Meanwhile in St. Louis...

David Wilkins Writes....

I spent Saturday at the Museum of Transportation helping with the ongoing restoration of St. Louis Public Service PCC Streetcar #1743. This car is a 1946 product of the St. Louis Car Company, and in 1958 was sold to MUNI in San Francisco. It lasted in service there until the early 1980s, when it was loaned to the group operating East Troy at the time. Later, it came to MOT, where it was on display, until a restoration began. The car has been an on again, off again project for a number of years, but has picked up full steam in the past 2 years.

Right now, we are at the point where we are reassembling the car's interior after it was stripped out. Work on the exterior is mainly complete, with work focusing on the front, including the distinctive "brow" sunshade that distinguished the SLPS cars.

Here we see one of the window guards that we've test fitted to the car. MUNI removed these, and we've reworked a set we took from a scrapped SLPS 1600 series car.

Of note, the former SLPS cars that were stored in St. Charles County have been scrapped. The developer that bought them went into bankruptcy, and the bankruptcy estate scrapped them. Before the cars were cut up, we were able to get a lot of spare parts, including this, the line switch cover, which was missing from our car. As you can see, when the car was in SLPS service, it had the car number painted on it, which survived through all the years at MUNI into today.

Also, I noticed we have a new graffiti removal product in the shop. I wouldn't use it though, after all isn't SoyGreen made from people?