Let's Work on a PCC

Following on the heels of the return of the Terrible Trolley, more PCC restoration news has come to light. It appears that working on restoring PCC cars is all the rage these days!

First up is DC Transit 1430, a wartime (prewar-style) car built in 1944 by St. Louis for the Washington, DC system. One of only five Washington PCC cars still in 1) the US, and 2) its original form, and the only member of its series extant, the car was retired in 1962 and made its way to the Rockhill Trolley Museum. It remained there, stored outdoors, until 1997, when it went back to home territory at the National Capital Trolley Museum. NCTM volunteers have now started working on the car, starting with cleaning up and repainting the interior, so its status has been changed to "undergoing restoration." Thanks to Wesley Paulson for the update on this car. The above photo is from here.

Next comes San Francisco Municipal Railway 1153, which was built by St. Louis in 1946 for the hometown streetcar system as St. Louis Public Service 1742. It went to Muni in 1957 and upon retirement in 1982 it was acquired by the Western Railway Museum. It has been stored at WRM ever since, mostly as a static display piece as far as I can tell, but that looks to be changing. As shown in the above photo (from here), car 1153 has been brought into the WRM shop for mechanical work. It is receiving a rebuilt MG set and possibly other work. Its status, too, has been updated to "undergoing restoration." There are 21 cars from this series on the PNAERC list, but most are in rough shape - I'd opine that car 1153 is in better shape than all but two or three of the others.

And finally we have this, which is just a thumbnail (I can't find the original image, posted earlier this week) purporting to show SEPTA 2336, one of the system's modernized "PCC III" cars. This car has been undergoing another overhaul for something like a year and a half, but the novel development is that it is supposedly being painted in "Gulf Oil" colors rather than in traditional PTC green and cream like the rest of the PCC III fleet. Time will tell whether it rolls out of the shop in this livery. Although the "Gulf Oil" livery is among the more distinctive applied to PCC cars, only one car has heretofore been repainted in these colors.

The Terrible Trolley Rides Again

Today in a dramatic ceremony the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum unveiled its latest restoration project: Port Authority Transit 1713, better known as the "Terrible Trolley." This car, a 1949-vintage PCC built for Pittsburgh Railways, was in 1980 painted in an elaborate livery honoring the Pittsburgh Steelers. The car was acquired by PTM two years ago and since then has undergone a speedy restoration to its 1980 appearance. The car is undoubtedly eye-catching, and as popular as the Steelers are in Pittsburgh, it's sure to raise awareness of the museum with a fan base that may not currently be very familiar with the museum.

As for car 1713, its condition has been updated to reflect that it is in operation at the museum. This means that of the eight 1700-series Pittsburgh cars on the PNAERC list, the only two that are restored and operating are both at PTM. (I should also mention that I recently removed several cars in this series from the list that were at Windber because they had clearly collapsed, making them effectively unsalvageable in my opinion and, therefore, no longer "preserved.") The photo above is from a Railpace post on Facebook.

And in unrelated news, Bill Wall sent along this link and alerted me to the fact that Branford has just celebrated the 125th birthday of its line! The line from Branford to East Haven via Short Beach opened on July 31st, 1900, and has been in operation continuously ever since, which is quite a distinction. Of course, the math  majors among our readership will realize that the trolley museum has operated the line for significantly longer now than did the Connecticut Company. The museum celebrated this anniversary with a ceremony at Sprague Station, in East Haven (photos and information here). Kudos to BERA on this milestone! The photo shown here is from that first link and here.

Update from Branford

Thanks to Bill Wall, who has sent along an update of recent progress in the shop at Branford:

First news item is the reappearance of Montreal Tramways locomotive 5002, which was flooded in 2011 and 2012 by Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. The motors have been redone and while they were out the opportunity taken to rebuild the very worn out trucks. With a newly made center plate, new old stock Red Arrow center door wheels replacing the cracked or broken tiny pie plate wheels, an armature rewound and other work, 5002 hasn't been this good mechanically since it was built. Another one brought back to life...

Thanks to the Amherst Railway Society for their grant supporting this 1917 homebuilt steeplecab.

Connecticut Company car 775 has had the majority of its rattan seats redone just in time for the 125th anniversary (7/31)  of the opening of the original Branford Electric Railway on the very route that is now our museum line. A total of 10 bottoms and 10 seat backs were redone with new material, courtesy of combining two grants from the Mass. Bay RRE and the NRHS, along with some internal support. A special thanks to both organizations for helping to make this happen. Attached you will find some photos of before and after the work was done. 

