The Kawasaki Light Rail Car Procurement for Philadelphia –
The 30^th Anniversary of K 9000!

by Joe Boscia

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By the mid 1970’s, SEPTA was planning a procurement of trolley cars for the five Subway-Surface routes in West Philadelphia. The disastrous Woodland Carhouse fire of October 1975, that destroyed so many PCC cars, brought new urgency to the effort. In addition, there was pressure from Boeing to purchase the locally manufactured Standard Light Rail Vehicle (SLRV). Still, it would be several years before funding was set and a spec completed.

Potential bidders were invited to complete a two-day PCC car familiarization training program out of Woodland. The course was offered to enable bidders to better understand the operating conditions and environment the car would deal with. Only one company showed any interest – Kawasaki Heavy Industries. They and representatives from their proposed suppliers, like Westinghouse, participated in three courses.

On 9-13-78, a Request for Proposal was issued. Six bids were received in December. On 3-29-79, a contract with Kawasaki was approved for 141 total vehicles, 112 Single End (SE) for the City Division, and 29 Double End (DE) cars for Red Arrow. The agreement called for a mock up, and two pilot cars, one single end car, and one double end car, to be delivered and tested before production cars were manufactured.

         The SEPTA Light Rail Car was Kawasaki’s first rail transportation venture in the United States. At that time, people here thought of Kawasaki in terms of motorcycles. However, the firm was building ships, railway rolling stock (including the famous Bullet trains) for customers in Japan and around the world, and assembling Boeing airplanes for the Asian market. It would eventually win the SEPTA Broad St. subway car order, build U. S. assembly plants, and follow up with multiple rolling stock orders for New York City, PATH, and others.

Kawasaki accelerated its efforts, and a DE half-car mockup was ready for inspection by the SEPTA Team at the factory in Kobe, Japan, in late August of that year. Based on changes identified during the visit, Kawasaki went ahead with the prototypes.

By late May 1980, the two prototypes were ready for the SEPTA Team. After a thorough going over, a Completion Presentation Ceremony was held at the factory on June 2^nd. Car 9000 was shipped first, and arrived at Woodland on July 29, 1980. Car 100 came shortly afterward. Only 16 months had elapsed from Contract award to delivery of the prototypes, a record not equaled by any other modern Light Rail Car purchase.

After strenuous testing and operator training, K Car 9000 entered revenue passenger service on Route 11 with two back-to-back runs totaling 13 hours on October 10, 1980. Approval from passengers and operators was immediate. Some changes to the car were identified and incorporated into the production run. Facilities changes were made to several Surface Car Subway station platforms, and a number of newly created non-clearance curves on the street were relayed to provide clearance to passing Light Rail Cars. Overhead wire was modified on Red Arrow to allow pantograph operation, but the City Division Facilities Department fought conversion in West Philadelphia.

            Production cars were shipped starting in 1981, and final assembly to meet Buy America requirements was performed at the Boeing plant outside Philadelphia. By 11-29-82, the last K Car, 9018, was delivered. The Kawasaki car is also the only Light Rail Car procurement to date in the United States that did not utilize an outside consultant to manage the specification, construction, and testing process.

            A recommendation to use the Kawasaki cars in base line service on Route 15 and the five Subway-Surface lines, supplemented by PCC Cars in peak hours, was quickly rejected by bus-oriented top managers who didn’t want the cars in North Philadelphia, lest the people there lobby for new trolleys.

            Today these veterans soldier on, serving the people of West Philadelphia and Delaware County. For how much longer, no one knows, as SEPTA has announced no concrete plans for their replacement.

The Kobe plant was the only place and time that both the single end and double end cars could be seen side-by-side, and front differences highlighted. Joe Boscia photo.

