New Orleans car stripped for bar conversion

From a post on Facebook comes word that New Orleans Public Service 959, a standard car built by Perley-Thomas in 1924, has suffered an unfortunate fate. Complete and more-or-less operational until sometime during the last few months, it has now been stripped of its interior and all mechanical parts so that it can be converted into a centerpiece at a bar in Chattanooga.

Car 959, identical to the cars still in service on the St. Charles in in New Orleans, was among the 900s retired in 1964 when the Canal Street line was abandoned. It was sold, along with sister car 952, to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga. TVRM sold both cars to the Chattanooga Choo Choo in 1973, from what I can tell. CCC was a hotel and restaurant development built around the old Chattanooga railroad station and part of the development was a horseshoe-shaped streetcar line. Passengers could board the streetcar and travel about 3/4 mile on the line, ending up a few hundred feet from where they began.

I'd be interested in knowing more about the CCC operation but from what I can tell, 952 was regauged to standard and put into operation around 1973 and given a garish yellow livery. I don't believe 959 was put into operation at that time; I believe that it wasn't fixed up for operation until the mid-1980s, as suggested by this article. Either way, it was renumbered 953 to follow its sister, regauged, and put into service. In 1990 car 952 was sold to the San Francisco Municipal Railway, which restored it to New Orleans colors and put it into operation on the F-Market Line.

Car 959 continued operating at CCC into the 2010s, but within the last few years the streetcar operation was halted as part of a massive redevelopment of the train station site. Car 959 was moved to TVRM for storage. From what I've managed to gather, the now-stripped car body is going to be set in place at a bar back at the old CCC site. The loss of a complete, operational 1920s streetcar is not an everyday occurrence in 2018, though admittedly there are few streetcars more common than 900-series New Orleans Perley-Thomas cars. Still, it's a loss. For the time being I've left car 959's owner as CCC pending a definite name for the bar.

Thanks to David Wilkins for the heads-up on this one.