Shaker Heights Rapid Transit 63
An Illustrated History

by Frank Hicks

The suburban electric railway built from Cleveland, Ohio, to the planned community of Shaker Heights has a history that can be generally divided into thirds. For the first 23 years of the line’s existence, it operated as the Cleveland Interurban Railroad (CIRR), a component of the Van Sweringen empire. For the next 31 years, from 1944 until 1975, the line was known as Shaker Heights Rapid Transit (SHRT), a name that is often used to describe the line itself regardless of era. Since 1975, the line has been operated by the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA).

These three eras also roughly correspond to distinctly different fleets of equipment that the system used. From the line’s inception until the late 1940s, most service was provided by secondhand Cleveland center-entrance cars (like car 18, preserved at IRM), with support from a handful of secondhand lightweight interurbans (like car 306, also preserved at IRM). In the late 1940s, though, as SHRT modernized, the line entered its PCC era. This roughly 35-year period would see the line celebrated as one of the few operators of PCCs remaining in the United States.

Given that the SHRT PCC fleet lasted into the 1980s, surprisingly few examples remain. There are eight or nine Shaker Heights PCCs still in existence (plus a handful acquired in the late 1970s that only operated for GCRTA for a few years, a group that includes the restored car in Minneapolis). Only three of the eight are well maintained; and only one has operated in preservation. That lone operational car is Shaker Heights Rapid Transit 63, preserved at the Illinois Railway Museum.

Headline image: It’s 1953 and car 63 is in front of Snelling Shops in Minneapolis. Twin City Rapid Transit’s Superintendent of Power and Equipment, Frank S. Morgan, stands in front of the car following its rebuilding as a multiple-unit car and repainting in Shaker Heights yellow. Minnesota Streetcar Museum.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Aaron Isaacs, Steve Heister, Norm Krentel, Jeannie Lahickey, and Art Peterson for providing photos for this article, and to Aaron Isaacs and Bill Wall for providing information on car 63’s history.

Part I: Twin City Rapid Transit’s PCCs

The story of the development of the PCC car is well known and will not be repeated. Suffice to say that a street railway industry consortium called the Electric Railway Presidents’ Conference Committee spent several years in the early and mid-1930s developing a standardized, modern, streamlined streetcar, and the first of these so-called PCC cars, or PCCs, rolled off the production lines in 1936. By the time America entered WWII, there were nearly 2,000 PCC cars in service in cities across North America.

St. Louis Public Service ordered 100 PCC cars in 1941 that were radically different from the other cars in operation. They used no compressed air at all but used dynamic braking and electrically activated drum brakes. They also had small “standee windows,” smaller side windows that provided a window for each seat and angled front windows to reduce glare. These changes, and others, would be incorporated into a new standard PCC design developed during WWII. This “1945 model,” colloquially known as the postwar style, would be purchased in even greater numbers than the prewar cars.

One city that needed PCCs more than perhaps any other was actually two cities: Minneapolis and St. Paul. Twin City Rapid Transit (TCRT), the street railway system that operated an extensive network in Minneapolis and St. Paul, did not own a single steel-bodied streetcar in 1944. Its sizable fleet consisted almost entirely of all-wood cars built in the company shops before World War I, with a handful of lightweight cars sheathed in Masonite that dated to the 1920s. TCRT management planned to rationalize its operations after the war, using PCCs to modernize its most heavily used lines while less popular routes were converted to bus operation. At the end of 1944, it ordered 40 PCC cars – still built to the prewar standard with air brakes – but this order was delayed. While TCRT waited, it was able to obtain a single car as a testbed. The car was a hit with TCRT’s riders.

TCRT car 352, which would later become Shaker Heights 63, is eastbound on 4th Street at Wabasha in downtown St. Paul. The Grand-Mississippi route was modernized with PCC cars when the second order for postwar cars arrived in mid-1947. Minnesota Streetcar Museum.

When the war ended, TCRT’s order could be built. The benefit was that this delay meant the new cars for TCRT would be all-electric cars built to the 1945 design. The 40 cars in the initial order, numbered 300-339, arrived in the Twin Cities between December 1946 and January 1947. TCRT ordered another 100 cars in two other batches: cars 340-389 were ordered in August 1945 and arrived between August and October 1947 while cars 390-439 were ordered in October 1947 and arrived between May and July 1949.

