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. I'm not sure exactly when it went out of service, but by 1991 it was evidently one of four cars of this type being held for possible rebuilding into 4600-series cars. That rebuild program was curtailed, 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.