Futuristic (and some would say ugly) it may be, but Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART, the San Francisco subway system) is now approaching its 40th anniversary, and the system is looking at eventual replacement of its entire car fleet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INQ_7WM0zyY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK2W8hFiSOA

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2032642/BART- ... and-Photos

http://sonic.net/~mly/www.geolith.com/bart/

http://www.bart.gov/

http://www.bart.gov/about/history/index.aspx

http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/cars/index.aspx

Historic preservation of anything from this car fleet has some interesting challenges. They include an oddball track gauge, a unique 1,000-volt DC power supply, unusual carbody construction (partially to allow for an unusual car lifting system), unusual composite wheels, all that automated high-tech gear that is now 40 years old (and in reality, older), high-level only loading. . .whew!

There are critics who have charged that this subway system turned out to be a nice, cozy profit stream for one of its primary contractors, partially as a result of the choices and recommendations it made. . .but I won't go there, I can't say I really know enough of the project. . .still, you wonder about some of that weird engineering. . .

The only preservation entity that I can see being interested would be the Bay Area Electric Railway Assn, and this group has quite enough to work on already. The non-standard gauge makes operation highly unlikely, and I'm not sure if the axle configuration is such that regauging could be done (OERM does have an Irish tram that was 5' 2.5" inch, and some New Orleans and Philadelphia cars have also been "narrowed"). Presumably some of the "automation" could be bypassed and the car or cars run made to run in "manual" mode, but that would probably mean finding an electrical engineer who's looking for a retirement hobby. Not quite like getting a GG-1 to run on 600 volts DC, but still not something that could be accomplished just by isolating the third rail shoes and installing a trolley pole or pantograph. Remember when the highest praise for some new technology was calling it "Space Age"? Now we're seeing the Space Shuttles becoming objects of historic preservation

I think museum operation of a BART car would be fairly simple. Just add another rail to your line like OERM has done for their LARY cars, get a couple of ladders so people can crawl up into the cars and then just harness up a horse or two to pull the car around the track.

Preservation of modern subway equipment has been discussed before. In a similar situation are the last of the original Washington Metro cars, provided any are still actually left from the start of the "Great Society Subway."

The problem is that even if the track gauge is the same, the length and overhang of these cars preclude their operation on the typically tight curves of most transit museums, including the most natural candidate, the National Capital Trolley Museum. Heck, it would be a challenge to truck it to NCTM these days!

If you want to be thought of as a truly regional transit museum, you HAVE to start figuring out a way to preserve these things. The Baltimore Streetcar Museum's guys are already considering just what to do come the probably-inevitable day when they have to save both a Baltimore Metro two-car set and an articulated light-rail car--standard-gauge, to boot, on a 5' 4.5" streetcar museum........

Well, BART is built to the Iberian railroad gauge, also used in a few of their former colonies. But shipping to an overseas museum would be expensive.

BART certainly isn't the only trolley operation that has an unusual gauge.

I'm from Pittsburgh, and "Pennsylvania Broad Gauge" (5' 2-1/2", 6 inches wider than standard gauge) was fairly common. The museum at Arden operates cars of that gauge, and I think there are others.

Laying in a third rail is another option as well, look at Shade Gap Electric/EBT.

I think that some the original BART cars with the shovel nose should definitely be preserved, if there are even any left to save. Love 'em or hate 'em, they were definitely a milestone in rapid transit systems.

If nothing else, put a few on a static display! That wouldn't be very difficult.

BART represents the extreme of oddity and the greatest challenge to future preservationists. But ANY transit equipment from the computer age had best be viewed as static exhibit potential. The challenge will be in the hardware and software required to even make these cars move in manual control, let alone automatic. Little matters like track gauge are purely mechanical in nature and thus easily dealt with from the technology standpoint. 1000VDC propulsion? Now it's getting involved. Processor based motor controls? OMG. Fully automatic train control? Time to give up. Think "adaptive reuse" ("Chicken coop," on in museum environments, display areas.)

