Peter Baut, right, and James Baut talk about their late father, Conrad Baut, during an interview at The Baut Studios in Swoyersville. On the table is a model of Wilkes-Barre trolley car 790, the last surviving streetcar from the system, which closed in 1950, and which Conrad Baut worked to rescue and restore. ‘We realized that the trolley was an important thing for my father,’ said Peter Baut. He and his brother are working with volunteers from Anthracite Trolleys, the group their dad co-founded, to keep the restoration project moving.
Roger DuPuis | Times Leader
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It can be very hard to believe, in this age of multi-car families and on-demand Uber or Lyft transportation, that Wilkes-Barre — and the entire county — once had numerous electric passenger trolleys riding a vast network of rails. Yet trolleys weren’t simply convenient, they were essential.
As surely as coal made the region boom, the wide-ranging trolley system made steady growth possible by connecting people to the places they worked, shopped and lived. The surprise is how little of that history remains here in Luzerne County.
Yes, the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton has preserved a good deal of rolling stock from the area and the state, but as a Sunday story pointed out, most of the physical assets of Luzerne County’s trolley industry were trashed or sold for scrap.
Which makes the story of car 790, believed to be the last Wilkes-Barre trolley in existence, that much more remarkable. As the story recounted, the late Mary and Walter Krakowski of Wilkes-Barre’s Rolling Mill Hill section acquired the car’s body and used it as a cottage near Perrins Marsh in the Back Mountain. They ultimately built a roof and home, protecting the trolley from the elements for nearly 70 years.
Conrad Baut, who passed away last year, spotted Car 790 during a bike ride and never forgot it, developing a fierce desire to see it removed and restored. In 2019 that desire was partly fulfilled when the trolley was extracted and taken to Conrad’s family business, The Baut Studios. A volunteer nonprofit, Anthracite Trolleys Inc., was created to raise money for restoration.
It is, no pun intended, a heavy lift. The trolley is missing the seats, controllers, motors, trucks and electrical equipment. The body work has been extensive, requiring panel and frame replacements, and disassembly of the floor to make the car structurally sound.
Conrad’s death last year was a serious blow to the restoration attempt, made worse a year later by the passing of Rev. Jim Wert, a driving force in organizing the non-profit. It is the region’s good fortune that Conrad’s twin sons Peter and James have stepped in to help keep the preservation effort going.
“We realized that the trolley was an important thing for my father,” Peter Baut said during an interview that included his brother James and Anthracite Trolleys members Emil Augustine, Tom Musso and Frank Paczewski.
“These two fellas are running the company and they have taken on the challenge to continue the project,” Paczewski said of Peter and James. “They’ve done a lot of manual work on the trolley.”
The goal is to restore the body and get the car in running condition (they believe they have access to many of the needed missing parts) so it can operate along the Electric City Trolley Museum line. As is usually the case in preservation projects, the price tag is steep and has gotten steeper. It was originally estimated at about $300,000; now the non-profit projects a cost closer to $500,000 or more.
We applaud all the members of Anthracite Trolleys, Baut studios and Conrad’s twin son. Because it is likely the only existing car from a once bustling trolley line, the restoration of car 790 deserves broad support. If you want to help, either by donating money or time, visit https://www.facebook.com/anthracitetrolleys or https://anthracitetrolleys.business.site/.
— Times Leader