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TROLLEYVILLE VISITS PHILADELPHIA

Philly's Phantastic Trollys

George Huckaby - Almost all railfans know of the light rail vehicles running in the Greater Philadelphia area. These were pressed into service beginning in 1981 and serve all five of the active trolley lines in the city and the two lines in the western suburbs. The city cars are single ended, weigh about 56,000 pounds and are air-conditioned for passenger comfort. They are about 2,000 lbs. lighter than the double-ended versions in the western suburbs.

But the best two features are the excellent riding, considering some of the bad track in places on the system, and the fact that they look, feel and operate so well after twenty (YES, TWENTY) years of operation. Moreover, every single one of the original 112 cars is still in service. Even the PCC cars could not claim that record.

On Monday morning, May 7th, Trolleyville representatives, George & Anne Huckaby were given the royal treatment at the Elmwood District Facility in Southwest Philadelphia.

The local transit authority, SEPTA, was represented by (below l to r) Robert Hughes, Resource Controller, Light Rail Operations (LRO); Dominic J. DeMarco and Michael DeGrasse, Maintenance Managers, Rail Equipment, Light Rail Operations (LRO).

Unknown and unheralded to most railfans are these now twenty-year-old vehicles, first seen by the writer in the opening scenes of the movie, "Trading Places, featuring Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd. The writer did not get to ride one of these cars until they were almost five years old and at that time, the excellent ride was immediately noticed. It was not known then how substantial the cars were, weighing almost 20,000 lbs. more than a PCC car. In 1989, Anne Huckaby got her first ride and she remarked that it was " …like a ride at Disneyland…" When Anne made this remark to Joe Boscia, a member of the team that helped develop these cars, a new friendship was born. When this conversation was related to Bob Hughes, it was decided to demonstrate the ease and simplicity of operating the Kawasaki LRT vehicle. Anne was given about 45 seconds of training by Steve Swift, another transit employee shown below and then taken out to 27 rail

(Track 27 for you-non-SEPTA-ITES), placed in the operators seat of LRT 9008 and moved the car from the rear of the property to the front.

Then, to complete her training, she was instructed on how to operate the car using the back-up controller and returned the car to the original location at the rear of the barn.

Since the largest vehicle operated by Anne prior to this was a Chrysler Mini-van, handling a 50-foot, 56,000-lb. vehicle was a new experience. After completion of these runs, she remarked how easy it was to control the vehicle. She was surprised that the controls were so simple and the car was so responsive, "…just a couple of switches and a few pedals… I thought it would be much harder…" SEPTA has a proven winner in these cars and they will probably outlast the PCC cars that they replaced. Only time will tell. They also have some real winner employees at Elmwood District. Thanks for the memories!!

Philadelphia Trolley Weekend

George Huckaby - The East Penn Traction Club of the Greater Philadelphia area held it’s 15th National Trolley meet at the South Jersey Expo Center, 2323 Route 73, Pennsauken, NJ on Friday, May 4th and Saturday, May 5th. The writer has had the opportunity to attend most of these meets since 1987 and if you are in any way interested in modeling trolley cars, this is the meet to attend.

These meets are held in May of odd years (i.e. 1997, 1999, 2001, etc) and almost every scale from N to G scale and larger is represented. For a report on the 1999 meet, see the 5/9/99 issue of the Times. There is normally a lot of activity crammed into this weekend. Usually, Custom Traxx starts with a Thursday visit to Bowser Manufacturing where we are usually the guests of Lee English and his parents. The show starts on Friday, and ends on Saturday. The Sunday after the show is usually reserved for a fan-trip. In 1995, Peter Witt 8534 and PCC 2750 were used to traverse the Germantown Avenue Line. In 1997, the PATCO High Speed Line was featured. In 1999, this consisted of a trip over Route 15 on PCC 2168 and Peter Witt 8534. This year it was a two-car train of Kawasaki Light Rail Transit vehicles on the former Red Arrow Lines.

The Thursday visit went off as expected with progress being made on a possible new trolley shell from Bowser Manufacturing. We can’t say specifically what the project is, but it will be a derivative from one of the current four models offered. The new A-line #20040 flywheel kit for the Bowser trolley mechanisms was offered to the public for the first time at the meet and was sold out two hours after the show opened.

Friday, May 4th had an extra attraction added when Custom Traxx visited the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. This city claims to have had the first streetcar system operated by electric power on November 30, 1885. More on this museum can be obtained at http://www.ectma.org. The details of this visit will be reported in the July Trolleyville Times.

The theme for the Saturday show was "Post PCC era cars". We wondered what models to expect in the model contest since very few of these cars are commercially available. We never had time to find out, as this was one of the best shows as far as sales were concerned. Details of the meet can be found on the East Peen website, www.eastpenn.org. The usual modules and vendors could be found at the meet. But there were periods of intensive sales activity with vendors reporting sales at two to three times previous shows. But one of the high points of the show for streetcar modelers was the viewing the operation of an HO scale module of the grand union belonging to Charles Grant.

All the trips through the grand junction were made by left turns. This is the most challenging move through the junction as it involves negotiating two turnouts and four crossings, a challenge for any model overhead wire specialist. In the upper left photo, a New Orleans 900 series car has just completed a left turn through the junction while a Philadelphia Air-Electric PCC waits its turn. In the right photo, a SEPTA 9000 series LRT vehicle is making its left turn while a Philadelphia All-Electric PCC and a Montreal Sight-seeing car waits. There were occasional dewirements but not many considering the number of movements.

Clinics were scheduled on (1) Re-powering HO trolleys, (2) Making single point turnouts, (3) Designing Trolley Modules, (4) Trolley freight and (5) N scale traction and were well attended.

The Sunday trip was a "Daisy Picker" two-car train of the 1981 Kawasaki Light Rail Vehicles, which have been the mainstay of the line for 20 years. Cars 111 and 120 were used and both the Sharon Hill and Media Lines were covered. Most of the cars on the line have been repainted into the SEPTA Phase III scheme, which is similar to the new Muni (San Francisco) scheme reported in the May 2001 issue of the Trolleyville Times. Despite being 20 years old and in their third paint scheme, these cars give the impression of being much newer. Except for minor scratches intentionally made by low class individuals, these cars look a fine as the day they were delivered.
he day they were delivered.