Wow, you guys give up easy...

Go to the "Make" magazine website and see what those guys are doing these days with small processing units on board various devices.

I think that in 10 years or so you'll be able to emulate a lot of that stuff. Will you have truly functional and fail-safe automatic train control? No, probably not. Do you need it? No, probably not. Have an operator on board who can over-ride the system, run at low speeds, only one train at a time etc.

I understand this stuff is difficult, but rebuilding boilers isn't easy either!

If a BART car is saved, I can envision a display based on one of the original high-platform stations. For non-railfan interest during a special event, re-create the postcard scene from the early days of BART (and as far as I know, still available at SF souvenir shops) with attractive young women wearing early 70's mini-dresses.

Yes. After the PCC, all evolution in public transit stopped dead. Then there was 40 years of nothin'. And then BOOM, there was a rail renaissance. BART was on the lead, and BART was full of daring innovations (and mistakes), and no doubt of it -- BART is the most historically important of ALL OF THEM.

But this is a major, constitutional crisis for railway museums, and especially transit museums. Most are all about preserving pre-1950 transit, and being about the nostalgia, and about early 20th century engineering which was so stout and godly. Unspoken was the shared expectation that they were preserving an era that was gone for good. Most have spent their entire existence (many since WWII) being just that, and that's how everyone thinks.

So now there's this NEWKRAP.

It's a much sharper distinction than steam vs. diesel... And you know all the hand-wringing museums had over THAT.

See the pickle? As a museum full of pre-1940 cars... do we preserve TRANSIT? Or do we preserve early 20th century transit specifically? Will other museums preserve this newkrap? (not likely.)

Does our museum stick with early 20th century railroading, and slowly watch our relevance as a museum diminish, as no one still lives who remembers anything in our collection? Or do we slowly come around to the notion of saving newkrap, too late to preserve the first generation, then spend the next 200 years explaining why these key developments are missing from our collection?

For instance WRM is a museum that is basically complete. It's all indoors. We're in the phase of replacing carbarns now. Our mission is to preserve electric railroading in the west, but our master planning is completely unprepared for the onslaught of BART, Sacramento, San Jose, Sandy Eggo, L.A.'s variety of lines, Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake, Phoenix... to say nothing of San Francisco, and we can't refuse them!!! This is all LARGE equipment which ran M.U. so we can't do it justice without two each. We don't have the barn space, and the approved master-plan has nowhere to put the barns if we wanted to. So you're talking about, essentially, a whole 'nother Lone Mountain retreat intensive to reestablish who the heck WRM is; new site approval, practically reboot the museum.


Let's see...

The oddball track gage is a very special problem, because the BART "air bag suspension" truck design is entirely unique to BART... and one other system. The Washington Metro Gen-1 Rohr cars, the infamous crashy ones. And yes, they are standard gage. DC can't get rid of those things fast enough, so as a practical concern, preserving BART actually starts Right Now in Washington.

The voltage is the least of my concerns. Actually the prototype BART substation is at BAERA, and powers operation daily. That's about the only thing from the BART prototype era that got preserved. The American Aerotrain is better preserved.

The carbody construction isn't so bizarre that you couldn't work with it. Mostly, it's flimsy. Those cars were intended to be extremely light.

I don't believe the composite wheels exist anymore, however, the axles are hollow.

If only we were preserving 40-year-old "high tech" gear. That stuff is manageable. All the original BART cars have been refitted with more modern controls. Some got AC drive, which will make truck swaps real interesting. The signature "Bizzzzzzzzzz" of pulling out of a station -- gone. The old warbling "Bwauuummmm" of the doors abut to close - fixed. The old brown seats and carpet - blue now. (somebody read "Dress for success".) It all went in a dumpster in Sacramento in the 1990s and nobody thought to preserve it, because nobody conceived of preserving a BART train, let alone rolling one back technically to 1968.