The new TCRT PCCs were built to the PCC standard design with very few customizations. They were 9 feet wide (six inches wider than many cities’ PCC cars), 46 feet 5 inches long, weighed 37,990 pounds, and seated 54 people. They were painted identically to the street railway company’s older cars, overall golden yellow with olive green roof, skirts, and striping. The cars had flat-panel folding doors, rather than more complex “blinker” doors, and were fitted with General Electric 1220E1 motors and GE 17KM12N2 commutator-style controllers. The cars had 2+1 seating, with single seats on the right side of the car, forward of the center doors and 2+2 seating behind the center doors. The first order for 40 cars had a conductor’s station on the left side of the car near the center doors, but it’s thought that the second and third orders lacked this and were set up for single-man operation, which was more typical for PCC cars in most cities.

The first order for 40 PCC cars was assigned to the Interurban route that ran along University Avenue between Minneapolis and St. Paul. When the second order for PCCs arrived in mid-1947, PCCs were also assigned to the Bryant-Johnson and Glenwood-4th lines in Minneapolis and to the Grand-Mississippi and Hamline-Cherokee lines in St. Paul. The arrival of the final PCC order in 1949 added PCC cars to the Grand-Monroe, Bloomington-Columbia Heights, Nicollet-2nd Street NE, all of which were in Minneapolis. Later, in 1952, the Como-Harriet and Oak-Harriet lines acquired PCC cars as ridership declined system-wide.

TCRT car 357, sister car to 352, is outbound on the Oak-Harriet route at 42nd Street in St. Paul with picturesque Lake Harriet in the background. This bucolic section of track is still in  use today as the Como-Harriet Line of the Minnesota Streetcar Museum. Henry M. Stange Photo, Krambles-Peterson Archive. 

Lines were switched over to PCC operation in their entirety to avoid mixing PCC and older, much slower cars, which would have negated much of the speed advantages of the new cars. TCRT also assigned the new PCC cars only to lines that operated out of certain carbarns. All the company’s PCCs were assigned to routes out of Snelling, Nicollet, or East Side. This helped minimize crew and maintenance staff training requirements as well as reduce parts inventories.

The PCC cars were successful in that they reduced costs, sped up schedules, and helped stave off the inevitable declines in ridership that came with the end of WWII, but they weren’t enough. In 1949, there was a hostile takeover of TCRT’s management by stockholders and the new managers decreed that the entire system would convert to bus operation by 1958. That wasn’t good enough for all the stockholders: management changed again in early 1950, and the new TCRT president (who, by the way, would end up going to Federal prison in 1960 for conspiracy, mail fraud, and other crimes) elected to scrap the streetcar system as quickly as possible. Many of the company’s PCC cars were only months old, but already their fate was sealed.

Car 352 is inbound, leaving private right-of-way and about to proceed onto 31st Street in Minneapolis on a stereotypical Minnesota winter day. This trackage was used by the Oak-Harriet and Como-Harriet lines but the car is signed “Loop,” which indicates that it is terminating in downtown Minneapolis. Minnesota Streetcar Museum.

As the TCRT system constricted the company began an energetic program of finding buyers for its nearly new PCC cars. The first group of cars sold were the first 20 cars from TCRT’s second order. Cars 340-359 were sold in January 1953 to Shaker Heights Rapid Transit, the suburban line out of Cleveland that had purchased 25 new PCC cars from Pullman-Standard in 1947 and was now looking to replace the last of its old lightweight interurban cars. All 20 cars were repainted at TCRT’s Snelling Shops in SHRT yellow with green pin-striping. Cars 340-344 were shipped to Cleveland largely unmodified, numbered SHRT 51-55, but cars 345-359 were rebuilt by TCRT shop forces. They were provided with automatic couplers and high-voltage jumper sockets at both ends and rewired for multiple-unit (MU) operation. These cars, as SHRT 56-70, went to Cleveland in mid-1953.

The rest of the TCRT PCC fleet got sold off, too. Public Service Coordinated Transport in Newark, New Jersey, purchased 30 cars in March 1953, and cars 320-339, 360-364, and 415-419 were shipped to New Jersey still in TCRT colors. The remaining 91 cars, including the 1945 air-electric demonstrator, were sold to Mexico City in August 1953. Snelling Shops refurbished and repainted these cars before sending them to Mexico. The last streetcar ran in Minneapolis in June 1954, less than five years after deliveries of new PCC cars had ended.

