San Diego car bodies acquired by SDERA

The San Diego Electric Railway Association has announced on Facebook (no login required) that they have acquired the three preserved Class 1 streetcars built for San Diego in 1912. Their newsletter from the end of last year confirms that these cars, all of which were owned by the late Chris Chaffee and preserved under the auspices of his "Historic San Diego Class 1 Streetcars" organization, were donated to SDERA by Mr Chaffee's widow.

All three cars were built by St. Louis Car Company in 1912 and were retired at the end of the 1930s. Car 138, shown in the photo above from the SDERA Facebook post, is in the best condition and its body was cosmetically restored by Mr Chaffee. The car had made occasional appearances in parades in this restored condition. The other two are car 126 and car 128, both also pictured in the Facebook post. These two are in worse condition but from the photo they still appear to be reasonably solid, no doubt aided considerably by the arid climate.

All three cars served as houses from c1939 until acquired by Mr Chaffee in 1996. Car 138 is now on display at the SDERA site at National City while the other two are stored towards the back of the property. These three cars were the only cars on the PNAERC list to have been owned by "HSDC1S" so that organization is now a former, not current, owner, and SDERA's collection (not counting a couple of foreign cars) is up to eight cars. Considering that 20 years ago SDERA owned none of these cars and that six of the eight are of local significance, that's pretty impressive.