SLPS PCC returns home

Thanks to Randy Hicks for sending along this photo, taken a couple of days ago at the National Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood, MO. The photo doesn't reveal much by itself, other than that it's a PCC car under shrink wrap, but fortunately the museum volunteers he ran into filled him in. This is San Francisco Municipal Railway 1101, which was built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1700, and it arrived in Kirkwood just in the last couple of weeks. The car was retired in the early 1980s along with the rest of the Muni PCC fleet and was stored in San Francisco until sold to the Tahoe Valley Lines PCC Railway in 1995. It's been for sale for something like 15 years and its owner finally found a buyer. (Another PCC recent left the Tahoe collection, leaving only three cars still owned by TVL: two Toronto 4400's and a bizarre Frankenstein-esque double-end PCC built by welding together the front halves of two normal San Francisco PCC's.)

NMOT's plans for their new PCC aren't certain. They just haven't decided exactly what they'll do. This is the second ex-SLPS, ex-Muni PCC they've acquired recently (following car 1140) and the third ex-SLPS, ex-Muni PCC on the property when you add in restored car 1743. It's unlikely that they'll retain all three cars long-term, but possible that they may retain two (1743 and one other, naturally) for historic purposes, in which case they'll have to decide whether to keep 1101 or 1140.

Yet another CLRV and more

I'm a little late with this update, but last month Richard Schauer sent me a photo of yet another TTC that has made it to a museum. Car 4133, shown above, is currently stored at the Halton County Radial Railway but - like car 4068 - it is owned by the Seashore Trolley Museum. Unlike car 4068, though, this one isn't slated for long-term preservation. Instead the plan is to scrap it for parts, chiefly its trucks, which will be regauged to standard gauge and placed underneath car 4068. That's the plan but until that happens the car is still owned by a museum so it's on the PNAERC list for now.

Thanks also go to Al Weber with the National Museum of Transportation, who sent along several helpful pieces of mechanical information about cars in their collection. Tidbits like the type of controller on work car 165, air compressors on SLPS 1005 and IT 1575, and the brake schedule on the bi-polar are now part of the roster. Information like this is always greatly appreciated. I'm always looking to add any missing information, especially technical information on mechanical and electrical equipment. If you notice that cars at your museum have blank spaces in their listings, YOU can help! Just email me any information you are able to find.

Update From Kirkwood

I had a chance to visit the ersatz Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood, Missouri last week and came away with a couple of updates. First of all, I say "ersatz" because it's no longer known as the Museum of Transportation. Back under private management after a three-decade period under the authority of St. Louis County, the museum is now known as the National Museum of Transportation. Their website and logo actually list this as TNMOT, so apparently they've got either an Ohio State alum or a fan of Wisconsin interurban lines in their management, but regardless the name of the organization has been updated on the PNAERC list (albeit sans leading T). I also got to view progress on Kansas City Public Service 1533, a Birney which is undergoing a major rebuilding effort including a lot of steel replacement.

The big news, though, was that a new acquisition was en route and has since arrived. San Francisco Municipal Railway 1140, a PCC built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1711, was offered for sale by Muni recently along with a collection of other PCC cars that had been in dead storage for years. This particular car ran in St. Louis until 1957, when it went to San Francisco and operated (I think) until about 1981. Muni stored it until 1994 when it was sold to an individual in Lodi, California. In 2003 it was bought back by Muni and has been in storage since. It still wears its old Muni "wings" livery but doesn't seem to have suffered the vandalism and deterioration that some of the cars in storage did. NMOT didn't acquire the car for permanent preservation, but as a parts source for their identical car 1743. However plans for car 1140 are not final and the museum may hold onto it, at least for a while.

As for the other PCC cars put up for sale by Muni, I haven't seen anything about disposition. The folks in St. Louis said that 1140 was the only car in the bunch that wasn't being scrapped but I don't know whether this is confirmed.

