This car is painted to honor El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, which ran PCC streetcars across the border from 1950 to 1973.

El Paso's 17 PCC streetcars came second-hand from San Diego (See our No. 1078), which had just retired them. A bit ironically, El Paso City Lines was owned by National City Lines, notorious for buying transit systems around the U.S., ripping out the streetcars, and replacing them with buses. In El Paso, however, PCCs replaced older conventional streetcars on the international route across the Rio Grande River Bridge into Juarez, Mexico. Since these PCCs were single-ended, and with no turning loop at the carbarn, the cars had to back up a full mile to enter service every day. The traditional front-facing PCC seating (as on No. 1073) was replaced with continuous longitudinal seating along the walls of the cars so that customs officials could check passengers more quickly as they crossed the Rio Grande.

National City Lines generally painted the streetcars of its properties in a standard orange, green, and white livery colloquially known as 'fruit salad' and so it was in El Paso initially. The 'fruit salad' paint scheme of National City Lines is modeled (in its Los Angeles version) on Muni No. 1080. But most El Paso streetcars later received different schemes, including this late 1960s version in light green with white and red trim modeled on No. 1073. There are crossed American and Mexican flags on the front.

No. 1074 »  

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