Postcard from Colfax

"Lovely weather - wish you were here!" Thanks to Joel Salomon for taking the above photo of Toronto PCC 4472 and to Wesley Paulson for passing this along to me (with Joel's permission to post it). TTC 4472 is a typical 4400-series PCC built for that city by St. Louis in 1949. It was purchased in 1990 by the Market Street Railway Association and moved to Muni property, but at some point they sold it to the private owner who goes by Tahoe Valley Lines PCC Railway (TVL). It has bounced around a bit; as of about 20 years ago it was stored in a scrapyard in Roseville, but in recent years it has been located in Colfax, California. It's supposedly for sale, if you're in the market for a Toronto PCC.

This is one of just three cars still part of the once-sizable TVL collection of PCC cars. Most of the collection was sold around 2007 to a real estate developer in St. Charles, MO, but that outfit went bust in the 2008 recession and the entire lot of cars was unceremoniously scrapped without warning. Besides 4472, there is the bizarre creation dubbed 102435 that was made by welding together half of Muni 1024 and half of Muni 1035 to create a double-ended PCC; and a second Toronto PCC, 4404. This car was also owned by MSRA but was stored in Oakland in the early 1990s. The trouble is, I can't find any information on this car more recent than 2007, when it was listed for sale. It may be stored on the property in South Lake Tahoe along with car 102435, but does anyone know for certain?

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.

San Diego 502 moves to Rio Vista

 

Many thanks to Bill Wulfert, who forwarded me some photos showing the move of San Diego Electric Railway 502 to the Western Railway Museum. I don't have permission to post those photos publicly, so the above shot of the car taken within the last few years is from Railfan & Railroad. This is the culmination of a fundraising effort, largely online I believe, held by WRM over the past year or two to purchase and move this car.

SDER 502 was part of San Diego's first order for PCC cars and was among the earliest orders for PCC cars; of production PCC cars in preservation (say that eight times fast!), only Brooklyn 1001 and Chicago 4021 are from earlier orders, though El Paso 1517 started life as SDER 501 and would have been built alongside 502. A total of 13 cars from this order were preserved, actually, due to many of San Diego's cars finding a second life in El Paso that kept them around for decades after most air-electric PCC cars had gone to scrap.

Car 502 became El Paso 1500 in 1950 and ran in that city into the 1970s, being stored after the system there shut down. In 1986 the car returned home and to the ownership of the San Diego Electric Railway Association. Unfortunately during its time in San Diego it was damaged by fire, and in 1996 the car was sold to Tahoe Valley Lines and moved to northern California. It was owned by TVL until this year. It is the only air-electric PCC cars in the WRM collection, though it does join slightly newer "patent evasion" streamliner Muni 1003 which has many similarities to early PCC cars.