Editor: Recently, the 30th anniversary of these cars was celebrated with a fan trip. The fan trip was organized by Joe Boscia, who was a key member of the team that produced these cars.
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Changes at Custom Traxx!
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Recently, while evaluating the latest Bowser PCC cars and the M4T decoders. we had a chance to discuss the status of the hobby with Jonathan Werner of Custom Traxx. First, he told us that the future of traction modeling at this very moment just might be as good as it has even been. The recent group of HO scale ready-to-run trolleys from Bachmann (Peter Witt and the coming Birney), Con-Cor PCC and the Bowser PCC cars have seen an increase in the number of new traction devotees. One of every two Custom Traxx sales in the past six months have been to new customers, most of them indicating that they have just bought one of the new R-T-R trolleys and are starting on a "long-awaited" streetcar layout.

In the same conversation with Jonathan, Custom Traxx Director of Procurement, we were told that the Bowser PCC, Bowser traction drives and parts along with the TCS traction decoders (M4T, M4T-NP, M1T) are accounting for over 80% of Custom Traxx business. He further said, ..."The Bowser trolleys, no matter how many we order, are sold out within 30 days. Some of them sold out within a week, particularly the San Francisco and Boston models".... But Jonathan cautioned us as he noted that despite the current good position of traction modeling that there will be a few casualties. He noted that although Custom Traxx started out as a traction decal maker. Decals now account for less than 8% of their sales and getting less every year. "...Do not look for a lot of new decals from us and you should not expect a lot of them to be re-run when they are exhausted. Traction decals used to be between 33 and 50% of our total sales each year until about 2004, when the slow decline began. We really enjoyed the research and the development of decals and we will really miss it. But that research was not wasted. A lot of it is being put into the new Bowser trolleys. Demands for TCS decoders, ORR rail and special work, trolley poles from Miniatures by Eric and the Bowser trolleys continue to escalate and demand more of our attention..."

George Huckaby also told us that the long time policy of attending many train shows is also being revised. He is now a Product Consultant to Bowser Manufacturing on HO scale streetcars and this is keeping him very busy and tied to his computer. He also told us that there are many more trolleys coming from Bowser, the first of which will be available early next year and another after that is already in the works. So in 2011 expect to see Custom Traxx only at local Southern California model train shows and traction only shows like the fantastic East Penn Traction Club Meet.

Finally, Custom Traxx has just received its second overseas order of Girder Rail from our Swedish suppliers. Although the price is the same, the value of the dollar has declined relative to Swedish currency and forced another price increase. Hans Josefson personally brought our order on an airplane as he was attending a conference in San Francisco and we picked it up in that city while attending the International Railfair. Without this personal, unique delivery, the price increase may have been greater.
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Next Bowser Trolleys!
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By now, most of you know that Bowser will be introducing their next trolley, the traditional 1945 all-electric PCC Car early next year. The basis of the model is the 1948 all-electric PCC car delivered to the Philadelphia Transportation Company and operated in that city from 1948 to 1992. Several of these cars were included in the 110 cars upgraded with Federal Funds during the 1980s. Fifteen of these cars ended up in San Francisco and fourteen of them were base service on the F-line when it opened in 1995.

The first five road names have been selected, announced and are currently in development. Other road names being considered are: SEPTA Phase 1, SEPTA Phase 2, Minneapolis TCL, Cleveland CTS, Detroit DSR, Birmingham BEC, New Jersey Public Service PSCT, Los Angeles LATL, Shaker Heights SHRT, and Cincinnati CSR. Some special cars such as Philadelphia's Safety Car 2128 and Pittsburgh (PAT) 1730 Mod Desire are also under study. Even being discussed are road names such as Washington D.C. and Saint Louis. The Bowser-Custom Traxx team wants to hear from you but it should be soon and definitely before the end of this year. The first pre-production samples of the first five road names of these arrived at the Custom Traxx facility on November 29th for evaluation. These cars all have working trolley poles very similar to the HT-P2 poles currently available from Custom Traxx. With the current rate of pre-orders, we just may see the cars shown below from Bowser in the future...