Urban Commuter / Light Rail / Modern Streetcar News!
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ORANGE COUNTY, CA - Work continues on the streetcar system that would operate on Santa Ana Blvd in Santa Ana and terminate at the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center (SARTC), which is the Amtrak/Metrolink train station at 1000E E. Santa Ana Blvd in Santa Ana.

The Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) In early December reached a construction milestone on the OC Streetcar project as crews set in place the first rail that will carry light-rail vehicles through Santa Ana and Garden Grove, California, by 2022.

Construction crews set the rail in place at the intersection of Santa Ana Boulevard and Bristol Street. They will continue placing rail westbound toward Raitt Street, OCTA officials said in a press release. The 4-mile streetcar will carry passengers between the Santa Ana transit center and a transit stop at Harbor Boulevard and Westminster Avenue in Garden Grove, and along Santa Ana Boulevard, Fourth Street and the former Pacific Electric right-of-way. Siemens is manufacturing eight S700 light-rail vehicles for the project. 

Artist's conception of the Siemens S700 vehicle in OCTA dress and 'wrapped'!

The line has been divided into five segments for construction as shown below:

Beginning in December 2020:

1. Full intersection closure at Raitt Street and W. Santa Ana Boulevard. Detour routes are in place.

2. Streetcar track installation in Segment 2. This work requires full lane and parking closures on Santa Ana Boulevard from Raitt Street to Shelton Street. Detour routes are in place.

3. Streetcar track installation in Segment 3. This work requires full lane closures on Santa Ana Boulevard from Parton Street to Mortimer Street. A single lane is open for through traffic. 

4. Base installation for the overhead wire poles along the streetcar route. Please expect possible lane and parking closures.

NOTE: Access will be maintained for all residents and businesses. Construction activities are dependent on weather and resource availability.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - The final car of the 16 car order (1007 (PST Red Arrow), 1010 (San Francisco), 1015 (Illinois Terminal), 1050, (Pittsburgh), 1051 (San Francisco), 1052 (Los Angeles), 1053 (Brooklyn), 1055 (Philadelphia 1954), 1056 (Kansas City), 1057 (Cincinnati), 1058 (Chicago), 1059 (Boston), 1060 (Philadelphia 1938), 1061 (Pacific Electric), 1062 (Saint Louis) and 1063 (Baltimore) to be rebuilt by Brookville Equipment Corporation has arrived back in San Francisco and will be seen on the streets during the burn-in process. It is equipped with the operator protection barriers required now on transit vehicles.

 

Update on the Train to King of Prussia, PA!
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Richard L. Allman

 

A public information webinar about the King of Prussia extension of the SEPTA Route 100 Norristown High Speed Line occurred on December 1, 2020. The route is the historic Philadelphia and Western Railway Norristown line that once operated a line to Strafford and connected at Norristown to Lehigh Valley Transit’s Liberty Bell Limited to Allentown. The extension will leave the Route 100 alignment north of the Hughes Park Station and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Three operations will be provided: 69th Street Terminal to King of Prussia, King of Prussia to Norristown Transportation Center, and the current 69th Street to Norristown operation. Representatives from the project planners and SEPTA made a detailed presentation. Throughout the planning process, stretching over more than two decades, business, government representatives at Federal state, and local levels and residents have been intimately engaged in the process.

N5 car #151 outbound approaching Garrett Hill Station. Photo Credit: R. Allman

Twenty-one different alignments had been proposed and withdrawn in response to concerns about construction disruption associated with an alignment along US Route 202, DeKalb Highway and other proposals that would have caused acquisition of many private homes and noise and visual issues along different proposed alignments. The current proposal has alleviated all private resident concerns and virtually no homes will be impacted. Unfortunately, responding to these local concerns has enhanced community buy-in but has resulted in a lengthy delay which has increased the projected cost from roughly $450 million (2000) to almost $2 billion (2020), a hefty price tag for a four-mile route. Usually around 20-25% of the cost of a transit extension is for rolling stock but planners claim that purchase of only four additional vehicles is needed to supplement the N-5 fleet, which might be optimistic, especially since the earliest introduction of service will be in 2025, at which time the N-5 fleet will be almost 35 years-old. The N5 fleet was named N5 due to the fact that they are the fifth generation of vehicles to serve the line in its 113 years of operation. (More about the previous cars in the next issue.)

Two-car train headed by N5 #136 approaching Villanova Station. Photo Credit: R. Allman

The alignment will have five stations and will serve the Henderson Road shopping complex, the King of Prussia Mall complex with shuttles to the new entertainment and dining venues at the King of Prussia Town Complex and additional commercial, residential and development space. The route will end near a hotel and casino complex with easy access to Valley Forge National Park. Together these comprise some of the largest retail and entertainment venues in the United States with more square feet of retail space than Center City Philadelphia and the highest concentration of entry level jobs in the region. Already more than 60,000 people work in King of Prussia, a number expected to grow by at least 30% in the next 15-20 years. The area is served by six SEPTA bus routes which must contend with local traffic, including the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76) and consequently have the worst on-time performance of any routes on the SEPTA system. King of Prussia is vibrant and growing but is totally automobile dependent. It is a magnet for students from local colleges along the old Main Line, including University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Rosemont and Villanova. The line will be an engine for transit-oriented development-residential, commercial, retail, and entertainment.

