PCC streetcar

A Twin City Rapid Transit PCC streetcar in museum operation.

The PCC (Presidents' Conference Committee) streetcar is a streetcar (tram) design that was first built in the 1930s. The unusual name comes from the fact that the car was designed by a committee, first formed in 1929, representing various electric street railways. The Electric Railway Presidents' Conference Committee, or ERPCC, was tasked with producing a new type of streetcar that would help fend off competition from buses and automobiles. The committee produced a high-performance design that was very commonly used in the following decades. The cars were popular because of their distinctive streamlined design and smooth acceleration.

It turned out that, unlike many other things produced by committees, the PCC streetcar had a very good basic design. Many railways altered the car in various ways to fit their own needs, but most cars retained a very normal appearance. The first batch of 100 cars was built in 1936. Production continued in North America until the early 1950s, with 4978 units built; but thousands more PCCs and direct descendants were produced in Europe through the 20th century. The cars were very sturdy and many have lasted a long time. A handful still remain in service alongside modern vehicles, though most of the functional PCC cars in existence today are operated by museums and heritage railways.

The early, pre-World War II versions of these vehicles were known as air cars and used a belt-driven air compressor to provide the capability to open doors and operate brakes. Later models were entirely electric, doing away with the noisy compressor and air brakes by replacing them with dynamic brakes to provide most of the stopping power instead (though brake pads were available if an emergency stop was required).

PCC cars were initially built in the United States by the St. Louis Car Company, Pullman Standard, and the J.G. Brill Company. PCC cars for Canadian cities were built jointly by St. Louis Car Co. and Canadian Car and Foundry in Montréal, Quebec. The PCC technology was also exported to Europe, with the company La Brugeoise et Nivelles (now the BN division of Bombardier) of Bruges, Belgium building several hundred streetcars which saw service in the cities of Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, The Hague, Saint-Étienne, Marseille and Belgrade (the latter city buying vehicles initially used by the Belgian Vicinal Railways).

CKD Tatra (now CKD Vagonka) of Prague was also a PCC licensee, and built thousands of their T1 through T6 series PCC cars for the former eastern bloc countries, with a claim of 13000 built by 1980. CKD had begun marketing to the rest of the world until 2000, when the company faced a bankruptcy and reorganization. The tram business was sold to Siemens SKV, who discontinued these products in favor of Siemens-designed models.

The first PCC cars in Canada were operated by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) in 1937. By 1954 Toronto had the largest PCC fleet in the world, including many purchased second-hand from U.S. cities that had abandoned streetcar service following the Second World War. Although it acquired new custom-designed streetcars in the late 1970s and 1980s, the TTC continued using PCCs in regular service until the mid-1990s, and retains two for charter purposes. A number of different models of Toronto PCC cars are on display at the Ontario Electric Railway Historical Society museum known as the Halton County Radial Railway near Rockwood, Ontario. Several are in operating condition and rides are available to the public.

PCCs still in revenue service

Late-model PCCs remain in use up to this day in Belgium. The vehicles used in Antwerp and Ghent vehicles are metre-gauge, while those used in Brussels are standard gauge. One of the particularities of the Brussels PCC vehicles is that some of them have been equipped with bogies and electric motors acquired second-hand in the United States from decommissioned streetcars from Kansas City, Missouri and Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

In North America, most PCC-based systems were dismantled in the post-war period in favor of bus-based transit networks. Of those rail transit systems that survived this period, most had replaced their PCCs with modern light rail vehicles (LRVs) by the 1980s. There are still a few places in North America where transit agencies employ PCCs in true revenue service (as opposed to short-run or intermittent heritage railway service):

The F Market Line in San Francisco runs along Market Street from The Castro to the Ferry Building, then along the Embarcadero north and west to Fisherman's Wharf. This line is run by a mixture of PCC cars, built between 1946 and 1952, and earlier pre-PCC cars.

The Kenosha Electric Streetcar in Kenosha, Wisconsin has been operating five PCCs acquired from Toronto since 2000, although service has sometimes been intermittent because of funding issues.

The Kenosha Electric Streetcar is unique among modern PCC operations in that that PCCs had never run in the city before 2000—the original rail system there was shut down in 1932 before any PCC cars had even been built. One of its cars is still painted in its original TTC colours, while the rest have been re-decorated in the liveries of several U.S. cities.

The Ashmont-Mattapan High Speed Line in Boston is a light-rail extension to the MBTA's heavy Red Line. It runs from the Ashmont terminus of the Red Line to Mattapan, and runs PCCs exclusively.

It should be noted that only the Ashmont-Mattapan line has been running PCCs continuously since their glory days. San Francisco removed PCCs from service when the city's light rail was transfromed into the Muni Metro system in 1980; though they made occasional festival trips in the ensuing years, they were not returned to revenue service until the F Market line was established in 1998.

Recent retirements

A few sites have only recently concluded operation with PCCs. The Newark City Subway used them until upgrading to modern light rail vehicles in 2001. The unique Tandy Center Subway in Fort Worth, Texas shut down in 2002. Essentially a glorified shuttle operation bringing passengers back and forth between a mall and its parking lot, the system used a number of PCCs, but their exteriors were heavily modified in the 1970s, making them largely unrecognizable.

External links

• PCC Car - The Industry Saviour? (http://www.trolleystop.com/pcccar.htm)
• History of the Streetcar (http://www.brooklynrail.com/info_streetcar.html)
• The PCC Car - Not So Standard (http://world.nycsubway.org/us/pcc/pcc-car.html)nl:PCC