New Arrival! 1903 Columbia Electric

by Willy Vinton

Here is one of the new additions to the museum that arrived on Monday. This little Columbia Mark XIX Surrey is a very nice car, restored from a complete original.

The Columbia history begins in 1897 and ends in 1913, during which time many changes were taking place, such as experimenting with gasoline cars, and even a high breed in 07-08 known as the Magnetic.  The model you see here was built as a taxi to be used aroound the cities, and was very succesful, with this being the only known survivor.

This is the original volt/amp gauge that tells you the status of the batteries and the amount of power being used to move the car.

As you can see from this picture, our Columbia is a very original car, with almost all of the wood and components being the ones installed when it was built 108 years ago. The twin motors give the car good performance, and as we learned yesterday, the very large brakes you see at the rear wheels are only mildly effective. Tim seems to think they are a little lacking, but with proper planning you are able to stop most of the time.

This shows the original controllers, and all the wiring that is original as well. It has the addition of a safety shutoff that you see on the floor, but the rest is all as it was. You should come in and check this one out.