By Eric Berger
An Indiana interurban that last ran more than eight decades ago has been restored to service by the volunteers of the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Co.
The last time the public saw Union Traction Company Car 429 moving on its own was approximately 83 years ago during its final run over UTC successor Indiana Railroad. The next time will be on October 28, when the volunteers of Hoosier Heartland Trolley are holding an open house to celebrate its restoration, a key milestone for the “Electrify 429 Project.”
News of the first successful test run of the car was announced on October 1, along with the date for the open house. The event runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with five specific visiting periods and limited ticket availability. Tickets are $5 per car and can be obtained online.
Built by St. Louis Car in 1925, Car 429 was an interurban combine car with a 500-hp rating and a rapid acceleration rate, named in honor of Noblesville. It seated up to 44 passengers on trips between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne until approximately 1940, serving on one of the last of the former Insull traction routes operated by Indiana Railroad prior to its demise the following year. After just 15 years of use, the car was retired, stripped of its running gear and mechanical equipment, sold off and repurposed as a yard office at an Atkinson & Company gravel pit in Indianapolis. It stayed in that role for roughly 25 years, a decade longer than it spent on the rails.
The long road to restoration as a functional electric railcar would begin on November 13, 1964, with the body of 429 riding aboard a flatbed truck escorted by Indiana State Police to its namesake city of Noblesville. There it became the nucleus of the Indiana Transportation Museum and the focus of ongoing restoration activities through the 1970s, as volunteers searched for and acquired replacements for many missing parts and fixtures.
The only other known survivor of Noblesville’s class was donated to the museum in 1981. Retired in 1940, Car 437 “Marion” was moved deep into the wooded hills near Mooresville, Ind., and spent four decades as a secluded cabin. Some hoped the Marion would provide technical information useful in restoring Car 429, but a change of museum priorities and focus saw both cars mothballed along with the restoration effort. Noblesville was kept under cover, but Marion remained outside, used as storage space.
When ITM was evicted from its city-owned property in 2018, the founders of the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Co., stepped in. They incorporated the non-profit in 2018 with the goal of rescuing as many of the endangered traction pieces as they could to serve as the core of a new museum focused on Indiana’s rich traction heritage.
The first car acquired from ITM was Car 429. Also acquired were sister car 437 and 1902-vintage Jewitt car Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern 81. Additionally, the group rescued the seriously deteriorated Indianapolis Railways 153, the last survivor of that streetcar system. It is a 1932 Brill Master Unit, historically significant as the final incarnation of the Peter Witt-style car preceding the introduction of the PCC. One electric locomotive was obtained for the HTTC collection, the diminutive early GE industrial boxcab Singer 1, built in 1898.
Sadly, one ITM piece that was purchased by HHTC did not survive intact but played a key role in restoring Car 429. Cedar Rapids & Iowa City 55 was a freight motor built in 1926 by Detroit United Railway. Out of service since 1953 and largely ignored at ITM since its arrival, it was also ignored by other bidders on the ITM equipment. The unit was moved to the HHTC site for salvage of usable parts and components, notably its trucks, which were a near match for the ones missing from Car 429.
The restoration of the Noblesville is not done yet and contributions to Electrify 429 are welcome. Volunteers are optimistic the work will be completed in time for the car’s 100th anniversary in 2025.
