| The final three renovated ex-Newark PCC streetcars arrived at Muni in March. This completes the order of eleven PCCs to expand Muni’s fleet. The cars were built between 1946 and 1948 for Twin City Rapid Transit of Minneapolis-St. Paul, then sold to Newark in 1952.
Car No. 1071 (middle left) is painted to honor its original Minnesota owner; No. 1072 (bottom left) to honor Mexico City, which bought some identical Twin City cars; and No. 1080, back to stay after being returned to the vendor for another round of modifications, painted in Los Angeles Transit Lines’ ‘Fruit Salad’ paint scheme of the late 1940s.
The varied liveries of Muni’s current PCC fleet, honoring North American cities that ran this great streetcar type, are a far cry from the uniformity of Muni past. Not only the consistent green & cream livery, modeled in the photo of car No. 1016 when it was delivered late in 1951 (top left), but the consistently pale skin tone of the men (all men!) who ran Muni back then...they even wore the same hats!
This publicity photo, taken by longtime Muni PR man Robert Rockwell, shows No. 1016, first of the ‘Baby Tens’ to arrive, on a flatcar on the Southern Pacific exchange track at the old Elkton Shops (a site occupied today by Muni’s Curtis E. Green Light Rail Division). Car No. 1016 has been preserved at the Western Railway Museum in Solano County, where volunteers are well along in restoring it to this ‘as-delivered’ appearance.
The photo itself comes to us as part of the marvelous gift to Market Street Railway by Brian Adler, son of one of our charter members.
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