June 2013 Main Line vol5 No4 - Seashore Trolley Museum

For last my favorite - something rare and with a bit of mystery. This image is from a quite
degraded photo in Mr. Brown’s album. On the back of the picture is a stamp indicating it had
belonged to G. F. Cunningham of Washington, D.C., yet another founding father of Seashore.
There is also an inscription “Biddeford & Saco RR, Early two-car train after electrification, Saco
Country Club, Saco, Maine.”
Considering Messrs. Brown and Cunningham I am quite certain as to the description on the
photo. However the train appears to be made up of two Bombay roofed cars - one carrying a
pole and the other does not appear have such and apparently a trailer. At electrification three
open horsecars, 11,13 and 15 were motorized and the rest 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 were used as
trailers. The cars in the image appear to have Bombay roofs - unfortunately there seems no
surviving pictures of a B&SRR horsecar except a picture of #1 and it has a monitor roof which
raises a question about the others. All of the initial open horsecars were constructed by J.M.
Jones’ Sons of West Troy, NY in 1888 and the three were motorized in 1892. In that time
period Jones was building lots of Bombay roofed cars. My theory is that the motorized cars
were Bombay roofed as were some number of the trailers. However this is speculation derived
from analysis of what is known rather than “proof.” If anyone can help in confirming or
dispelling this theory please let me know.
Another degraded print that I have squeezed as hard as I can through scanning and
manipulation.