SEPTA PCC Scrapped

Thanks to Bill Wall, who passes along word that SEPTA 2104, the last Philadelphia PCC remaining at the Middletown & Hummelstown, was shipped to the scrapyard yesterday.

Car 2104 was a standard Philly postwar car built in 1948, overhauled in the 1980s GOH program, and sold to the M&H in 1994. Its loss is unfortunate, but not particularly significant; by my count, there are roughly 70 Philadelphia PCC cars in existence, in an astonishing variety of states, and that's not even counting cars purchased secondhand by the city.

The M&H is down to 12 cars on PNAERC. Eight of those are Lackawanna MU cars, which I assume are sticking around. Of the other four, three - KCPS steeplecab 2, BRT convertible 4550 and SBK box motor 9425 - are likely available to a good home. That leaves only Red Arrow 77, and the single-truck Rio open car that isn't on the PNAERC list, that the M&H intends to retain for the long term. The PNAERC list currently stands at 2,088 cars in all.