I quibble about Philly and San Francisco, both of which I believe had a few year gap in their PCC service.
Boston, or rather its Mattapan and Asmont suburbs, is the only operation that I’m pretty sure is still PCC.
Chicago Transit Authority 4391 is at the Illinois Railway Museum.
http://www.irm.org/cgi-bin/rsearch.cgi?estreet=Chicago+Transit+Authority=4391
Also Cleveland Transit System 4223.
And CTA converted PCC’s 22, 30, 41, 50, and 6125-26, 6461-62, 6455-56.
S. F. MUNICIPAL RAILWAY #1030 is at he Fox Valley Trolley Museum, along with more CTA conversions.
The Minnesota Streetcar Museum operates a PCC car in TCRT colors at Lake Harriet in Minneapolis along with TCRT car 1300, and Standard TCRT car and 299 a Duluth Standard car.
A complete list of PCC streetcars at IRM include CTA 4391 http://www.irm.org/gallery/CTA4391 CSL 4021 http://www.irm.org/gallery/CSL4021 CTS 4223 http://www.irm.org/gallery/CTS4223 Greater Cleveland RTA (née TCRT) 63 http://www.irm.org/gallery/GCRTA63 Kansas City 755 http://www.irm.org/gallery/KCPS755 NJT (née TCRT) 4 http://www.irm.org/gallery/NJT4 And pre PCC CSL 4001 http://www.irm.org/gallery/CSL4001
YOu are correct. Boston is the only city with continuous PCC service since 1941. However, the lines served changed several times, and the original, Park Street - Watertown, doesn’t exist. SF and Philly had a gap in regular service, but not in servicable cars. Toronto cannot be counted as regular service.
CTA’s rapid transit PCC’s were not rebuilds but trade-ins and the first batch, 6001-6200 were built prior to the beginning of the trade-ins, which covered 6201-6720 and 1-50. CTA would sell PCC streetcars to St. Louis Car Co., who scrapped the cars and salvaged various re-usable parts, primarily trucks and various interior fittings, to be used in the construction of new PCC rapid transit cars.
CRT/CTA’s 5001-5004 articulateds also had PCC control and could train with the 6000 series. Cars 6127-6128, 6129-6130 and 1-4 had various non-PCC control systems but could train with cars with PCC control. Easiest way to distinguish the built-new from the trade-ins were the flat instead of curved doors on 6001-6200, which were known as “Flat Door Sixes”
I was under the (mis)impression that the trade-ins also used some of the body of the PCCs (sides).
The bodies were built new, with windows, cranks, light fixtures, seats re-used. The windows and crank assemblies on the Pullman and St. Louis streetcar PCCs were slightly different, requiring some body modifications as the project was underway. In the run-up to the final design, Pullman tried re-using a St. Louis-built car’s body with new ends and bolsters, but the body construction was too light for rapid transit service. St. Louis Car made the proposal to build new bodies and reuse parts. StLCC’s offer included buying back the streetcars, which is why the majority of them were scrapped in St. Louis.
Hard as it is to believe, the first 120 cars were built with the Conductor’s position outside the cars, with one foothold on each car of the married pair. Needless to say this arrangement didn’t last long, and may not even have made it into passenger-carrying service.
Forgive my dim memory, but I thought I saw a Boston orange line conductor operating door controls from outside between the cars when I visited around 1978. Can anybody confirm or deny it? Of course nobody better try to claim Chicago winters are worse than Boston winters.
IND and IRT cars had conductors outside until the equipment after WWII. Chicago winters ARE more severe than Boston’s having lived several years in both, because of the very strong winter wind off Lake Michigan, much stronger than the wind off the the Atlantic Ocean in Boston. Cape Cod acts as a wind breaker… Chicago, even though south of the Twin Cities, has a more severe winter. Indeed, I would say it is more severe than Montreal. Parts of Long Island have more severe winters than Boston.
The surprising thing wasn’t the idea that conducters should ride outside in Chicago - far from it. Gate cars were still in service in Chicago for several years after 6001-6120 were delivered. What was amazing was the idea that the conductor would ride between the cars with just one foothold and one grab iron on each car of the married pair.
http://www.chicago-l.org/trains/gallery/images/6000/cta6005-06cond.jpg
In the dreadful winter January 1979, passengers rode between cars on the L. I witnessed this several times on the Ravenswood line, since because of the snow, the buses were largely not operating and few were driving, the L lines were horribly overcrowded.
I saw that back in 1975 when My dad, brother and I visited Boston and rode a good bit of the rail transit there. I can’t recall seeing that on the Red or Blue lines but I definitely saw it on the Orange lines. Having a crew member working like that seems so insane.
Wonder if the got ‘hazardous duty’ pay for working ‘outside’?
Onllly possiblew when the trucks are near the ends of the cars, with little overhang. Otherwise, entering and leaving curves would be a big problem. Even then, most conductors in all these cities moved one foot or the other to have both on the same step, but continued with use of both cars’ grabirons.
The buttons on the Conductor’s right were for the door controls. I imagine he was only expected to pop out onto his footholds at station stops. The Logan Square line, where the cars had their initial service intermixed with wood cars, had a couple of stations with curved platforms. . .
On both the CTA and on very crowded IRT Lexington Avenue Locals, the conductor often stayed at his position between stops only because of crowding, if the stops were close together. I remember observing this, but I can be confusing the two systems. On the IRT, this was in the subway, so rain and snow were not problems.
Dave: As I remember on the old NYC IRT type cars. The conductor riding between cars had a cylindrical mechanism attached to each end of the cars both sides about shoulder height… Looked somewhat like a flashlight. Once the train stopped the conductor would operate some kind of switch on the bottom that would open the doors on that car and every other car towards that end of the train. Then he would operate the switch on the other car towards the other end of the train.
Once the doors were clear of passengers the conductor would slap the top of each cylinder and doors would close toward that end of train. That way it may have been for the short platforms at South Ferry ?
Can anyone elaborate or correct my memory ?