Part II: Shaker Heights Rapid Transit’s PCCs

When the 20 ex-TCRT cars arrived in Cleveland to enter service on the Shaker Heights line, they joined an eclectic fleet. The newest cars were the 25 Pullman cars built in 1947-1948, which – unlike the TCRT cars – differed significantly from the standard PCC design. Besides their MU capability, they were nearly 4 feet longer than a standard PCC and were also fitted with left-side doors, though SHRT didn’t end up using those. Even so, they were electrically compatible with the MU-capable ex-TCRT cars, and the two PCC fleets were operated largely intermixed. SHRT also ran a collection of ex-Fox River Electric lightweight interurbans, all of which were retired when the TCRT cars arrived, and MU-capable ex-Cleveland Railway center-entrance cars, most of which were retired. It wasn’t until 1960, when SHRT purchased 10 more PCC cars from St. Louis Public Service (SLPS), that the last of the old cars were retired and the system was an all-PCC operation.

Car 63 is on the point of a three-car MU train of ex-TCRT PCC cars in November 1962. The train is westbound at East 55th Street. Note the left-hand running, low-level center platform for Shaker Heights cars, and outside high-level platforms for the Cleveland Transit System trains that used this same track. Only the first and third PCCs have their poles up, with the center car being powered via 600V bus jumpers. J.W. Vigrass Photo, Krambles-Peterson Archive.

For their first two decades, the ex-TCRT cars were largely unmodified. One exception was that in the mid-1960s, the 2+1 seating forward of the center doors was changed. The single seats on the right side of the cars were replaced by double seats salvaged from retired Cleveland trolley buses, increasing the cars’ seating capacity. The cars kept their overall yellow livery, but on many cars the triple green pinstripes at the belt rail were replaced by green/orange/green stripes or a single wider green stripe.

By the early 1970s, the SHRT fleet was starting to show its age. The Pullman-Standard cars seemed to have more deterioration issues while the ex-SLPS cars were mechanically troublesome, making the ex-TCRT cars the best cars in service. In 1974 and 1975, SHRT embarked on a program to rehabilitate the 20 ex-TCRT cars. The first, car 51, was outshopped in December 1974 in an entirely new livery of overall orange with an ivory belt rail and maroon pinstriping. The other 19 cars followed over the next year or so and the Pullman-Standard cars were rehabilitated in 1976.

Car 63 is at Lynnfield, the second-to-last stop on the Van Aken line, running solo as a local car sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Minnesota Streetcar Museum.

The date is December 30, 1963, and IRM volunteers Norm Krentel and John Horachek are paying a visit to the Shaker Heights operation. Car 63, trailed by 67, is inbound at Lee Road on the Shaker Boulevard line running as a Terminal Local. Both cars have recently been repainted in their second SHRT livery, traditional yellow but with a single wider green stripe replacing the triple green pinstripes. Norman Krentel Photo.

During this period, the city of Shaker Heights was struggling to maintain the suburban railway to Cleveland that it owned. For its part, the city of Cleveland was also having trouble funding its own transit network, Cleveland Transit System (CTS). The solution lay in accessing Federal grant money, but that stipulated the creation of a regional transit authority. As such, in July 1975, the citizens of Cuyahoga County voted to approve the creation of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA). The new authority took over operations of both CTS and SHRT on October 5, 1975.

The Shaker Heights line saw an immediate ridership surge of more than 25% due to newly combined fares with CTS buses and rapid transit. Experiencing a car shortage, GCRTA rented two ex-Illinois Terminal PCC cars from museums in late 1975 and in 1979 the line bought nine PCC cars from Toronto that had originally been built for Cleveland city car service.

For whatever reason, there are a lot of photos of car 63 running in the snow. The car is shown here on March 4, 1978, in the brilliant orange livery it acquired in 1975, including the RTA sticker on the car side. C.W. Lahickey Photo.

The ex-TCRT fleet soldiered on through these upheavals, though not without changes. When the GCRTA took over in 1975, the newly rebuilt orange PCCs acquired large RTA stickers on their flanks. Cars 59 and 65 were destroyed in a head-on collision in 1977 and were replaced by ex-Newark cars 3 and 27, which retained their Newark numbers. Also in 1977, the ex-TCRT cars went through a minor rebuild that included restoration of rear-end marker lights that had been blanked over when the cars were purchased by SHRT and new doors with one-piece, full-height Lexan windows. A short time later, a “gumball” rotating beacon was added on the roof over the motorman’s head. The cars kept their orange livery through these changes.

That same year, 1977, GCRTA placed an order with Breda of Italy for 48 modern, articulated light rail vehicles (LRVs) that would replace the entire PCC fleet. The first LRV arrived in October 1979. Mechanical issues and needed right-of-way work delayed final acceptance of most of the LRV fleet until 1982, and in the interim, the PCCs were on borrowed time. The ex-TCRT cars, though, were still the best of the PCC fleet and were considered for possible retention as backup cars. In 1980 and 1981, all 20 ex-TCRT cars were painted in the new RTA livery of overall white with a grey roof and wide red and orange stripes below the windows. Around the same time, 18 of the cars (ex-Newark cars 3 and 27 were excluded) had a pantograph mounted over the front truck. The line’s overhead wire was being rebuilt for the pantographs of the new Breda LRVs, and this modification allowed the ex-TCRT cars to operate either with their original trolley poles or with their new pantographs.