Inbound car 141 at Bridgeport with Norristown in the background! Photo Credit: R. Allman

Success will depend on frequent and free shuttle bus service linking the route to various destinations including King of Prussia Town, the large Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia satellite on Upper Gulph Road, and the theatre complex between the King of Prussia Mall and the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Schedulers will need to acknowledge that peak ridership to a mall complex is unlike usual weekday peak service. Demand will be high in mid-afternoon, late evenings, and weekends when shoppers, retail workers and entertainment seekers travel to and from the area. Planners will be well advised to review the scheduling and operations of other rail projects serving large suburban retail and commercial agglomerations, including Mall of America in the Twin Cities, South Hills Village outside of Pittsburgh, and the large mall that will be served by the Edmonton Light Rail operation. The trough design of some of the elevated structure may complicate issues like snow removal. Nonetheless, this is the highest priority transit project in the greater Philadelphia area, has enormous promise as a job generator, source of transit-oriented development, traffic mitigator, and environmental and quality of life enhancement. A no-build option would leave the King of Prussia area totally car dependent. For information about the project, visit their web site https://www.kingofprussiarail.com/

Kevin Honda's Neat Garage Layout (Part One)!
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George L. Huckaby

 

As a two-day-a-week employee at Arnie's Model Trains since March 2020, I have become familiar with Kevin Honda, the Store Manager. He does all the repairs on the N scale and HO scale locomotives and cars plus installing DCC and DCC/Sound in HO scale vehicles and those N scale vehicles capable of having such added. The store was open seven days a week before the COVID-19 pandemic and returned to seven day a week operation for the 2020 Christmas season. Despite managing this store which is rapidly turning into one of the major model trains stores in he US, Kevin has found the time to build this great layout in the garage of his home some 25 miles from the store.

The layout is located in one half of a two-car garage and is basically a 10' by 15' around-the-wall two level layout which models southeastern US and Florida railroads such as Florida East Coast, Seaboard Air Line and Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard Coast Line and CSX. The layout is operated and controlled by NCE DCC equipment. NCE has a PowerCab controller that can be used both as a master control system and as a separate cab on a multi-cab layout. The two levels are joined by the spiraling track at left. Kevin's layout has a four-track yard off to the side for each level that allow visitors to arrange and place their trains on a long straight track for operation.

A complete trip involves both levels and begins at one yard and ends at the other.

What struck me at first was the immense detail that Kevin had placed into all the scenes of the layout. Two examples are shown below.

 

The west wall of the layout shows the number of detailed scenes!

Custom Traxx' PRR T1 4-4-4-4 with passenger cars in the upper yard ready for its run on the layout.

Small shopping center with details.

A Union Pacific Big Boy owned by one of Arnie's long time customers just coming in to the yard from its run on the layout.

More on this marvelous layout in next month's issue!

HO Scale Contemporary Rail Urban Transit Models!
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As you, our readers, know, we have been extolling the virtues of many 3D-printed models of contemporary urban rail transit vehicles. In this article, we have listed those that we know have been made available to the modeling public in HO scale:

Vehicle	Scale	Prototype City	Developer	Modeler's Source
Kinki-Sharyo P3010	HO	Los Angeles	West Coast Traction Supply	Shapeways Store
Nippon-Sharyo P865/P2020	HO	Los Angeles	West Coast Traction Supply	Shapeways Store
Siemens S70	HO	San Diego, Salt Lake City, Atlanta	Interurban Traction Models	Shapeways Store
Kinki Sharyo Type 7	HO	Boston	Tramspotter	Shapeways Store
Breda Type 8	HO	Boston	Tramspotter	Shapeways Store

We anticipate that there are other models that may have been made by individuals but have not been placed in the public market and there may be more models that we have not encountered. If those developers would send us a photo of their models, we would let the modeling public know that someone made that model. If they finished the model, we would like to know what paints and/or decals were used.

 

New HO Scale Streetcar Model Coming Later This Year!
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Just before Christmas, Bowser Manufacturing released the following notice. The Kansas City (KC) Body all-electric PCC was originally planned for 2015 but a major problem in the offshore supplier chain delayed and almost killed this project.

The KC body PCC was the result of a dislike of standee windows by the President of Kansas City Public Service at the time, Powell C. Groner. He was a dynamic individual who was not afraid to follow his intuition. When he saw the plans for the post war all-electric PCC cars, he disliked the standee windows that would be the "trademark" of the post war cars. He told the Transit Research Commission (TRC) that he would have "none of those little apertures" on his cars. So his 160 post war cars were characterized by the lack of standee windows and the larger side windows that resulted. These are an unusual car body PCC!

Some of these cars later ran in Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco, CA; Tampico, Mexico and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This is an unusual car body PCC!

Get your requests in. This model should have the same excellent chassis and drive train of the previous Bowser HO scale trolleys. If this is anything like the earlier Bowser trolleys, some of them were sold out before the models hit the USA!