Bullet car removed from list

I've received confirmation that ex-Philadelphia & Western "Bullet car" 204 was scrapped at the Museum of Transportation within the last couple of years. As with the rest of the series of ten Bullets, car 204 was built by Brill in 1931 and ran on the P&W - later Red Arrow, later SEPTA - for some 50 years. This car was retired in 1986 and for some reason its stripped shell went to the Delaware Car Company in Wilmington where it spent several years plinthed alongside the Northeast Corridor (photo here). In 1996 it was acquired by the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis and moved there. Not much was ever done with it and I believe that for the entirety of its time at MOT it was stored outside the "trolley building" at the bottom of the hill. The photo above was taken by yours truly in 2009 and the car's condition didn't improve in the years following this. After being offered to other museums with no takers, it was cut up.

While the Bullets are iconic cars, from an historical perspective this is really no loss. First, the car was only a shell, missing its interior, trucks, and all of its underbody equipment. More importantly, there are still six out of the original ten* P&W Bullet cars around (not to mention three out of the original five FJ&G Bullets) and those six are all complete, or substantially complete, cars. One of them is even in running condition.

*Yes, I know there were eleven because one was built shortly after the others to replace a car destroyed by fire. But there were only ten P&W Bullets at any one time.

Kansas City Birney under restoration

Thanks to David Wilkins for forwarding along the above photo, taken by Bob O'Neil, showing Kansas City Public Service 1533. This single-truck Birney is preserved at the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis and as the photo shows it is now the focus of the museum's Trolley Volunteers restoration group. This is the group within the MOT organization that previously restored St. Louis 1743, a 1946 PCC car, and before that restored St. Louis Waterworks 10. Car 1533 is an historic car and should be well-suited to their short line. Built in 1919 at the height of the Birney fad, car 1533 ran in Kansas City for a full three decades, later than Birneys ran in most larger cities. When it was retired in 1949, it was acquired by the nascent National Museum of Transport (now MOT) and brought to St. Louis intact. Over the years it was maintained in pretty good condition, though in recent years it suffered a collapsed platform knee at one end which resulted in some damage to one platform (see below photo, taken in 2009).

But the MOT restoration crew is obviously rebuilding the framing of this platform and it looks like they will be rehabbing the rest of the car as well. Besides being the only Birney, and the only Kansas City car, at MOT, car 1533 is also in the best shape of the four pre-PCC cars from Kansas City that are in museums. It will be a great addition to the MOT operating fleet when it's done.

CTA acquires more 6000s

The head of the Chicago Transit Authority's heritage fleet program, Graham Garfield, has posted on Facebook at this link (should work regardless of whether you have an account) the news that CTA 6711-6712 have been acquired from the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis. Car 6712 arrived in Chicago on Tuesday the 28th with car 6711 soon to follow. This brings the CTA's historic collection up to a total of fourteen cars, which includes two 4000s, four 6000s, and eight 2400s.

The collection includes both the newest and oldest sets of 6000s preserved. This set of 6700s, built in 1959 at the tail end of 6000-series car production, was retired in 1992 and acquired by MOT in 1993 but never ran in St. Louis. The cars were stored in the MOT barn until this month but in the last two or three years the museum had been slowly stripping them for parts to use on CTA 44, which is regular use on the museum's electric line. It's thought that most essential components remain on the 6711-6712 though and the CTA should be able to restore them to service to operate with their other set, acquired recently from Fox River.

PCC restoration complete in St. Louis

As noted on our sister Hicks Car Works blog, this summer the restoration of St. Louis Public Service 1743 was completed (or, at least, substantially completed) by Museum of Transportation volunteers. The car's status on the PNAERC list has been updated from "undergoing restoration" to "operated occasionally" although it may be in more regular use, I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, this is the only car currently in service in SLPS livery anywhere, despite there being a sizable number of ex-SLPS PCC cars still in existence owing to their service into the 1980s in San Francisco.