High level loading is standard on third rail systems. The real problem is that BART cars are really wide, so existing high-level stations like at IRM won't do.

Preserving the minidresses: You know, it was (approximately) the Summer of Love.

Not to detract from the other issues relating to operating BART cars in your post, but actually they're not any wider than mainline electric equipment (albeit quite a bit wider than your average streetcar or interurban). Their 10'6" width is the same as the Illinois Central MU cars at IRM; these cars have been run out of the west track at the museum's "L" station, which is set out from the platform more to accommodate wider equipment.

http://www.irm.org/gallery/IC1380/aae

The west track at IRM's "L" station is intended to eventually be a gauntlet track allowing both narrow ("L" standard) and wider (IC, South Shore) equipment to be used. A similar arrangement at WRM maybe possibly might work for displaying - if not operating - a BART car.

I think the only practical way to preserve and operate an old BART car is on the BART system.

Even if changing to standard gauge were possible (which I doubt), California law would not permit third-rail operation in a typical museum setting since the entire ROW of a third-rail system must be fenced (or elevated or underground) to prevent accidental contact with the third rail.

Equipping a BART car with a trolley pole or a pantograph would look ridiculous (in my opinion), and the roof structure would probably not support an overhead current collector in any case.

WRM already has moved to preserve the later 20thC stuff. You have a Boeing LRV. All the same, who says relevance or memory has anything to do with preserving stuff from the past 4 decades? WWII, Civil War, etc...History just gets older. The fact the Civil War is now 150 years old does not make it any less interesting and there are still plenty of re-enactors and tourists without people having direct memories or recent relatives involved.

Also, you need to save three cars. At least one "B", and trains never run in less that three units.

Also, not much of a master plan if it does not anticipate future growth, since that is the purpose of a master plan.

The Western Railway Museum's effort to preserve BART artifacts is being understated here. The question is, is a complete car necessary?

WRM has an extensive archive. The largest single collection in this archive is BART documents. The Museum has a very unique broad gauge M-9 motor car used in the construction of BART; the shove nose cab from the first production car, car 107; the first substation; the prototype propulsion equipment from the first C-Car; samples of wheels and third rail collections systems from the Diablo Test Track (pre BART federal project); and more.

The oppotunity to save an original BART car was lost in 1997 when BART went into a program to extensively rebuild the original fleet of Rohr built cars. The only things that were reused in the rebuilt cars were the aluminum car shell, the truck frames, couplers, and seat frames. Everything else is new. They came back to BART designated as "A2" and "B2" cars. At that time, of the 136 existing original "A" cars, 59 were rebuilt as "A2" cars, but with new fiber glass cabs. The remainder were converted to "B2" cars. The only original cab that survives is the one off car 107, which is at WRM. Cars 101 to 106 were prototypes and never made it into revenue service.

The three original prototype "B" cars, 501, 502 and 503 are still in existance as 1501, 1502 and 1503, but they have been heavly rebuilt and little of the original still exist.

As Robert pointed out, there are many new systems in the west that have preservation opportunities coming up. In my opinion, since saving and preserving a full size operational rail vehicle is so expensive, the few that are chosen should be examples that will operate on the railway WRM has invested so much in already.

At National Capital Trolley Museum our mission is to preserve and interpret the history of electric street railways for the Nation's Capital. Our General Plan for Determining Collections does not anticipate expanding our mission to include rapid transit in the region or beyond, and the new campus was not designed for clearances of Metro equipment. Like an earlier post noted about WRM, we too are a fairly complete Museum in many ways.

So don't look to us at NCTM to take a role in preserving a Rohr car, or a Breda car, or a CAF car, or whatever else is out there on the Washington subway. As for the equipment on the proposed new streetcar line, I will let my grandchildren deal with deciding that matter when the time comes.


We have no problem with taking deliveries at the new facility as evidenced by recent deliveries of cars from NJT and Lake Shore Electric.

Wesley