Vintage Rail Photo - what is this???

I was going through some "unidentified" cards last night and came accross this one. Anyone know what exactly this is?


http://www.cardcow.com/29936/junk_railr ... portation/

PM me if you'd like to see a larger photo.

It's a street railway or interurban work "motor." This design was common to most reasonably large electric railways and was useful for all sorts of tasks such as hauling around company materials, ties, rail, ballast, whatever. I can't make out all the initials on the cab (can only read "??I-U Ry. Co."), but if you can decipher them all, chances are that the location can be easily identified.

And what a beauty it is, too!

It's a work car known as a differential dump car. Boston had quite a few of them. The Seashore Trolley Museum has at least one, I think. They were used for a multitude of things from carrying ballast to debris and dumping it. I have a picture I shot of one of the old Boston Elevated differentials on the NERAIL North American Photo archive. Page 20 under my name - Paul Joyce. I think that your photo may be United Railways-Providence ?

This is probably splitting things too fine, but to me it looks like a straight utility flat motor. The carbody seems to be fixed, and doesn't look like it's designed to swivel like a dump car. When this type of car carried bulk loads like dirt or ballast, the load would have to be manually shoveled out.