The RTA’s new Central Rail shop facility opened in 1984. In May of that year, the three generations of Shaker Heights rolling stock – represented by historically preserved center-entrance car 12, PCC 63, and LRV 840 – were posed for photographers. Car 63 sports RTA colors and has its pantograph up. Willis A. McCaleb Photo, Krambles-Peterson Archive.

As the Breda LRVs entered service over the course of 1982, the PCCs were taken out of service. The Pullman-Standard cars and ex-SLPS cars were all out of service by June of that year. The ex-TCRT cars continued in operation a few more months until the last LRVs were in service, but the PCCs all were retired by the end of 1982. They were retained in operational condition in storage, however, and a few ex-TCRT PCC cars including at least cars 54 and 70 were put back into limited service around Christmas in 1984 and 1985.

Part III: Car 63

One of the cars in the ex-TCRT fleet was car 63, which had been built as car 352, part of TCRT’s second order for PCC cars that was delivered in mid-1947. Car 63 was rebuilt for MU operation at Snelling Shops in 1953 and shipped to SHRT, where it led a career largely similar to the other 14 ex-TCRT MU-capable cars. In 1985, though, it was selected by GCRTA out of the lineup of stored PCC cars and sent to Trolleyville, U.S.A. on long-term lease. Trolleyville was a privately owned trolley museum that operated through a trailer park in North Olmsted, in the Cleveland suburbs. At this time the museum’s founder, Gerald Brookins, had recently died, and the collection was going through some changes (including the sale of ex-SHRT car 306 to IRM).

Car 63, in its GCRTA colors but apparently without its modern (and, to the GCRTA, useful) pantograph, was shipped to North Olmsted. It entered service at Trolleyville, though it doesn’t seem to have been used very frequently. It was generally stored outside, so over time the car started to experience rust issues, and its Lexan windows fogged up badly, making it impossible for riders to see out the windows. It was joined in the late 1980s by two Pullman-Standard PCC cars from the SHRT fleet, but it’s thought that unlike car 63, those cars never ran at Trolleyville.

Car 63 is shown stored in the warehouse on the Cleveland waterfront in March 2009. It's accompanied by other Shaker Heights cars including PCC 71 to the left and car 304 to the right. Steve Heister Photo.

Then, in 2001, the Brookins family sold the trailer park, and the museum collection was given five years to leave the premises. After a few years of little activity, an organization called Lake Shore Electric Railway Museum (LSERM) was formed with the goal of working with the City of Cleveland to construct a lakefront trolley museum that would house the collection of cars. In 2006, the Trolleyville collection – car 63 included – was moved to a warehouse located in downtown Cleveland, along the lakefront adjacent to the football stadium. Except for a handful of interurban cars stored on GCRTA tracks, the collection of cars was stored in the warehouse for more than three years while LSERM attempted to gain enough political support to fund the envisioned trolley museum.

The political support – or at least, the government money – never appeared. When the recession of 2008 hit, funding was scarcer than ever, and in 2009 LSERM called it quits. Instead of the collection being put up for auction, a consortium of trolley museums was assembled, and cars were sold to interested museums depending on available funding and interest. The money thus collected went to the Brookins family to repay the costs of moving the collection from North Olmsted to Cleveland in 2006.

Car 63 arrived at IRM on the afternoon of November 16, 2009. It is shown here about to turn off Olson Road and enter the museum’s property. Randy Hicks Photo.

With an impressive collection of restored interurbans and historic streetcars available, the three SHRT PCCs found no takers. Bill Wall of the Shore Line Trolley Museum, who was coordinating the consortium effort, did not receive any bids at all on car 63. Initially, the plan was for the three Shaker Heights PCCs to all be scrapped, with their in-demand wide-tread PCC wheels distributed to various railway museums. But during a multi-museum parts distribution session in Cleveland in November, Bill spoke with IRM volunteer Frank Sirinek about sending car 63 to IRM for preservation instead. Frank spoke with other Electric Car Department volunteers who were on site, then the museum’s Board of Directors was contacted to gain approval, and by the end of the day the car belonged to IRM. Just a few days later, on November 16, 2009, car 63 was trucked from the Cleveland lakefront to Union, IL.

