Bad news for passersby who’ve noticed workers blow-torching a rusty green-and-white trolley on Falls Road just north of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum and figured they were repairing it.

Turns out, they’re actually scrapping it for parts.

“It’s just too far gone,” said the Streetcar Museum’s John La Costa, speaking to The Brew over the weekend. La Costa explained that the trolley car – which comes from Philadelphia and was built in 1942 – is going to be stripped for parts that can be used for other similar cars in the museum’s working fleet.

“We’re going to take the top off and flip it over and use the stuff underneath,” La Costa said, noting that, as a PCC (Presidents’ Conference Committee) streetcar, it has rare components that aren’t made anymore. Certain electrical parts, such as contactors, will be especially useful, he added.

Saga of a Streetcar

Designed during the Great Depression by American engineers, the PCC included a host of innovations that essentially reinvented the old and clunky streetcar.

With sleek steel bodies, automatic accelerator controls, better brakes and a revamped heating and ventilating system – the PCC made for faster, smoother, more comfortable rides for the hundreds of thousands of Baltimoreans who relied on streetcars to get around town.

In 1936, Baltimore became the second city in the world (after New York City) to order the revolutionary new car.

The privately-owned Baltimore Transit Co. placed the initial fleet on the No. 25 line, running from Park Heights to Camden Station via Mt. Washington and Hampden, and on the No. 31 from Redwood Street to Walbrook Junction via Madison and North avenues.

Eventually, the BTC orderd 276 PCCs, according to transportation scholar Stephen P. Carlson.

The cars rolled down the tracks on Baltimore’s final routes, the No. 8 between Catonsville and Towson, and the No. 15, from Overlea to Walbrook Junction via downtown, until they were replaced in 1963 by buses.

An Eyesore

As La Costa spoke, one of the museum’s PCCs was on the track awaiting Sunday afternoon visitors.

He and Buster Hughes, who were in charge at the museum on Sunday, took a moment to explain the history of soon-to-be-scrapped No. 2647.

Purchased by a private collector, it was last used in the mid-70s in Philadelphia and has been on museum property for about five years.

“The person who brought it here thought he could restore it himself and then, I guess, he realized it was just too much, there was too much to do on it,” La Costa said. “It didn’t help that he was from New York.”

At the hands of vandals, the car took a tremendous beating. Amid incessant waves of graffiti, it stood valiantly against a hostile world, but eventually became an eyesore. Museum volunteers, who are working to restore several other streetcars, weren’t able to do anything with this one.

“At least it’s not all being thrown away,” La Costa said. “We’ll make some use of it.”

POSTSCRIPT

While the PCC died in Baltimore and other American cities with the demise of the urban trolley, the car became a huge success abroad.

With its patents exported to foreign manufacturers, some 25,000 PCCs were built after 1950. They operated in cities ranging from Tocopilla, Chile, to Kobe, Japan, and from Antwerp, Belgium, to Melbourne, Australia.

Reincarnated as “light rail” vehicles, the PCC technology is now returning to some cities, such as Washington, D.C., in the form of neighborhood trolley lines.

What goes around, comes around, it seems, with the added irony that we’ve put ourselves in the position of having to repurchase the fruits of own our engineering.