Thanks to Randy Hicks for sending along this photo, taken a couple of days ago at the National Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood, MO. The photo doesn't reveal much by itself, other than that it's a PCC car under shrink wrap, but fortunately the museum volunteers he ran into filled him in. This is San Francisco Municipal Railway 1101, which was built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1700, and it arrived in Kirkwood just in the last couple of weeks. The car was retired in the early 1980s along with the rest of the Muni PCC fleet and was stored in San Francisco until sold to the Tahoe Valley Lines PCC Railway in 1995. It's been for sale for something like 15 years and its owner finally found a buyer. (Another PCC recent left the Tahoe collection, leaving only three cars still owned by TVL: two Toronto 4400's and a bizarre Frankenstein-esque double-end PCC built by welding together the front halves of two normal San Francisco PCC's.)
NMOT's plans for their new PCC aren't certain. They just haven't decided exactly what they'll do. This is the second ex-SLPS, ex-Muni PCC they've acquired recently (following car 1140) and the third ex-SLPS, ex-Muni PCC on the property when you add in restored car 1743. It's unlikely that they'll retain all three cars long-term, but possible that they may retain two (1743 and one other, naturally) for historic purposes, in which case they'll have to decide whether to keep 1101 or 1140.
No comments:
Post a Comment