The Streetcar That Was Engineered Like a Sedan | 1951 PCC Streetcar | CC&C Rail Test

Well, it is a hot and sunny day here north of Campbellville, Ontario, and we are in a car, but a kind of a different car. We're here at the Halton County Regional Railway Museum, and we're joined by Lionel. And what are we in today? We're in a PCC from the City of Toronto. It would have ran in Toronto from 1951 to 1994 before it retired and came up here. And so we're talking about streetcars, the history of this exact streetcar, and what it's like to drive one, and how you can ride in this exact same streetcar. But right now, Lionel, we're behind schedule, aren't we? A little bit. So we get on our way here. Perfect. So as we set off, let's start with the history of the PCC. What does PCC stand for? Why do we call it that? PCC is called the Presidential Conference Car. It was called that because way back in the 1930s, presidents of a lot of public transit companies wanted to come up with a basic design they could all use to cut costs. Because back then, when they built streetcars, they built them kind of ad hoc. Axles from this company, trucks from this company, a body from this company. And they were like built to order for whatever municipality. So the idea here was that they would have kind of a standard form, and they would just produce them like a car. Yes. And different manufacturers could produce pretty well the same car for different companies as needed. And what were some of the design goals? Because they were trying to come up with a whole new generation of streetcars. What were some of the problems they were trying to overcome, and things they were trying to make better on the PCC compared to older cars like, for example, the Peter Witt? Try to make acceleration quicker so it could keep up with traffic in cities. Before that, streetcars were generally kind of slow and would not move along too quickly in cities. This car is designed to keep up with traffic and also to be a little bit better heating, a little bit more better seating, and definitely if you're standing so you're able to see out of the car better with the stand-up windows at the top there, so you wouldn't have to duck down to look out the window to see where you were. And they also added some innovations, like there's a lot more rubber isolation in the trucks and the suspension than you would have, would have had previously, right? That's right. And then the other thing is that older streetcars would have, you would have driven them standing up, versus here, you're sitting down, you've got pedals like a car. The pedals like a car, so instead of hand controls, we go to foot pedals, and basically a three-pedal system, the left pedal being an interlock that you have to have your foot on the whole time while you're driving so the car brakes don't come on automatically. The pedal in the middle is a brake, just like you would have on a regular automobile for braking, and the pedal on the very far right, just like an accelerator on a car, is the power pedal to accelerate the vehicle. So it's three pedals, like a car, but they don't all do the same thing. No. And the other thing about the accelerator pedal is that it's literally an accelerator pedal. If you touch it, you are accelerating, it doesn't hold a constant speed. No, you can't hold your speed just at 30 miles an hour, you're constantly accelerating, and it just depends on how far you push the pedal down, how fast you accelerate until you get to top speed. And right now we're just cruising, but this is actually quite a bit of acceleration. They listed that this thing could accelerate 4.3 miles per hour per second. These are pretty quick in terms of street cars, right? Yes. But imagine this car with basically 100 people on board. You need that power when you get full. But when you're carrying just a few people, you don't quite need all that power. But when it was a full car, you would need that power so you can accelerate and move up and down along the line, up and down hills. And one of the other innovations of the PCC was, I don't know what it's called, the amount of contacts in the accelerator pedal. Like if Peter Witt has like 10, this has 100. Explain to people why that makes this car smoother to drive. Well, it's not as jerky because you're not jumping as much in power. If you want to explain the best way, it's like opening up a tap, pull that water out. You're slowly letting the water out with all those contacts instead of larger intervals. So it makes it a lot smoother acceleration for the customers. And so let's go back to the origins of the PCC. So they started developing these in the early 1930s. And when did the first PCC come out? When was it ready for service? The very first one. In Toronto, it would have been about 1938. I believe they started running the PCC in Toronto. And they were a little different back then because the first cars would have had an airbrake on them. Compared to now, this car we're driving today is all electric. There's no air on this car at all. And so the PCC was made from the mid 1930s. They took a hiatus during the war, I assume. Yes. And then they continued on. And this is actually a very late PCC. And this car was originally built in 1951, right? 