PCC Going Up for Auction in California

The story behind this post from May seems to be confirmed - per this website, the Bright's Pioneer Museum collection in Le Grand, California, is going to be sold at the end of October in an online auction. Individual lots haven't been listed yet, but a couple of the photos (including the one reproduced here) prominently show Muni PCC 1150, so you can be pretty confident it will be in the auction along with the rest of the stuff.

I have no idea what will happen to 1150, of course - and I'm not even sure whether I'll know after the auction what ended up happening to it - but it would be nice if the car went to a good home. From the photo, it looks practically pristine, without even flaking paint - just some dust and dirt.

PCC for Sale?

An intriguing post showed up a couple of days ago on the Facebook page for Aumann Vintage Power, which I'll confess I'd never heard of before. They are evidently auctioning off a huge collection of tractors, trucks, and other miscellaneous equipment (including the school bus involved in the Chowchilla kidnapping, of all things) sometime this summer. Why is this of interest? Because what's being auctioned off is (apparently) the entire collection of Bright's Pioneer Exhibit in Merced, California - and Bright's appears on the PNAERC roster! Tucked way back among all the random machinery is the ex-St. Louis Public Service, ex-Muni PCC pictured above in a photo taken in 2011. The car is Muni 1150, which was built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1140 and ended its service career in 1979, from what I can tell. According to one source familiar with the Muni fleet, the car was taken out of service and moved to Merced right away, likely being put into indoor storage as soon as it got there. As such, it's probably in better shape than just about any other ex-SLPS Muni car out there except for the two or three that have been fully restored.

Now, I have to admit, the PCC doesn't appear in any of the photos on the Facebook post, so I can't be certain it's included in the auction. But it seems likely. Aumann says they will add a full listing to their website soon, so that should answer any questions. If car 1150 goes up for auction, hopefully it finds a good home.

On a totally unrelated subject, I've removed the above car, Companhia Municipal de Transportes Coletivos 1791, from the PNAERC roster. It's an ex-Third Avenue Railway System "Huffliner" built by TARS in 1938 and sold to the Sao Paolo, Brazil, system in 1947. Until sometime in the last couple of decades it was on display under a shelter at the Clube Esportivo Nautico de Guarapiranga, located near Sao Paolo, but I cannot find any evidence that it's still there despite the club being very well documented in online photographs. Until I can find some evidence that the car still exists, it's off the list.