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| Oh, that Balboa Park—’San Diego’ PCC No. 1078 glides toward Geneva Yard under tow from 1929 Melbourne tram No. 496 (shown below), following unloading on San Jose Avenue in early October. In honoring San Diego Electric Railway with this tribute livery, some compromises were made. For one thing, none of San Diego’s PCCs had the distinctive ‘standee windows’ with their rounded ends above the main side windows. Instead, the pre-War design San Diego PCCs had a blank panel above the windows used as a letterboard that said Ride & Relax. The slogan was so identified with San Diego Electric Railway that Muni decided to use it on one of the side signage panels below the car windows. It’s on the door side of the car, to the rear, where most San Diego PCCs said Tops in Transportation. On the other side of the car, the traditional San Diego standard banner that read Visit the Zoo - Balboa Park - Car No. 7 & 11 was changed to replace the car numbers with San Diego to give the car proper identification—and perhaps keep literalists from looking for a 7-Haight to head to the zoo! But you can still reach Balboa Park on this car—once a day when it pulls into the car house on the J-Church line, which runs right by San Francisco’s version of that park. |
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| 1070-class PCCs—honoring Detroit, Michigan (No. 1079, left); and Toronto, Canada (No. 1074, right)—pose side by side at Geneva Yard. |
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| Red Rocket—This side view of No. 1074 in its new Geneva Yard home makes it clear why these Toronto Transportation Commission PCCs were fondly known as ‘Red Rockets’ in their hometown. Toronto had the largest fleet of PCCs in North America—745 cars—many of them purchased second-hand from other cities. In the early 1970s, Muni bought ten PCCs from Toronto (which got them from Kansas City) to help out during BART construction. Most Muni operators didn’t like them, though, and all but a couple saw little service. But because Muni only modified the Toronto paint scheme slightly before putting them into service, this ‘Red Rocket’ look isn’t completely new to the streets of San Francisco. |
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| Birmingham Beauty—Birmingham PCCs wore one of the crispest liveries among the 30 North American cities that operated PCCs, a bold red wraparound band separating a blue-greenish lower body from the cream window section. Many new colors have been added to Muni’s ‘PCC palate’ with the arrival of the 1070 class. Even so, practical constraints related to storage space and cost mean that the color shades on a number of cars are just a little different than the originals. Of course, memories of precise colors have faded among many people, and some tend to forget that the old lead-based paints oxidized easily and so went off their original color pretty quickly. |
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| On the border at Brookville—’El Paso-Juarez’ PCC No. 1073 models the 1960s version of the livery of the only international PCC route—the El Paso City Lines cars crossed the International Bridge into Juarez, Mexico until 1973. The track and wire still exists on the bridge, by the way. This livery version was chosen, in part, because of the crossed US and Mexican flags on the front of the car, a distinctive touch. The car poses here at Brookville shortly before it headed to San Francisco, where it arrived December 18. |
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| Half of 'New' PCCs Here |
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| At press time (December 20), six ‘new’ 60-year old PCC streetcars are at Muni to stay, more than half of the group of eleven Muni bought third-hand from Newark NJ after their retirement there in 2002.
The streamlined PCCs, numbered by Muni from 1070 to 1080, were built in 1946 and 1947 for Twin City Rapid Transit in Minneapolis-St. Paul, then sold to Newark NJ in 1953, where they ran almost a half-century on a protected right-of-way.
Brookville Equipment Co. of Pennsylvania has been renovating the PCCs at a cost of $666,000 per car. Five are still to be completed and delivered, including car No. 1080, which was initially delivered to Muni last year without the interior improvements added to the contract by Muni. It was returned to Brookville for that additional work.
This was not a complete remanufacturing of the eleven cars to make them ‘like new’, as was done for the initial F-line fleet of seventeen PCCs in the early 1990s. The cars in Muni’s 1070-class were well maintained in Newark, so Muni opted for a renovation rather than a rebuilding. For example, the original wiring harnesses were left in place, and limited work was done on the trucks (wheel sets) and motors and other core technologies of the car. It is hoped this will not prove to be shortsighted, given the demands placed on the cars in daily San Francisco street service.
Of the six cars on the property at press time, two were having problems with their (new) brake actuators, a third with its motor-generator. One car, San Diego No. 1078, was slated to be released for training soon. Some operators had already been trained on Newark No. 1070 before it ran into its motor problem.
By the time you read this, perhaps the first cars in this group will have made it into revenue service, helping to alleviate the burden on the current F-line fleet. Meantime, we present more photographs of the ‘new’ PCCs, both here and in Brookville.
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| This story originaly ran in Market Street Railway's quarterly newsletter, Inside Track. We hold web publication of such stories under a three-month embargo. To receive these stories in their printed form at their time of publication, join Market Street Railway today. |
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