Rolling through Ames, Iowa today on the back of a trailer, one of our watchful members, Mike Joynt, spotted newly rebuilt PCC 1061, painted to honor Pacific Electric, on its way back to San Francisco following rebuilding by Brookville Equipment Company in Pennsylvania. Mike wasn’t able to snap a photo, but here’s one of the car body emerging from Brookville’s paint shop a couple of months ago before its regular trucks were installed and the finishing touches applied. (Thanks to Jack Demnyan for the photo.)
Pacific Electric was the mighty Southern California interurban and electric freight railway involved with the even mightier Southern Pacific Railroad. P-E even painted its small fleet of double-end PCCs to evoke S-P’s red and orange “Daylight” passenger trainsets. The restored 1061 has a more accurate orange — Daylight Orange, actually — that provides more contrast with the red than the color did on the original restoration, performed in the early 1990s. That extra contrast led one member, who saw this photo in Inside Track, to complain that the paint scheme is “wrong” because there’s “too much orange” above the windows. In fact, the paint design is identical to what has been on the car since the early 1990s. The relative lack of contrast between the body red and the trim red-orange meant that this member didn’t notice anything “wrong” for 25 years. You can see the original this great shot by Rich Panse.
In fairness, this paint scheme in particular is tough to replicate because P-E’s PCCs were unique, double-ended with front and center doors and no standee windows. The side windows were much taller instead, leaving little room between the top of the windows and the main roof as shown below.
We’ll post photos of the finished car when it arrives in San Francisco early next week.
