The next car to arrive from Trolleyville will probably be one we haven't even announced yet. IRM has acquired another car from that collection. PCC #352 was built for Twin City Rapid Transit of Minneapolis-St. Paul in 1947. When that system was abandoned in 1953 the car then went to Shaker as #63, and then to GCRTA. It was then preserved by Trolleyville. Frank Sirinek organized the fund raising for this one, which is said to be in very good condition and should be operable. Follow this link for a picture of it at Trolleyville, and this link for a good picture (of a car at the Minnesota Streetcar Museum) of what the TCRT paint scheme will look like. Pretty sharp!
Update: Tom Hunter sent me several photos of the car at MSM which he took last spring.
Thanks, Tom!
14 comments:
Another PCC! Awesome!
Randy
I presume this to be one of the RTA PCCs' , the 63,71 or 76 ?
Weren't these supposed to go to Electric City in Scrantion ? Did part of the deal fall through ?
John C
Okay, never mind,, boy genius figured it out,, upon closer inspection I can see it's RTA 63 !
JC
Now that is good news... I may have to switch departments soon!
Tom Hunter
Tom: Sure, the door is always open.
Seriously, I suspect the museum needs you much more where you already are!
John: Good point, I added the current number to the original post.
I believe Electric City decided that a single-ended car was of little use, since there are no turning facilities. But that's just speculation.
A close up pic of 63 at Trollyville (LSER?) is at:
http://transit.nerail.org/s/?p=143569
Nice addition to IRM - especially in Twin Cities colors. How does this fit into the other PCC streetcars in the collection?
Bob
I understand that Electric City bought the 3 Shaker PCC's for resale, and did not intend to bring any of them to Scranton.
Question: Can you ID the box motor in the Trolleyville photo? Is that the one that's supposedly going to Pa. Trolley Museum to be dismantled for parts?
A commenter wanted to know how the TCRT car fits into the PCC collection at IRM. Let me take a stab:
The car is a fairly "standard" post-war St. Louis Car Co. car, with standee windows. The only deviation from the standard post-war carbody is that the TCRT cars are wider, but several cities, including Los Angeles ordered the wide body post war PCCs. The other PCCs in the collection at IRM are a pre-war Chicago car, a post-war Chicago car (both with the Chicago-only configurations), a post-war Kansas City Car (with the Kansas City-only lack of standee windows), and a Cleveland PCC car, which is a good example of a Pullman-built PCC. Thus, in my mind, the TCRT car is not duplicated.
This PCC was intended to be scrapped to salvage trucks and motors. Since it was a running car in decent shape a last minute deal was worked out to try and preserve it, and get another operable streetcar for IRM in the process. It was a win-win situation for all involved.
Mr. Mitchell: No, the one in the picture is the single trucker #1, which is going to Warehouse Point, we're told. #100 is the one to be scrapped.
Are we going to restore the Twin City PCC with that freaking huge trolley wheel? Do we have one on hand?
We actually do have one of those oversized TCRT trolley wheels on hand; no idea whether it might be used (or used as a pattern) for the new car.
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