1951 was the last new order for the city of Toronto until they got their next generation of cars in the mid 70s. As the subway came online in Toronto, they got they needed less and less cars. So they would scrap the older ones or the ones that weren't as good and keep the fleet going. Well, we're pulled in here into the station, but I actually want to pitch it to my friend Myles at Interurban Era. And he is incredible at modeling these trains and making layouts. And he's really versed in railway history, and especially how it relates to model railroading today. So I want to throw it over to him for his take on the PCC. And then we'll jump back here in the car with Lionel. Hello, I'm Interurban Era. I'm an industrial designer and a professional model builder. And I'm here to talk to you about the design masterpiece known as the President's Conference Committee car. In the late 1920s, North American streetcar systems were in trouble. Revenues were tight. Equipment was old. Many Americans referred to their local streetcar as a rattle trap. And all too often, this insult was well-deserved. Especially compared to the increasingly popular automobile or the relatively new gasoline-powered bus. In response, the leaders of several systems jointly formed the Electric Railway President's Conference Committee and tasked it with designing, from the rails up, a modern streetcar. The PCC was the result of their work. Its improvements are extensive. Three big ones are worth noting. The cars were all steel, eliminating flexing and groaning. The wheels were clever. In inverse of an automobile, they used a rubber center and a steel outer tire. Along with a robust suspension, this greatly improves the ride. Four 55-horsepower electric motors and a more advanced throttle made for smoother acceleration, while a combination of regenerative and pneumatic brakes helped the car glide to a stop. In park, a strip of magnets held it all to the rails. But there was one more simple yet important advancement. An operator's seat. Traditionally, streetcar motormen stood, but in the PCC, they could sit. The result was reduced fatigue and increased safety. The first PCC car went into service in 1935, and many more followed. For the next 17 years, North American systems bought more than 5,000, and license-built copies were built all around the world, including behind the Iron Curtain. The largest operator was Toronto's TTC, outing 765, with their first examples entering service in 1938. In many major cities, PCC cars were the mainstay equipment of the 20th century. For cities such as San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, and Toronto, they were crucial to keeping streetcar services operating and viable. Without the PCC, these systems might not have survived to our time. You can still ride these cars in regular revenue service on San Francisco's F Line, Boston's Mattapan Line, Philly's SEPTA G Line, as well as in El Paso and in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Many more are at museums around the world. Now, back to you, Clayton. For people that might be coming from the car world who have always kind of enjoyed streetcars, how would you describe the driving experience in terms of like how it relates to a car? Like, it's kind of sort of different, but kind of sort of the same. Like, how would you relate it to people that are coming from a kind of a car background? It's sorely different because I have no steering. True. I don't do any steering. The car does the steering for me. I have to be able to read the track and tell me at certain locations where they call a track switch, which allows you to make a choice where a track goes from one track into two track. You have to be able to read which way it's set so you know which way you're going with the car. But besides that, it accelerates like an electric vehicle and decelerates a little bit like an electric vehicle. And they're all different from different eras. So everyone is unique in how they operate and how they run. And it's very unique how we still are able to maintain them and keep them running. Yeah, it's one of the few places there I think that you, especially in Canada, where you can experience, you can literally experience moving down the rails different eras of street car design. And all the stuff we're running today, it might be worth mentioning as well, is electric. We're on electric overhead lines, 600 volts for this car. But let us know in the comments what kind of street cars you guys want to see next. Because you guys have very old, like you have a Peter Witt, which is older. You have a CLRV, which is newer. Newer, yeah. But let us know in the comments what kind of street car reviews you guys are looking for next. Because you guys have all kinds of stuff in the collection. Yes, we do. We have a snow plow and a sweeper. Well, I don't think we're going to get any snow today. No snow today, no. Wouldn't it be the nicest day to bring that out? So let's talk more about the history of this car, which is currently 4611. But it was born as a 4500 series car in 1951, right? So originally, this car would have spent a lot of time up at Witchwood Car House in Toronto when it was first in Toronto. About 