Ed. note: A how-to guide to restoring rattan seats, written by Bob Yohe of Branford and provided by Bill Wall, is posted on our sister blog Hicks Car Works here.

First Portland LRV Preserved

Thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski for forwarding along this link announcing that TriMet (MAX) 101, the first light rail vehicle built for the Portland light rail system, has been moved to the Oregon Electric Railway Museum for preservation. The image above is a screen grab from the video posted on the museum's Facebook page.

Car 101 was built by Bombardier in 1983, making it the first Bombardier-built LRV in preservation. It underwent some testing in Pueblo, Colorado, in late 1983 before delivery to Portland the following year and entry into service in 1986. The Portland light rail system was the third modern system of its type to open in the US, following San Diego in 1981 and Buffalo (which was intended to be a heavy-rail subway but morphed into a hybrid light rail system when funding ran short) in 1984.

I've also added a new top-level "car type" classification to the PNAERC list. Until now, I've been classifying LRVs as rapid transit cars, but I've just created a new "light rail vehicle" classification. There are now 14 LRVs on the list, including seven San Diego U2 cars, four 1970s-era Boeing SLRVs, and three one-offs, including TriMet 101. OERHS also joins Western Railway Museum and Southern California Railway Museum as the only organizations to roster LRVs of multiple types, though WRM still leads the way with three different types of LRV (and from three different systems, no less).

CTA Budds Back from the Dead

The CTA has been maintaining an historic fleet for about a decade or so now, and it has recently comprised one pair of 1920s-era Cincinnati-built 4000s, two pairs of 1950s-era St. Louis-built 6000s, one pair of 1969 Budd-built 2200s, and three pairs of 1970s-era Boeing-built 2400s. But a second pair of 2200s is now back from the dead! Married-pair cars 2231 and 2232 have been retrieved from Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, where they were shipped in 2012 following retirement for use in training, and have returned to Chicago. The news was reported here, along with the above photo, courtesy of LaQuan Miller.

That brings the size of the CTA historic fleet up to 16 cars. That's far smaller than the New York historic fleet, of course, but it's enough to represent every major class of 'L' car used in Chicago since the dawn of the steel car era - no minor feat.

PCC Going Up for Auction in California

The story behind this post from May seems to be confirmed - per this website, the Bright's Pioneer Museum collection in Le Grand, California, is going to be sold at the end of October in an online auction. Individual lots haven't been listed yet, but a couple of the photos (including the one reproduced here) prominently show Muni PCC 1150, so you can be pretty confident it will be in the auction along with the rest of the stuff.

I have no idea what will happen to 1150, of course - and I'm not even sure whether I'll know after the auction what ended up happening to it - but it would be nice if the car went to a good home. From the photo, it looks practically pristine, without even flaking paint - just some dust and dirt.

Cars in Limbo

The PNAERC roster uses an assortment of criteria for judging whether to include a car. An attempt to explain all these criteria can be found here, linked from the landing page for the list. The first question I ask is whether it's an electric car, which is usually - though not always - obvious. The second question, which can be thornier, is whether the car is "preserved." If the answer is yes (and the car meets the other PNAERC criteria), then it goes onto the list. But if it isn't really "preserved" as such - if it still exists but is in more of a state of limbo or is more of a utility, e.g. it's part of a structure - then it's excluded.

However, a few years ago a fellow IRM volunteer named Lucas McKay started tracking these "not-quite-preserved" cars in a Google spreadsheet. After a while, I took over maintenance of this list. While this list is linked from the Preserved Traction Blog site, it's hidden down at the bottom of the righthand column and is totally invisible if you're reading on mobile. Marc Glucksman recommended highlighting its existence, which I think was an excellent suggestion. So click here to view the "non-preserved" list.

This list is a lot less complete than the PNAERC roster proper. There's almost no mechanical information, in part because almost nothing on the list still has any of its mechanical components. It's far less complete, not only because I've only been maintaining it for a few years but because almost all the entries are in private ownership and are a lot harder to track down. There are some well-known cars like the PE car used as the Formosa Cafe and a smattering of bodies still at Lake Lamoka, New York (including the ex-Corning & Painted Post carcass shown above). There are also quite a few little-known entries. And I'm always looking for more to add, so let me know if you come across anything that isn't on the list.

Enjoy!