Imperial Hobby Productions (IHP) recently released what we consider to be the fourth generation model of the Philadelphia (SEPTA) Single End Kawasaki Light Rail Vehicle (LRV) introduced to the streets of West Philadelphia in 1981-1982. This HO scale model, unlike earlier models, was injection molded in China. All previous models were cast in resin.

In the late 1970s, especially after the disastrous 1975 Woodland Depot fire that consumed 60 of the best PCC cars on the property, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) began to design a replacement for the venerable PCC cars. (That fire was eventually discovered to have been started by a disgruntled SEPTA Woodland Depot Maintenance employee.) Many of them were failing due to a totally inadequate maintenance program and the desire of some SEPTA senior management to "rid themselves" of the streetcars. They could not place buses in the trolley subway in which operated heavily used Route 10 (Lancaster Avenue), Route 11 (Woodland Avenue), Route 13 (Chester Avenue), Route 34 (Baltimore Avenue) and Route 36 (Elmwood Avenue), so they were forced to look for a replacement vehicle. Articulated vehicles which were becoming the norm in cities like Boston and San Francisco were ruled out due to the extremely tight curves in Philadelphia so an in-house design team, including rail knowledgeable people like Russ Jackson and Joe Boscia, Transportation Representative for the entire procurement, worked with Kawasaki Heavy Industries of Japan to build the next generation of Philadelphia streetcars. When the contract was advertised, the only prospective bidder that took advantage of the SEPTA three-day PCC Car Familiarization course was Kawasaki and they took great advantage of the information presented. They even encouraged some of their subcontractors, such as Westinghouse, to attend. Boeing-Vertol, who was located in Philadelphia's backyard, was arrogant and never did bid on the procurement. They felt that if they "...could do helicopters, trolleys would be a snap...". Of course we all know how their now practically extinct USLRV fared in Boston and San Francisco, don't we.

SEPTA eventually procured 112 single-end versions (series 9000-9111) for those five lines and 29 double end versions (series 100-128) for the suburban Sharon Hill and Media Lines. As of this date, over thirty years later, every one of the cars are still in service, which is a testimony mostly both the designers and the builders, but some credit must be given to some of SEPTA dedicated maintenance personnel who performed excellent support activities on the cars despite some of the negative attitudes toward streetcars in general from some SEPTA senior management. While the 9000 was in testing (see below left), Joe Boscia held a management familiarization course and Hale Davidow, stated that "...It is the Cadillac of dinosaurs...". Another SEPTA senior executive, Joe Wagner, head of Rolling Stock and Shops (RS&S) pulled an option out of the contract which would have provided about 25 more cars for surface Route 15 and did not inform some other key personnel working on the project at the time. When Joe proposed to run the cars on Route 15, Dave Feeley rejected it, stating that if people in North Philadelphia saw the cars, they would want them for the other routes. That same individual mounted a forklift and turned air-electric PCC cars on their sides at Luzerne Depot that were already scheduled for scrapping. Remember this is the management of the same company that sued Bachmann in the 1980s for making an HO scale model PCC car with SEPTA markings (shown below right), forcing them to remove the cars from store shelves.

So you can see that these cars, especially every single one manufactured, lasting more than thirty years under SEPTA management is quite an achievement.

Custom Traxx and the Southern California Traction Club (SCTC) obtained their first model of a Kawasaki LRV in May 1999 at the East Penn Traction Club Meet. The club acquired it already painted as 9038 in the Phase II scheme, eventually added headlights, converted to run on overhead wire and equipped it with a TCS MC4 DCC decoder. This car was equipped with the very first Bowser traction drive off the Bowser assembly line in 1999 and it is still operating 15 years later. The model, shown below left, looked like a Kawasaki car but had it's share of errors, the most obvious were the inset doors and the operators window. But to IHP's credit, they were the first firm to bring an American prototype LRV to the market using resin casting technology and combined with the just released 1999 Bowser traction drive, it did the job, showing that there just might be market for the newer traction models. The SCTC, being mostly non-Philadelphians, really did not notice those discrepancies at first as they did not have to paint the model. So any issues with the model were noted only after the club visited the 2007 East Penn Meet and participated in a fan trip on both the Kawasaki cars and the PCC-II. They took photos and started to paint and letter a second car acquired in June 2007 that had to be acquired from a third party for reasons that we will not discuss here. It was at that time that they noticed that this second model had drastic improvements over the initial model. The club painted that car as 9011 in the Phase III paint scheme, added headlights, converted it to run on overhead wire and added a TCS MC4P-LH DCC decoder. It is shown at right below:

The club acquired the third model, shown below left, in May 2009 at the next East Penn Traction Club Meet. They added headlights and a TCS M4 DCC decoder. They also converted it to run on overhead wire. Now that the club had plenty of photos from the 2007 fan trip, this model was found to be even better than the second one. There were several similarities between that last resin cast model and the latest unpowered injection molded model just received, shown below right. All three powered models have been equipped with the now proven rugged Bowser 125100 traction mechanism and the A-Line 20040 Flywheel retrofit kit. All three cars run very smoothly from overhead wire.