I am an American living in Bucharest, Romania and am interested in creating a city-scene layout (either in HO or N scale) featuring a European tram system.
Currently, I am in the early planning stages (way early!) and conducting research. To date, finding a manufacturer of trams, trolleys, and/or streetcars–in the aforementioned scales–has been very difficult.
Can anyone help?!
This is a Bowser PCC car. It’s an American prototype, and they started making them in the 1930’s. The design was borrowed and used even more heavily in Europe. Many of these trolleys are still in use today, so they may actually be a pretty good fit for what you’re planning to model. (See http://www.tmny.org/tmnyglossary.html for some other reference info on these, or Google up PCC Trolley for even more.)
In the US, many cities used these extensively. They were used both above and below ground in the Boston system, among others. Many of them fell into disrepair, but the San Francisco transit system rescued them from scrap heaps around the country, restored them and now they run them as part of the “living museum” that is their street railway system. About a year ago, some clothing manufacturer featured a pair of these cars along the San Francisco waterfront in a TV ad.
The Bowser models come as unpainted kits. They are almost completely assembled, though, so it takes only 5 or 10 minutes to have them on the track. There’s lots of room inside, so adding a decoder was a piece of cake. I added a single “Cyclops” headlight and a pair of rear LEDs to mine, too.
MisterBeasley:
Thanks for the info!!!
Streetcars in the United States were adopted more quickly and thoroughly than in Europe, but they were overtaken by the automobile and most transit systems died a slow death between the 1930s and the 1950s. San Francisco isn’t the only city with a historic trolley line, they’re just a well-known one. In the 1980s, some US cities started producing what was known as “light rai;”, basically a modernized trolley, to ease traffic congestion and provide a transit alternative.
There are plenty of European model trams around, as there are plenty of European trams. In Europe, due to higher population densities and fewer suburbs and much more expensive gasoline, trolleys took longer to take hold but are still in common use. Some of the San Francisco trolleys are former Peter Witt cars built in Ohio but used in Milan, Italy from the 1920s until a few years back when they were replaced by more modern cars.
Trolleys are braced for a renaissance in the United States, as market forces and environmental concerns move us away from suburban sprawl and auto-centric cities. There are even companies that specialize in refurbishing old trams and building replicas of old style streetcars.
www.trolleyville.com and www.customtraxx.com are informative sites for the trolley modeler. Carl Arendt’s mini layouts page at www.carendt.com includes many neat ideas for small trolley/tram layouts as well as those powered by more traditional methods.
Here is a comprehensive search engine at a British Columbia store for available European manufacturers, including traction called, Euro Rail Hobbies…
http://www.eurorailhobbies.com/ERH/contactus.asp
Here’s a handful of N & HO traction “how to get started” and references…
NCat => http://www.teamsavage.com/ncat/ncat.html
Trolleyville => http://trolleyville.com/trolleyville.shtml
East Penn Traction => http://www.eastpenn.org/
Interurban’s Trolley Forum => http://2guyzandsumtrains.com/Forums/viewforum/f=8.html
Interurban’s Street Trackage => http://www.the-gauge.com/showthread.php?t=12348&page=1&pp=15
Jason’s Brass Poles => http://users.adelphia.net/~bweisman/
Japan Rail Modelers => http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/
Japanese Model Supplies => http://japanese-model-supplies.com/
Don’t forget to check out “Yahoo Groups” for their N & HO forum groups with quite a few targeting traction modeling.
Up until recently, Pittsburgh ¶ had a few PCC cars still in service, until recently. The last 4 (I think there were 4 left) have all been preserved. They were replaced by newer cars a few years ago. When the PCCs were still running, they were all over town, including the ‘subway’ portion downtown. That brings up a funny point–people call the entire system, even though most of it is above ground 
Anyway, at least one of the PCC cars is at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (http://www.pa-trolley.org/). Photos of some of the other cars are on that site as well.
Bachmann once sold an older style trolley, as well as a PCC-style car. Walthers has NYC subway cars, and once sold a Metro (Washington, DC) subway set.
Here are some adresses who’s making streetcars/trams (H0 scale) on european prototypes.
Lima also build trams but they are hard to find these days.
probably you will find some on ePAY.
kon
Kato make a Düwag single-truck car and trailer in a number of European liveries. I have a small fleet of these cars, they are quite lovely models. I also have a couple of the Linie8 Frieburg single-truckers. They are also excellent models, they run superbly and are very detailed.
As far as I know, the ROCO Düwag articulated cars are not currently in production, which is a pity - they are also good models. Are you intending to model a modern tramway, or an older system?
Cheers,
Mark.
Well, not really. Most European PCC cars had bodies quite different in appearance to the US cars. Probably the closest were the early prototypes that ran on the Vicinal lines in Belgium, and in the Hague in the Netherlands. To model either accurately would mean extensive modifications to the body of the Bowser kit. Another option would be the ex-Washington cars that went to Sarajevo in Yugoslavia and Barcelona in Spain, bu these too have an earlier body style to the Bowser kit.
Cheers,
Mark.
I would like to thank everyone who has responded thus far … the information obtained is quickly becoming valuable.
Mark:
My intention is to model an older tram system using 1920’s Bucharest as the prototype. Here is a link to RATB’s web site showing historical photos: http://www.ratb.ro/eng/index1.php.
If it is too difficult to find trams of that era, then I may chose to depict the modern era; maybe I can find a manufacturer who produces trams similar to the ones used by RATB today.
Needless to say, I also plan on taking as many pictures as possible of the existing tram system to use as reference material.
Thanks!
I’m not too familiar with Bucharest - don’t they run Tatras, amongst others? I’m sure that there is a European manufacturer producing models of these cars.
Can I suggest a couple of Yahoo groups that will probably be of use to you?
Both these groups are geared towards tramway modelling, and are very useful.
A prototype group, but many of the members are resident in Europe, and all are very knowledgeable.
Although I’m mainly interested in modelling Japanese trams and interurbans, I’m happy to help you any way I can with your project. We trammies gotta stick together!
All the best,
Mark.