Five years after leaving F-line service with a major structural crack, PCC 1056, painted to honor Kansas City, arrived back at Muni Metro East this afternoon, totally rebuilt by Brookville Equipment Company and looking mighty good.
Because of the damage to the bolster under the car, the 1056 was the first car to be sent to Brookville under the current contract to completely rebuild the 16 PCCs that opened the F-line in 1995. After unloading from the low-ride trailer owned by expert streetcar mover Silk Road Transport, Muni maintenance worker Kevin Sheridan, a third generation San Francisco streetcar worker, took the controls and smoothly ran the car around the yard to a service bay inside the maintenance facility, under its own power. (Kevin’s dad Mike, retired from Muni, is one of Market Street Railway’s key volunteers, working on archival photos.)
The car will have numbers and decals applied, receive a farebox and radio, and then enter 1000 miles of testing before carrying passengers.
No sooner had the 1056 cleared the unloading track than Muni workers loaded up PCC 1055 (below) now on its way to Brookville, where it joins 1051, 1060, 1059. and 1062, in various stages of restoration. The 1051 is the next one expected back.
We’ll have the inside story of the car’s rebirth and a full update on the Brookville contract in the next issue of our exclusive member newsletter, Inside Track, due out in early September. Join Market Street Railway today so you don’t miss it.
Note the classy tractor–Peterbilt trucks were first made in Oakland, and share some ancestry with Twin Coach, which built some of Muni’s trolley buses.
Are cars 1050 and 1051 going to retain their Muni wings livery, now that we have actual Muni cars (1006,’08 and ’40) with that scheme? Will 1059 return with its proper shade of orange, as an earlier MSR article once suggested? If No on the first two, what liveries will ’50 and ’51 possibly wear?
The Kenosha PCC line has a car with a Pittsburgh tribute livery, but I don’t think BC Electric (Vancouver BC) has been covered. Then there’s the light green-dark green LAMTA (1958 version) applied to many LA PCCs and one ex-PE interurban car. It would probably be more trouble than it’s worth, but a car in the Pittsburgh “Mod Desire” paint job would certainly by eye-catching. Montreal Tramways had some PCCs, but as I recall, their color scheme was rather bland.
1051 is slated to retain its Muni simplified livery, because no actual Muni car wears that. The 1051 has already been partly painted anyway. 1050 will be repainted when it goes in, because as you point out, there are already three “Wings” cars. We do want to see both Pittsburgh and St. Louis represented, as they are the two largest PCC operators not included in the Muni fleet. (They were excluded at the time because we had actual cars from both cities, but the two Pittsburgh in-house rebuilds are so non-standard with the forced ventilation and sealed windows that they’re not being considered for restoration, nor, at least in the short run, are any of the remaining ex-St. Louis Public Service cars (the Muni 1100 class) in storage at Marin Street.) 1059 will get the proper shade of orange. To davistrain’s comment below, it is unlikely that we would paint another car in LA colors, already having three. BC Electric would certainly be a possibility if we had an extra car laying around without a livery on it. 🙂
I have not gotten my copy that was said to be released in late September. Has it been mailed out ? Or is it running late? Please let me know.
Thank You!