CHICAGO — When CTA train cars carry their last rider, they don't always head straight to the scrap yard.
Most of the cars, which remain in use for at least 25 years, are indeed sold for scrap metal and other precious parts. But a select few are saved from demolition — either by rail museums, private individuals or the CTA itself.
The cars are sold for between $1,500 and $6,000, according to Illinois Railway Museum executive director Nick Kallas, whose museum has several CTA cars and their predecessors — streetcars — which last hit the Chicago streets in 1958.
CTA spokeswoman Irene Ferradaz said all types of CTA train cars are in railway museums across the country.
That includes:
• The East Troy museum in Wisconsin, which has two 1924 vintage 4000-series cars
• The Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, which has one 1959 vintage 1-50 series car and two 1959 vintage 6000-series cars.
• The Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine, which has one 1959 vintage 1-50 series car and two 1957 vintage 6000-series cars.
• The Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, Conn., which has at least one 1920s 4000-series car.
• The Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., which has a restored, but not operational, 6000-series train in its display about 1950s-era urban transit.
"The CTA has sold retired cars to museums and various buyers since at least the 1960s, so there are several cars of various vintages stationed at locations across the country," Ferradaz said.
She said the CTA has also sold some of its decommissioned rail cars to the military for training purposes and also for use in television shows including “Chicago Med” and movies like “Transformers.”
If the cars are saved, Ferradaz and Kallas said they are typically transported cross-country via specially-outfitted tractor trailers. The responsibility of transporting the cars belongs to the buyer.
Ferradaz said the CTA sells, but almost never donates, the retired cars. Whether any cars are sold depends on whether any cars are being retired. From 1997-2010, no vehicles were being retired, and thus none were sold. Ferradaz said, for the last four years and the recent delivery of the 5000-series rail cars, the CTA has been retiring older models like the 2200-series and 2400-series.
Some of the retired CTA cars have been part of the agency's Heritage Fleet Program, which was established this year "to ensure that vintage CTA buses, rail cars and other equipment are preserved and maintained so they can be remembered and enjoyed through charters and events held for the public," Ferradaz said.
Non-museum purchases have included:
• A retired 2400-series car that was bought this year by Property Markets Group for its new housing complex.
• A 2013 purchase by Jungle Jim's International Market in a Cincinnati suburb. The giant store repurposed the car into a cigar shop.
• The purchase of 10 cars by the Southeast Philadelphia Transit Authority in 1986. The agency bought and used the cars on its tracks as a stopgap measure. At the time, the cost of the cars was $250 each, and it cost $4,000 to transport each car.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
