The Iron Monster Hits the Rails

Many thanks to our friend Jeremy Whiteman, who sends along the photos below showing San Francisco Municipal Railway 162, one of the "iron monsters" preserved by Muni on home rails.

The good news is that after many years out of service, car 162 has started burn-in testing in preparation for reentering revenue service on the F Line. Car 162 has an unusual history: built by Jewett in 1914 to the "class B" design, it was retired in 1958 and acquired by the Orange Empire Trolley Museum (today the Southern California Railway Museum). That organization sold the car back to Muni in 2002, and after it returned home the following year it was fully restored to its end-of-service green-and-cream livery. It returned to active use in 2008. Unfortunately, in 2014 it was involved in an accident that bashed in the end of the car. Muni sent it out for rebuilding and it returned home in 2018, but for reasons that I'm not clear on, it hasn't been returned to operation until now. Its status on the PNAERC roster has been updated to "operated occasionally," and with luck, that will soon flip to "operated often."

Backdated Bullet

The news made it out on Facebook today that Red Arrow "Bullet" car 206 has just been cosmetically restored by the Electric City Trolley Museum. Its newly applied livery, shown here, reflects its 1960s-era appearance in the years before Red Arrow was incorporated into SEPTA. The car serves as the "gate guardian" outside the ECTM museum building in Scranton. Kudos to the crew at ECTM for a very nice paint job.

In many cases, paint jobs don't entail any changes to PNAERC except for perhaps some new photos. But here, I've made a few edits to car's 206 listing. Its owner was changed from SEPTA (until now, it has worn its end-of-service SEPTA colors) to PSTC, aka Red Arrow; and its description was changed as well. At the end of its life, car 206 was put into work service spreading "brine" on the third rail to melt ice, so it's been listed on PNAERC as a work car. Since it was never a PSTC work car, I've changed its classification to "rapid transit car" and updated its listing a bit to reflect that.

The Perkinsfield PCC is Back

A huge thank you goes out to contributor Daniel, who emailed to notify me of this Facebook post from about a year ago. The unusual thing about the car in the photo is that I took it off the PNAERC list two years ago because I assumed it had been scrapped. Whoops!

This is Toronto Transportation Commission 4524, a class A-8 PCC car built by St. Louis in 1951. It was withdrawn from service on May 18, 1990, and by 1991 it was one of four cars of this type (the others being 4529, 4530, and 4546) being held for possible rebuilding into 4600-series class A-15 cars. That rebuild program was curtailed in 1991, though, and when the 4600s were put up for sale in 1996, un-rebuilt car 4524 was put up for sale alongside them. Daniel sent me additional history that came from Robert Lubinski: car 4524 was sold on April 4, 1996, to Vintage Electric Streetcar Company (under whose ownership it was listed on PNAERC for many years, I'm afraid to say), but VESCO rejected it soon thereafter and it was never moved over the border. In August 1996 the car was sold to a person in Perkinsfield, Ontario, and was used for a restaurant as a time.

That was the last I knew of it; the trail ran cold around 2010, and I took it off the PNAERC list in 2023. But as it turns out, around that time - supposedly in late 2009 - it was sold to a private owner in Tecumseh, Ontario, near Windsor, and moved to his property. And there it remains, though as can be seen, it's in unenviable condition and doesn't seem to have received much in the way of upkeep. But it's on trucks, on a piece of track, and nominally on display, though only for the owner - it's only just barely visible from the road.

I've added car 4524 back to the PNAERC list and corrected the errors with its ownership history. Surprisingly, it's the last extant un-rebuilt 4500-series car; other than the 4600s that were rebuilt in the 1980s, there actually aren't that many PCCs left that were built for Toronto, at least not anymore. When 4600s and secondhand (ex-Kansas City, Cleveland, etc.) cars are discounted, I count a total of 11 preserved TTC PCCs, with only one of those - the last air car, TTC 4000 - in what I'd consider good condition.

Third Avenue Railway Car Lost

This one came as a surprise: Matthew Juergens emailed me to let me know that Third Avenue Railway System 637, shown below in an undated photo, was scrapped sometime around last September.

The car was owned by the Tramway Museum Graz, which is located at the end of the streetcar line in Mariatrost, on the outskirts of Graz, Austria. Car 637 was built in 1939 by TARS but only ran in New York for nine years before it, along with a bunch of its fellow 600-series cars, was conveyed to the Vienna street railway system as part of the post-World War II Marshall Plan. Renumbered into the 4200-series in Vienna (car 637 became Wiener Stadtwerke Verkehrsbetriebe 4202), these cars remained in service into the 1960s. Eight (now seven) were preserved, including three that were repatriated to the United States (at Branford, Seashore, and National Capital) and five that remained in Europe.