When it arrived at IRM (photos here), car 63 was largely complete but in tired condition. It was tarped and stored outside but IRM members set about improving the car’s condition. The entire car’s worth of hopelessly fogged Lexan windows was replaced; two Chicago PCC ‘L’ cars had just been scrapped by the East Troy Electric Railroad and IRM had been invited to salvage parts, providing a source for good windows for car 63. The car’s interior was also spruced up. In October 2012, IRM volunteers went through the car’s control system and made some repairs, but the car was still subject to outdoor storage under a tarp.

After car 63 arrived at IRM, its interior was tidied up by IRM volunteers. The good condition of the interior is evident in this picture, taken on October 4, 2015, after the car’s lights were made operational. Photo by the author.

Car 63 ran for the first time at IRM in the fall of 2015. Here, it is appropriately signed “test run” as it proceeds gingerly through Yard 7. Photo by the author.

The car was finally moved inside in late 2015, after construction of Barns 13 and 14 permitted additional electric cars to be put into indoor storage. At this point, a pole was mounted on the car and after some additional electrical work, it was made operational. Unfortunately, in 2016 the car’s motor-generator (MG) set failed, and it was relegated to static display in Barn 7. There it has remained since. In 2023, though, a rebuilt MG set was acquired and allocated to car 63, and the decision was made to repaint the car in late-1970s colors. With enough funding and volunteer time, car 63 is expected to emerge freshly painted and operational from the shop at IRM sometime in the coming years.

Addendum: How IRM Got Car 63
by Bill Wall

With the exception of Shaker car 18, everything at the Lake Shore Electric Railway Museum (Trolleyville) had to go. Certain cars were really wanted by certain museums. Lake Shore was not donating anything to anyone except car 18. I mapped out what was available and sketched out where things could go. Money played a role in that, but so did something else. That was what to do with the orphan cars, the ones not selected to go anywhere. So, in some cases, museums agreed to take an orphan or two in exchange for getting something they really wanted.  Cars got bundled, all agreed to by the respective involved museums.

There were three cars that were destined for salvage of their compromise wheel PCC trucks: Shaker Heights 63, 71, and 76, which were assigned to Electric City Trolley Museum (ECTM). They were to be moved to Northern Ohio Railway Museum (NORM) and parted out there.  A deal within the deal was that one set of those trucks was to go to the Western Railway Museum and two sets to ECTM.

While on the pier in Cleveland during the great parts divide, a few deals got struck with different cars after the consortium won the bid. First, a deal was struck for Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) Dallas car 3334 to go to McKinney Avenue. A few phone calls and it was done, including storage at IRM. Nearby was car 63 and, feeling sorry for it, I steered Frank Sirinek over to it and mentioned how it would make a great "beater" car on the IRM loop line (having it as a car to beat up on instead of a Chicago streetcar), how it could show a little more Shaker Heights, and so on. Frank got into it, phone calls were made, a voice phone vote taken, and IRM was now getting car 63. It took about an hour from start to finish. ECTM was more than glad to see the car saved (they had taken it as their orphan car) and so it was a done deal. On November 16, 2009, 63 left the pier in Cleveland on board a Silk Road trailer and headed to IRM.

Car 63 Specifications

Builder: St. Louis Car Company (order #1660)

Year Built: 1947

Cost New: $20,000

Length: 46’5”

Width: 9’0”

Height: 10’2”

Weight: 39,400 lbs.

Seats: 60 (originally 54)

Doors: Outward folding

Trucks: Clark B2

Wheels: 26” super-resilient

Motors: 4 x GE 1220E1

Motor Controller: GE 17KM12N2

Master Controller: GE 17KC64A1

Backup Controller: GE 17KC30J1

Line Breaker: GE DB998B3

Brakes: GE Electric

Drum Brake Actuator: GE 17MK16F1

Couplers: OB

Trolley Catcher: Earll

Bibliography

Carlson, Stephen P., and Fred W. Schneider III. PCC: The Car That Fought Back (Interurbans Special 64). Glendale: Interurban Press, 1980.

Isaacs, Aaron. “The PCC Cars.” Twin City Lines Vol. 18, No. 1 (Winter 2024): 1-24. 

Schneider III, Fred W., and Stephen P. Carlson. PCC From Coast to Coast (Interurbans Special 86). Glendale: Interurban Press, 1983.

Toman, James. The Shaker Heights Rapid Transit (Interurbans Special 115). Glendale: Interurban Press, 1990.

Toman, James A., and Blaine S. Hays. Cleveland’s Transit Vehicles: Equipment and Technology. Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1996.

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