The Iron Monster Hits the Rails

Many thanks to our friend Jeremy Whiteman, who sends along the photos below showing San Francisco Municipal Railway 162, one of the "iron monsters" preserved by Muni on home rails.

The good news is that after many years out of service, car 162 has started burn-in testing in preparation for reentering revenue service on the F Line. Car 162 has an unusual history: built by Jewett in 1914 to the "class B" design, it was retired in 1958 and acquired by the Orange Empire Trolley Museum (today the Southern California Railway Museum). That organization sold the car back to Muni in 2002, and after it returned home the following year it was fully restored to its end-of-service green-and-cream livery. It returned to active use in 2008. Unfortunately, in 2014 it was involved in an accident that bashed in the end of the car. Muni sent it out for rebuilding and it returned home in 2018, but for reasons that I'm not clear on, it hasn't been returned to operation until now. Its status on the PNAERC roster has been updated to "operated occasionally," and with luck, that will soon flip to "operated often."

Backdated Bullet

The news made it out on Facebook today that Red Arrow "Bullet" car 206 has just been cosmetically restored by the Electric City Trolley Museum. Its newly applied livery, shown here, reflects its 1960s-era appearance in the years before Red Arrow was incorporated into SEPTA. The car serves as the "gate guardian" outside the ECTM museum building in Scranton. Kudos to the crew at ECTM for a very nice paint job.

In many cases, paint jobs don't entail any changes to PNAERC except for perhaps some new photos. But here, I've made a few edits to car's 206 listing. Its owner was changed from SEPTA (until now, it has worn its end-of-service SEPTA colors) to PSTC, aka Red Arrow; and its description was changed as well. At the end of its life, car 206 was put into work service spreading "brine" on the third rail to melt ice, so it's been listed on PNAERC as a work car. Since it was never a PSTC work car, I've changed its classification to "rapid transit car" and updated its listing a bit to reflect that.

The Perkinsfield PCC is Back

A huge thank you goes out to contributor Daniel, who emailed to notify me of this Facebook post from about a year ago. The unusual thing about the car in the photo is that I took it off the PNAERC list two years ago because I assumed it had been scrapped. Whoops!

This is Toronto Transportation Commission 4524, a class A-8 PCC car built by St. Louis in 1951. It was withdrawn from service on May 18, 1990, and by 1991 it was one of four cars of this type (the others being 4529, 4530, and 4546) being held for possible rebuilding into 4600-series class A-15 cars. That rebuild program was curtailed in 1991, though, and when the 4600s were put up for sale in 1996, un-rebuilt car 4524 was put up for sale alongside them. Daniel sent me additional history that came from Robert Lubinski: car 4524 was sold on April 4, 1996, to Vintage Electric Streetcar Company (under whose ownership it was listed on PNAERC for many years, I'm afraid to say), but VESCO rejected it soon thereafter and it was never moved over the border. In August 1996 the car was sold to a person in Perkinsfield, Ontario, and was used for a restaurant as a time.

That was the last I knew of it; the trail ran cold around 2010, and I took it off the PNAERC list in 2023. But as it turns out, around that time - supposedly in late 2009 - it was sold to a private owner in Tecumseh, Ontario, near Windsor, and moved to his property. And there it remains, though as can be seen, it's in unenviable condition and doesn't seem to have received much in the way of upkeep. But it's on trucks, on a piece of track, and nominally on display, though only for the owner - it's only just barely visible from the road.

I've added car 4524 back to the PNAERC list and corrected the errors with its ownership history. Surprisingly, it's the last extant un-rebuilt 4500-series car; other than the 4600s that were rebuilt in the 1980s, there actually aren't that many PCCs left that were built for Toronto, at least not anymore. When 4600s and secondhand (ex-Kansas City, Cleveland, etc.) cars are discounted, I count a total of 11 preserved TTC PCCs, with only one of those - the last air car, TTC 4000 - in what I'd consider good condition.