Museums In Motion - The Long Hello

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Diego debut—In San Diego’s streetcar days, streamlined PCC streetcars painted like this used to glide past the distinctive tower of the California Building in Balboa Park. In April, Muni PCC No. 1078, painted to honor San Diego, passes a different distinctive tower—Coit Tower—as it heads for the Wharf with a full load...the first additional streamliner to enter service since the F-line opened in 1995, with ten more on its heels.

Cars No. 1077 (Birmingham) and 1079 (Detroit) were on the street in early April, training operators and getting ‘burn–in’ mileage to test systems before entering revenue service.

The Long Hello

On April 9, a pea-green PCC streetcar picked up its first paying passengers on the F-line, marking the first ‘new’ streamliner to enter revenue service since the F-line opened in 1995. Car No. 1078, painted to honor San Diego, drew stares among F-line regulars with its unfamiliar livery, and compliments for its fresh paint inside and out.

The debut of No. 1078 opens what should be the final chapter in the long process of adding eleven badly-needed PCCs to Muni’s fleet, a process that began five years ago with the lease of Newark, New Jersey car No. 14 (now Muni No. 1070) for evaluation. Newark’s PCCs, built between 1946 and 1948 for Twin City Rapid Transit in Minneapolis-St. Paul, came to New Jersey in the early 1950s and ran successfully for a half-century, well maintained and stored under cover. After replacing the PCCs with new LRVs, Newark put them in storage and Market Street Railway urged Muni to pursue them. A procurement process ensued, ending with the acquisition of eleven cars (down from an originally agreed-to fifteen) in 2004.

Once the cars were under Muni ownership, they were shipped directly to Brookville Equipment Company in Pennsylvania for what was originally scoped as minimal modifications for San Francisco service, plus new exterior paint jobs. But when the first car, No. 1080, arrived in San Francisco, the then-Muni leadership determined that another round of modifications, including interior repainting, should be added. This two-stage process added almost a year to the project over what it would have taken had the stages been done at the same time.

Once here, it was discovered that the original door motors on many cars weren’t working properly, along with other problems. Some observers thought Muni staff, clearly focused on getting LRV availability higher to meet T-line requirements was ignoring the new PCCs. However, Muni CEO Nat Ford and COO Ken McDonald mandated that at least four of the Newark cars be in revenue service by the end of May, and work accelerated on the fixes. At press time, both No. 1077 (painted for Birmingham, Alabama) and No. 1079 (honoring Detroit, Michigan) were in service, with other cars including No. 1070 (back in its original Newark livery) due to follow shortly. As seen here, all eleven cars are in San Francisco now, with more and more of them slated to come into service, adding more color—and capacity—to the F-line. This is especially important because at the same time the T-line opened, Muni added additional runs to the F-line on weekends. We’ll have an evaluation of the new schedule in the near future.