Aristo-Craft PCC Streetcar (Capital Transit car 1324)

A few boxes arrived while I was on vacation including this beautiful PCC Streetcar made by Aristo-Craft. This doesn't fit into the theme of the PE&A at all—I just thought it was cool and really wanted a streetcar. Perhaps I'll set up an independent loop of track just for it to run on.

Capital Transit car 1324

PCC Streetcars were manufactured in the U.S. between 1936 and 1952. Over 5,000 were manufactured and they could be found in cities all over the world. While most have been scrapped, many PCC cars can still be found in revenue service today, including the F Market Line in San Francisco, the M line in Boston, and the Silver Line in San Diego.

Capital Transit logo appears on each side of the streetcar.

This example is car 1324 from Capital Transit, the transit authority in Washington, D.C. that was formed in 1933 by the merger of several independent streetcar lines at a time when streetcar use was already in decline. Capital Transit started running PCC Streetcars like this one in 1937 and continued to operate them up until 1962. Based on the window arrangement car 1324 is a pre-war style streetcar.

Route 69 headed toward the Navy Yard. Searching what is available on the Internet, I was not able to confirm whether this was a valid streetcar line number at the time, although there was a line running to the Navy Yard.

Both sets of doors are on the right and they fold inward.

For comparison here a couple pictures of PCC streetcars I rode on last time I was in San Francisco. Both of these are post-war style -- note the windows are narrower and there is an extra row of small windows running the length of the car near the roof line. Most PCC streetcars still in use today were built in the late 1940s or early 1950s. I wasn't able to find an example of an operational pre-war car, but there may be one out there somewhere.

Car 1055 was built in 1948 by the St. Louis Car Company for the Philadelphia Transportation Company, which later became part of SEPTA. The livery has been restored to reflect what it looked like at the time it was delivered in 1948.

Car 1057 was also built in 1948 for the Philadelphia Transportation Company, but today sports a bright canary yellow livery honoring Cincinnati, which ran PCC streetcars from 1939 to 1951.

For more information:

• Wikipedia has a nice overview of the PCC streetcar and its history.
• I haven't been yet, but someday would like to visit the National Capital Trolley Museum outside of Washington, D.C.
• This map of Capital Transit streetcar lines at the end of 1948 shows the route to the Navy Yard but does not include route numbers.
• The Market Street Railway in San Francisco has the largest collection of PCC streetcars in North America, as well as many pre-PCC cars. The cars liveries are tributes to the many cities that ran PCC cars, and the website provides details about every car's history and the transit system it represents.