shop lead at Seashore Trolley

Museum 3-29-2003 - Donald Curry image

Click Here: Video of Theodore Santarelli de Brasch explaining the "Birth" of Seashore Trolley - 1939

Additional blog posts on Seashore Trolley Museum's Laconia Car Company-built Collection:
Click Here: No. 14 - Laconia Car Company-built Collection
Click Here: No. 38 - 1907 Laconia Car Company-built Collection

Click Here: No. 60 - 1895 Laconia Car Company-built Collection
Click Here: No. 100 - 1906 Laconia Car Company-built Collection

Click Here: No. 108 - 1904 Laconia Car Company-built Collection
Click Here: No. 235 & No. 50 - 1895 & 1902 Laconia Car Company-built Collection
Click Here: No. 4175 - 1914 Laconia Car Company-built Collection
Click Here: No. 4387 - 1918 Laconia Car Company-built Collection

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We continue the restoration work on the 1912, Narcissus, the only surviving high-speed, luxury interurban coach of the Portland-Lewiston Interurban. 

Click Here: Narcissus Restoration-Related Posts

Being more than a century old, the stately, "Elegant Ride," Narcissus, is a gem.  This shimmering precious stone of Maine transportation history is brilliantly resplendent as it emanates so many elements of history, including; time, places, people, and events, that it was coupled to, that when just a smattering of its seemingly innumerable stories are shared, the contents captivates, fascinates, then generates, interest to learn more 🙋. The majestic Narcissus is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Please consider joining the epic journey to complete the Narcissus Project by making a donation today!

Click Here: Donation Options

The restoration of this majestic icon of Maine's electric railway history is but one in a series of captivating stories containing an abundance of incredible coalition of narratives.

Click Here: History-Related Posts - Narcissus and Portland-Lewiston Interurban

     The Narcissus is featured in the national Gold Award-winning novel, Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride. The "Elegant Ride" is the Narcissus. Theodore Roosevelt was a passenger on the Narcissus on August 18, 1914, between Lewiston and Portland, Maine, while campaigning for the Progressive Party candidates.

Click Here: Bookstores and Businesses promoting the Narcissus Project

Independent book publisher, Phil Morse, holding

the Gold Book Award Winner plaque for

 the Middle Reader category for The Eric

Hoffer Book Award. Congratulations to

award-winning Maine author,

Jean M. Flahive