Major culling of the Muni fleet

Today a link to this document, published earlier this month by the San Francisco Municipal Railway, was posted to Railway Preservation News and it contains a trove of fascinating information. SFMR, or Muni, owns no fewer than 58 PCC cars which makes them - I believe - the largest owner of PCC cars in the country. Of those, some 31 are in regular service (or currently being rebuilt, soon to reenter service) while the remaining 27 are stored. Of these 27 cars, it appears that 12 of them are to be disposed of. Part of the impetus for this is evidently that the entire collection of spare PCC cars (and other out-of-service historic vehicles of various sorts) is to be moved from Marin Yard to the Cow Palace in Daly City.

The list of twelve cars is a very interesting one. A couple of the cars are obvious candidates for disposal: two ex-Philadelphia cars that are virtually certain never to run, either in San Francisco or anywhere else. Car 1064 never actually wore that number in service; it was acquired back in 1990, the first PCC purchased from Philadelphia, and was intended to be rebuilt to supplement the original F-Market fleet of ex-Philly PCC cars but when disassembled was found to be very badly rusted. It has been stored in mostly disassembled state for some two decades. Car 1054 was part of the original F-Market PCC fleet but on November 16, 2003 it was rear-ended and suffered catastrophic frame damage. Judged irreparable, it's been in dead storage since.

Then there are the two Pittsburgh PCC cars, 4008 and 4009, which have never run in San Francisco and have been stored since acquisition 17 years ago. These were cars that were completely rebuilt in the late 1980s from 1700-series postwar PCC cars, so their body construction differs significantly from original PCC cars. They also have sealed windows, potentially a liability in California. They are, however, complete and generally undamaged cars and are being offered complete - unlike the other cars on the list, which are going to be (or already have been) stripped for parts by Muni prior to sale or donation.

The remaining eight cars on the list include three "Baby Tens," PCC cars built new for Muni in 1951, and five ex-St. Louis Public Service cars bought secondhand in 1957. The "Baby Tens" are 1023, 1031, and 1038. What intrigues me is that Muni has nine cars of this series in storage and the other six all spent many years away from San Francisco (two at Orange Empire and four in South Lake Tahoe) while the three up for disposal have been stored by Muni itself the entire time since they were retired in 1982. Apparently the other six benefited from their time away from San Francisco's salt air.

And finally there are the five ex-St. Louis Public Service cars, 1106, 1108, 1125, 1139, and 1140 (not be confused with 1040). Muni currently has no fewer than 12 of these ex-SLPS cars in storage (though one, car 1704, is restored to St. Louis colors and is considered a bit separately from the rest). Unlike with the "Baby Tens," the SLPS cars do not seem to have benefited from time away from Muni's care. Two of the cars, 1106 and 1140, were sold by Muni in 1994 (after a period of storage after retirement) to a collector in Lodi, California, from whom SFMR got the cars back in the early 2000s. A third car, 1108, was owned for a number of years by something called the Western Railroaders Hall of Fame. The other two cars being disposed of have been stored by Muni since retirement in 1982 (as have six of the seven ex-SLPS cars being retained).

One of the really interesting things about the document is that it appears that Market Street Railway Association disagreed with some of the cars being gotten rid of. Its judgment was that three PCC cars being retained by Muni - 1026, 1027, and 1028, all "Baby Tens" sold by Muni to Tahoe Valley Lines in 1994 and bought back in 2001 - were in worse condition than six of the cars on the disposal list. MSRA recommended that of those six cars - ex-SLPS 1106, 1108, 1139, and 1140, and Pittsburgh 4008 and 4009 - three be selected for retention and the three "Baby Tens" be disposed of. Muni seems to have declined to follow this suggestion.

An interesting - but understandable - aspect of this disposition is that it seems to largely disregard the difference between the Muni-original "Baby Tens" and the secondhand 1100s. Muni has rebuilt many cars in recent years but has yet to send out even a single ex-SLPS PCC for full rebuild. However in recent years Brookville, Muni's rebuilder of choice, has been fitting new-build Westinghouse-style PCC equipment to all rebuilt cars - including cars that, like the 1100s, started life with GE PCC equipment. It seems likely that Muni is viewing its remaining cars as shells, cars to be fitted with new electric equipment regardless of what they carry now.

All twelve cars marked for disposition have been noted as "for sale." The original Muni document is worth reading, as it suggests that major components will be removed from many of the cars (except for 4008 and 4009), meaning those cars are virtually certain to be scrapped. Even the remaining ex-Muni cars will be stripped of many components so they'll presumably be virtual shells.