The mysterious tipster
Posted on 08 June 2009 by admin
Perhaps Metro Jacksonville FORGOT to let anyone know until today:
Originally operating on New York City's IND line, this photo from NYCSubway.org shows the cars operating on their home turf.
Back in February 2008, on the 26th to be exact,
” … with the help of tipster Ocklawaha, Metro Jacksonville found a NYC subway car in Springfield, just north of Downtown Jacksonville.
“The subway car, #983, was built by the American Car & Foundry Co. in 1935. At just over 60 feet long and weighing in at 83,963 pounds, it represents a significant piece of New York City and transit history.”
LINK to the story and pictures of the NOW RUSTY car #936 can be found here.
Ocklawaha is indeed a finder of both lost railroads AND lost railcars!
- k. a. gardner
Tags | Ocklawaha Railroad
The city cut up 5 nearly perfect streetcars since 1980 and the fight for the Skyway. They had misguided ideas that the mere presence of a streetcar, streetcar barn, etc. would stop the Federal Funding of the Skyway. It was a sad and sorry excuse to destroy more of our Citys historic fabric.
OCKLAWAHA
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Oklawaha. It almost sounds like your a transportation consultant.
Did a retiree ride it down?
I’m puzzled too. That seems like a difficult thing to steal.
Since the tipster has mysteriously disappeared, we may never know. He’s been missing for over a month.
Although, Ocklawaha did leave this comment at the original blog on June 8th, so he may have been pointing out that streetcars can also mysteriously disappear:
“There are a lot more treasures of transportation past out there, all we need is more eye’s on the subject. Since 1976 Jacksonville has cut up 5 perfectly good streetcars, one of this was unique to our system! Most are found built into small houses, on farms, used for storage, chickens etc. Some of our cars went to Savannah and Valdosta, some of the retired cars to St. Augustine. This creates a fairly large circle for searching. There is another “Ghost” in Waycross, but all that remains are a dozen or so rusty bones on a wooded lot.”
I had also asked Robert Mann, a.k.a. Ocklawaha, if the Prime-Osborn Convention Center had put any Jacksonville streetcars on display, to which he replied:
“Oh no, the city at that time was pushing the Skyway. George Harmon, the late editor of the Jacksonville Journal, heard my argument for light rail and quit being a vocal supporter of the Skyway Monorail downtown. In return for the fight on which would be the best choice of transit for the city, the Skyway Mayor, ordered all the streetcars scrapped. 5 historic cars were sacrificed on the alter of the monorail, supposedly because if the Federal Government thought we liked the historic streetcars they would yank our funding for the monorail. All of the known streetcars were reduced to sawdust and razor blades within weeks.”
Mysteriously, all comments made on June 8th are only available here.