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Imagine getting these trains under the Christmas tree

Old trolleys for sale

The MBTA has hired an auction firm for online bidding of several old Green Line trolleys now rusting away at the Riverside yard.

1978 to 1990 trolley's from Boeing, and Kinkisharyo, as well as a shop-made flat car are included in this sale.

One is even painted in the colors of trolleys on the old MTA.

Orange trolley

Unfortunately, you won't be able to just drive away down the tracks in your new fleet:

Salvageable parts have been removed, and are NOT operational

These vehicles are for scrap and are inoperable, these units have sat for at least three years.

Trolley's are to be removed from the site via low bed truck. NO onsite scrapping will be allowed.

The bidding runs through Jan. 28. As of this morning, the top bid for the whole lot is just $500.

Via Nick Quaranto.

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Comments

Didn’t realize so many of the Type 7 trains had been scrapped.

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They should put these trolly trains up for auction, they will be useful to others perhaps they will be great for a diner conversion .

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Right now you can get by on each T route through select trains and stations except the Mattapan Line, which still require hand-crank lifts at each station. Baker should send some of the new Green Line cars down to Mattapan. The GLX can get by with a few older versions.

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I would live in one of those Kinki trains 10 months out of the year. Shit even 12 months.

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I figured people would line up to say, "How much will you PAY ME to take them away?"

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In the form of the Hartford Line / Springfield Line. Just have to find the right sucker

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If the cars don't break down, the seats are comfortable, and there's heat and AC, who cares how old they are? They managed to start up a new commuter rail service (which isn't so easy in this country) and saved some money by getting used equipment. I say great!

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In response, Western Mass riders pile into the Amtrak trains being subsidized as commuter rail along the Vermonter & Shuttle routes while the old MBTA trains run empty.

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The Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport has an incredible selection of all sorts of former MBTA vehicles. They may need parts...

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It would be a helluva philanthropist donation for the trolley museum too.

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This was the first place I thought of as well.

Fun side trip when travelling up the coast.

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They’ve got one of the Boeing Green Line trains (right at the entrance last time I was there) but not a Type 7 as far as I know.

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The three Type 7's being scrapped aren't complete. They're wrecked-beyond-repair victims left out of the recently completed midlife overhaul program which were raided for parts to help feed the rebuilt units. They were even able to squeeze a couple wholly bonus rebuilt cars out of the program as a result from other wrecks spliced together with spare parts back into working cars, so these wrecks ended up paying dividends. They're now thoroughly stripped of anything usable, so wouldn't even qualify for a static museum display at Seashore. Several more wrecks got scrapped about 18 months ago after similarly serving as parts donors, so these 3 final scrappings can sort of be considered the 'official' ceremonial end of the rebuild program as it was always planned this way.

The Boeing parts supply chain is G-O-N-E, so the 3 work cars have been all been sitting around for close to 4 years now with shot propulsion that can't be repaired. The 4th Boeing that's in this scrap contract was an extra unit stripped for parts to keep the 3 work cars running. Like the Type 7's being scrapped it's been so thoroughly harvested there's nothing useful left in it.

Not sure Seashore would have any use for the work cars. Boeing parts are so scarce even the one they have barely runs, and is probably fated to being a static display once they can no longer coax it into running. Unlike some of the simpler century-old Boston subway stuff they have still in fully-operational state and also unlike the Type 7's they'll ultimately get which have generic enough guts that they'll be able to take our great-grandkids for rides at Seashore...the Boeings are (and always have been) real unicorns parts-wise. They might be able to take a second unit from the work cars or stash enough parts from these scrappings to refresh their existing unit, but it only ends up delaying by a couple years the inevitable when something ends up breaking that they can't repair from any known parts supply.

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Great info, thanks! Do the Boeing trains have any parts in common with airplanes?

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LRV: "I am your father!"
737-MAX: "Noooooo!!!"

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The "4th car" is not a Boeing, it is a work car (powered flat car) made from scratch at the MBTA's Watertown carhouse in the late 1980s. No Boeing parts involved

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Someone - please let Shirley DeLibero know.

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One of those cars (3703) was the one hit in the fatal 2008 collision on the Riverside Line. It has been in storage since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Massachusetts_train_collision

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stop using their "Sleepys -For the Rest of Your Life" slogan for many years - a Sleepys ad with the slogan was on the side of the second train, and was clearly visible in the news shots of the wreck.

Ironically, the NTSB later determined that the operator of the second train had undiagnosed sleep apnea, and missed two red signals due to microsleep (momentary periods of sleep so short you don't even realize you've been asleep). However, this was well after Sleepys had pulled the tag line/jingle from their ads.

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That slogan is creepily close to "Sleep For the Rest of Your Life".

Great story, by the way, especially the little twist.

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They use to bury green line trolleys in the abandoned tunnels under Boylston station

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They stored some Boeing LRVs down there around 1979/80 when many of the relativly new cars were out of service because of derailments, accidents, and relaibility problems. The fire department made them remove and store the cars elsewhere when they found out

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including an I Team report about the problems of the Boeing cars in general, had far more to do with the cars being removed from the Boylston tunnels fairly quickly than the BFD did.

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breaking down faster then they could be repaired. In fairness, it was because the contract with Boeing didn't include an adequate supply of spare parts.

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diner or permanent "food truck" somewhere.

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The next batch of french fries is now coming out of the fryer...

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Someone with the time & resources should buy a whole bunch of these, put them side-by-side and turn them into a themed bar/ restaurant somewhere.

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and use 'em like concession stands or visitor booths

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I love the fully-appointed office they just abandoned on maintenance train 3448, complete with a printer and computer monitors. Perfectly good ladders left aboard a different maintenance train as well. Nobody at the MBTA even wanted to donate that stuff to charity or something?

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Founder flats? Crustacean condos? Lobster lair? Shark shack? I really should stop now.

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Grouper grotto? Dogfish house? Cod casa? Maison de mackerel?

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Weren't some of these maintenance trollies haunting some spare tracks between Park and Boylston in years past? The white one in particular since it reflected the limited lighting.

I haven't ridden that stretch in awhile so it's possible it's a newer set in service now?

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you're thinking of when 3417 was usually semi-lit and stored on the storage track, just past Boylston (at the former Charles St. crossover) when not on work duty.

Also, it was common to see 3448 resting at Boylston station, behind the fenced-off storage track that leads to Park St.

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3417 was the re-railer car, equipped with tools for pulling a derailed train back onto the tracks. When still operational it used to live on the pocket track in the tunnel halfway between Boylston and Arlington so it could be dispatched quickly to the scene of a derailment.

Its propulsion died a few years ago, so the only way it could do its re-railing job is if a Type 7 dead-towed it out of Reservoir and cumbersomely set it up. Then eventually it became too electrically unreliable to even do that much, so they had to mothball it in the dead line with the others.

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I've known one or two people I can imagine snapping that up and dumping it in a field behind a decrepit Vermont farmhouse, to join three or four cars, various pieces of non-functional construction equipment, half a sailboat, and a piano. Probably be good for something eventually.

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They used to use old passenger rail cars and add them to restaurants for a transportation ambiance , maybe those old trolleys could be used in a siilar fashion, like a roast beast or hot dog stand. If Joe and Nemo's were still functioning , there you go . Maybe Kelly or another famous roast beast outlet could dig it.

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loco motives.

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