PCC No. 1071, painted to honor Minneapolis-St. Paul, testing recently on West Portal Avenue.
Yellow isn’t traditionally thought of as a year-end holiday color, but that Twin City Rapid Transit livery still makes for nice “gift wrap” for PCC No. 1071, which (fingers crossed) entered revenue service for good today. It has been here more than a year after having been completely rewired at Brookville Equipment Company in Pennsylvania, but as we’ve reported in our member newsletter, Inside Track, getting the new door controls to operate reliably has been a vexing problem, and a variety of other glitches has cropped up over time. The car entered F-line passenger service earlier this year on a trial basis, but was soon pulled off the street as unreliable.
Now, though, with more than 3,000 test miles on No. 1071, the Muni engineer and project manager have accepted No. 1071, and it has been carrying passengers on the F-line today. Other cars in this class currently being tested, and which soon may join the active F-line fleet, include Nos. 1074 (Toronto), 1078 (San Diego), 1079 (Detroit), and 1080 (LA Transit Lines). As these streetcars start carrying passengers, additional rewired cars already back in San Francisco will start the testing process, including Nos. 1070 (Newark), 1072 (Mexico City), 1073 (El Paso-Juarez) and 1040 (an original Muni streetcar, painted in the 1950s “Wings” livery). For the current status of all 16 streetcars in this rebuilding contract (and all the others as well), click here.
The delay in getting these streetcars into service is a major reason we’ve seen so many buses on the F-line of late. Service had been increased to run every five minutes in September on the premise that these streetcars would be ready then. So they’re needed just as soon as they’re ready.
We celebrate the “present” that 1071 represents for the F-line fleet, and really hope all the bugs are worked out of it and the other streetcars in this group now, so that there won’t be any need to take it to the “return counter” after the holidays.
Glad they got it working, nice to see the fleet expanding.
How many streetcars (without buses) are needed to cover the F-Line route? Just on the line at one time, I know extras are needed to cover for maintenance and repairs. But was curious how many would be running at one time.
The maximum number of runs on the F-line at one time is now 24. That represents a five-minute headway. Currently, there are 20 or 21 streetcars available on a given day, thus the buses holding down some runs. Getting the cars currently in testing onto the street carrying passengers should get the buses off the F-line. Opening the E-line will require all of the rest of the cars currently being renovated, plus repair of several additional streetcars now being worked on.
Do the doors still bang shut, or has that been fixed?