1978, they closed Witchwood Yard because they were no longer needed in Toronto as they were downsizing the number of street cars they had. And this car would have been moved to Ronsonville's division. And then when the City of Toronto was getting ready to open up the Harbour front line, they decided they were going to open it up and run nothing but PCCs along the line. Of the last order of cars they had that they bought in 1951, they took the ones they had remaining back into the shops at Hillcrest in Toronto for the Toronto Transit Commission, and they rebuilt them. And this is one of those rebuilt cars. This is a late production PCC that then got rebuilt. Yeah, got rebuilt. And so a couple of the upgrades that this car has, it no longer has fuses for the operator. Everything got changed to circuit breakers. So you no longer have to worry about changing a fuse if something went wrong with the car. And the heat got upgraded. And they finally put insulation in the walls between the outer skin and the inner skin that it never had. So it put a little bit of insulation there to make it a little bit warmer in the winter. My trouble with that is it also made it a little bit warmer in the summer. And this exact car, 4611, was the very last PCC to run. What do you call it? Fair service. In service, yes. Yes, in Toronto. In Toronto, yes. And they made about 5,000 PCCs all told. Yeah. We have about 328 still existing in museums. And how many do you estimate are still like, you know, running and driving of those 328 that are known to exist? Well, probably I'm going to estimate this price somewhere in the low hundreds because there's still cities like San Francisco where they run and quite a few museums where they run. So now they're getting fewer and fewer of the run. And definitely when you need a part for one of these nowadays, it's getting interesting to have to make a part. Would it be fair to say this changed streetcar design? Oh, definitely it did. And for many cities, it brought a lot of streetcar service out and kept it running for quite a few more years until GM and Firestone... Bought everyone up. So in the end, what kind of were the reasons for retiring the PCCs? Was it just plain age? What were the factors that made them eventually actually pull these out of revenue service? Age plus... In Toronto, it got to... Especially the ones on Harborfront became very politicalized. They thought they were not getting proper service because there was no CLRVs down there, which were a far more comfortable car to ride. Had a lot more creature comforts than this does. But... And also it's just this age and reliability. And they got to an age where if they were in collision, the car would definitely have a lot of body damage to it because you can't always guarantee where the rust is. So after a collision, a serious one, they would be retired because it was just too much damage to repair and hard to get parts. Because every time they rebuilt the cars, the fleet would get smaller in Toronto. But these cars had like a 40-year service life. They ran these for such a long time. We didn't actually say what the end date was for service. Was it 1991? Ah, 94. 94. 1994. So this car ran in various guys from 1951 to 1994. An incredible run. And it's still running. Still running. And also the climate they ran in. If you think about in cities where they put salt down for roads in the winter. And this is a metal vehicle. And also a change in philosophy. These vehicles are not accessible. You have to be able-bodied to get off and on one of these cars. They're not designed for anybody that's in mobility aid. So that became an issue as time went by. And things have to be accessible now. So definitely came to an era where this... Yeah, it's kind of nice. It would have been nice to keep a few around nostalgic. But if you're trying to make them be for what we expect now for the type of service level... For actual transport, yeah. Transport, it makes it a little bit more difficult. Yeah, it really is an amazing organization. It's all volunteers. And it's been in operation since the 1950s. And you and the team do such an amazing job here literally keeping history alive. And this is one of the few cars that I'm in that you guys can also be in. You guys can come. I think it's basically the weekends during the warm season. Yeah, we're open May to October every weekend. And we're open five days a week in July and August. Thursday through Mondays. So I love riding around in classic street cars like this 1951 PCC. Hope that you guys have enjoyed watching this video about it. To make more videos about street cars like this, please like the video, comment, subscribe, do all that YouTube stuff. But also check out the Houghton County Radio Railway. If you live in Ontario, you can come visit in person. And if not, check out their store online. But if you can get involved and go see this place in person, it's an amazing place to spend a day. And Lionel, thank you so much for taking the time to show us around and kind of help us learn a little bit more about transit history. And thank you guys for watching. But we should ring the bell one more time and go to our next stop. Go to our next stop. See you on the next video.