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Matt Cosgro photo, all rights reserved. Used with permission.
Emulating steam railroads in providing private cars for its high officials, the Manchester Street Railway purchased the City of Manchester from the Briggs Carriage Company of Amesbury, Massachusetts, in 1897. Used for official inspection trips over the Queen City system for many years, the City of Manchester has a small body with beveled plate glass windows and unusually large platforms with wrought iron railings. The original furnishings were light wicker chairs that could easily be moved from the closed section to the open platforms or vice versa, depending on the weather. There were curtains on the windows and a thick rug on the floor. In each corner of the body were cupboards for the storage of "refreshments" for visiting dignitaries.
The body of the City of Manchester was being used as a children's playhouse when it was discovered and purchased by museum charter member Malcolm Bustin in 1952. It was the very first car acquired by any museum from a source other than a streetcar company, the precursor of what would one day be the primary means of obtaining exhibits as streetcar systems disappeared. Surviving the scrappers' torches were carbodies which had been converted to other uses, forcing this museum and other of its kind into a different role as archaeologists, as well as historians. The City of Manchester made its journey from Manchester to Maine atop a set of caisson wheels, and was formally donated to the museum in 1956. During the summer of 1962, its restoration by Seashore conservators began. Before the 1964 season was over, the body had been largely rebuilt and the window frames, doors, and interior woodwork had been scraped, sanded, and completely refinished.
Since the car had been obtained as a body, a suitable truck, motors, and electrical equipment had to be located. Originally, the car had ridden atop a very rare and specially ornate truck made by the Peckham Company of Kingston, New York, but this had been long since scrapped; in 1965, when the restoration was occurring, the museum had not been able to locate another of that type. A Brill 21E truck was substituted to make the car a complete operating exhibit. The City of Manchester rolled out of the shops for test running during 1965, and when the final details of restoration were completed in 1968, the car gained itself another distinction, that of being the first car to be obtained from secondary use and completely restored to operation. More recently, the correct Peckham truck was obtained from a work car in Amsterdam; after this has been mechanically refurbished, it will be installed on the car to make the restoration totally authentic.
History from Historic Cars: The National Collection at the Seashore Trolley Museum by Ben Minnich
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