The five that stayed in Europe have followed divergent paths, from a couple of fully restored showpieces to one or two victims of benign neglect. But the condition of the car in Mariatrost was far from the worst of the lot, and from outward appearances car 637 was complete and solid. I'm not sure of the reason for scrapping it, just that the museum supposedly tried and failed to find a new home for it. As previously mentioned, this is not a remarkable historical loss, as there are seven other examples of this type still extant, but it's still a dismaying development. Many thanks to Matthew for sending this information along. The list now stands at 2,087 cars in all.

SEPTA PCC Scrapped

Thanks to Bill Wall, who passes along word that SEPTA 2104, the last Philadelphia PCC remaining at the Middletown & Hummelstown, was shipped to the scrapyard yesterday.

Car 2104 was a standard Philly postwar car built in 1948, overhauled in the 1980s GOH program, and sold to the M&H in 1994. Its loss is unfortunate, but not particularly significant; by my count, there are roughly 70 Philadelphia PCC cars in existence, in an astonishing variety of states, and that's not even counting cars purchased secondhand by the city.

The M&H is down to 12 cars on PNAERC. Eight of those are Lackawanna MU cars, which I assume are sticking around. Of the other four, three - KCPS steeplecab 2, BRT convertible 4550 and SBK box motor 9425 - are likely available to a good home. That leaves only Red Arrow 77, and the single-truck Rio open car that isn't on the PNAERC list, that the M&H intends to retain for the long term. The PNAERC list currently stands at 2,088 cars in all.

A New Home for Ottawa 696

Thanks to Sean Bowen and Jordan Helzer, who sent me this link to a Facebook post from the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in May. Ottawa 696, the oldest double-truck car from that city in preservation, has been moved to a new location. It has moved from its longtime home in an OC Transpo bus garage to the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in Smiths Falls, which is an organization new to PNAERC. RMEO has a small collection of steam-road equipment clustered around the town's rather impressive railway station, but car 696 is their first streetcar.

I don't have any insider information on car 696 or this transfer, but the photos posted of the move (including the one shown here) make it clear that the car's condition is similar to the photos on PNAERC taken back in 2018, suggesting that the major rebuilding project that was underway may have largely ground to a halt sometime back. As for the car's new home, RMEO does have a single-track barn, so my hope - especially given that the car doesn't have windows - is that car 696 is going in there and not remaining outside. The museum posted that there are no current plans for an operational restoration, but they do plan to complete restoration work on the car's body and possibly tow it around with a diesel.

Another question, since OC Transpo has divested itself of car 696, is what might happen to Ottawa 905, the other car owned by the city transit agency. While 1917-vintage car 696 is the oldest double-truck Ottawa car in preservation, 1933-vintage car 905 is the newest extant streetcar from the city. It was rescued out of a house in 2004 and has been stored in the same bus garage as 696 for some time, but it's a car body without any interior or running gear.

EDIT: Thanks to Bill Wall for sending along some additional background information. It seems that cars 696 and 905 were both moved to outdoor (tarped) storage at a city works yard in Cumberland, east of Ottawa, last year. That nixed any hope of restoration work on 696 continuing - until its move to Smiths Falls. I'm still not certain of what the plans for car 905 might be, or whether there are any.

The Spirit of 1776

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum has rolled out their second striking, one-off PCC livery in as many years, this time in honor of the semiquincentennial. As shown above, Port Authority Transit 1799, a 1945 air-electric car, has been painted in a livery seen on the streets of Pittsburgh around the bicentennial in 1976. It's a striking color scheme that built off the then-current "banded" color layout used by PAT. The car was debuted today to much (literal) fanfare.

Now, there is an asterisk with this one. Unlike the "Terrible Trolley," this isn't really an accurate livery for this particular car. PAT did field a car with this exact livery, but it was (unsurprisingly) their car 1776, which did not survive into preservation. Car 1799 is identical; built as car 1613, it was overhauled in 1979 and received the number 1799 at that time. The original "Spirit of 1776" car began life as car 1616 and was overhauled in 1974, which is when it received the number 1776 and this livery.

But I don't think anyone's complaining. Car 1799 was saved by PTM to prevent it from being scrapped, but was in poor mechanical shape and had been considered "deaccessioned" by the museum for years. This new livery is quite the renaissance. I assume that 1799/"Spirit of 1776" is now considered part of the collection; although the car is not operational, at least not for now, it's certainly a striking display piece. I've updated its status from "storage" to "display." Kudos to everyone at PTM who made this happen!