Tandy Car Surfaces

I've been removing a lot of cars from the PNAERC list recently, but today I got to add one back. I finally found a fleet number for the car shown above: Tandy Subway 4. This photo popped up at the end of 2023 and shows a car whose existence had been rumored, but I'd never been able to find any solid information. But it's now clear that car 4 has, indeed, been in indoor storage since the Tandy cars were sold off around 2003, and it seems to be in excellent condition. It was being moved last year because the facility where it was stored was being torn down, but it's supposedly been relocated to a Trinity Metro facility elsewhere in Fort Worth.

This car was built in 1945 as Capital Transit 1506, one of that city's typical postwar PCC cars. It was among the small fleet sold in 1963 for continued use on the Tandy Subway in Fort Worth. It was heavily rebuilt in "Winnebago" style around 1975-1977. When the Tandy line quit, several of its cars were preserved, but in the last 10 years most of those have been scrapped, including two or three that were stored locally and a couple that were moved to Pennsylvania. In fact, this is the last car preserved in end-of-service condition. Only two other cars that ran on the Tandy line still exist, beautifully restored car 1, which was never rebuilt with this boxy body, and car 2, which was modified for street railway service on the McKinney Avenue line but has been stored out-of-service for several years now.

As a side note, this car is considered privately owned in Fort Worth until I find information to the contrary, but it turns out I already have an entry for "Private owner - Fort Worth" in PNAERC. Oops! So, lacking any better ideas, Tandy Subway 4 is listed under as "Ft Worth" rather than "Fort Worth."