This photo just in from DF Baker in our Market Street Railway Facebook group shows the latest restored PCC from Brookville Equipment Company headed back to San Francisco. It’s Car 1062, freshly repainted to honor Pittsburgh Railways Company. (The PRC logo will be applied after it gets to San Francisco.
The photo was taken at a truck stop Mill City, Nevada, between Winnemucca and Reno. The car could arrive in San Francisco Sunday. Once it’s unloaded, Car 1053 will be pulled onto the trailer for its turn at restoration in Brookville. Muni shop workers will check out the 1062 and then it will run 1,000 miles without passengers in a “burn-in” period like the other cars that have already arrived from Brookville.
I often wonder what people think when they see one of these old cars, shining brand new, sitting on a truck in the middle of nowhere, heading to the Coast. Of course they travel the highways, not the old town main routes of yore, but I can just imagine a couple of old men, habitues of the barber shop sidewalk, looking up.
“Here come’s another one.”
“Must be heading to the shop, kinda worn out lookin”
“Yep.”
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“Here come’s another one.”
“Must be headin’ back to Frisco, all new like that.”
“Yep.”
“You know what, with all that computer money, you’d think they’d buy new stuff”.
“Old stuff’s built better”
“I s’pose”
“Yep.”
When I volunteered at Illinois Railway Museum, there was a story about a motorist driving toward our main line. When he saw our big steam locomotive, 1630, heading for the crossing, he thought it was a ghost and drove into the adjacent cornfield. When I think of these like-new PCCs driving down the Interstate, especially if looking like they are self-propelled, I wonder if they haven’t caused an accident or two!
I’m looking forward to the day that Orange Empire gets the track and wire finished to the Perris depot. Imagine drivers on State Highway 74 (which runs from Perris to Elsinore) seeing the gates come down and a 72-foot long Pacific Electric interurban car go rumbling across the highway with its air whistle sounding, or our steam locomotive comes steaming through with a train of vintage passenger cars.