Or 5' 4 1/2"--"Baltimore gauge".

What prompted my query was the recent donation of Pittsburgh Railways PCC car 1734 to Youngstown Steel Heritage, and trying to determine the best way to move it to Youngstown. While it is not a piece of steelmaking equipment, it will serve as our gift shop until an addition is added to our main building. If we would not have taken it the car most likely would be scrapped, so we are at least giving it a small reprieve from meeting its maker.

Now that I know the car weighs in the neighborhood of 21,000 lbs., I think my strategy will be to build a set of rubber tired trucks using four mobile home axles. Each axle is rated for 6,000 lbs., and they will be attached to a frame made of beams or channel with a center bowl that the bolster pin would go into. With it on these trucks I can then roll the car out of its current location and into an area where it could be winched up onto a landoll. Comealongs attached from the carbody to the trucks would be used for steering.

Once it gets up here to our property it would be rolled off of the landoll to where it will sit, then jacked up, rubber tired trucks rolled out, rail put down an a set of dummy PCC trucks rolled under it. I can get a landoll and driver for $100 an hour, so I anticipate that the entire move will cost less than $1,000 with me doing much of the grunt work as usual.

An alternative idea that we tossed around was the potential for converting this carbody into a traveling exhibit for the YSHM (after the addition has been built). We have a couple of large fairs in the area as well as numerous other events that are held throughout the area that we would like to have a presence at.

So an idea would be to put a subframe under the car that has four axles and a hitch, and basically convert the carbody into a mobile home that could be moved from place to place with a toter. The standard 14x70 mobile home weighs a little bit more that this PCC carbody, so anywhere that a MH could be moved this carbody could be moved. I think it could weigh as much as 26,000 lbs. with 24,000 on the axles and 2,000 on the hitch.

This may sound a bit outlandish, but maybe out of the box thinking is required to find a use for car. If done right, the car could become our mobile museum, attending our two big county fairs as well as a some of the annual downtown street festivals. It would certainly give us more exposure and would most likely become a huge attraction in itself. The Canfield Fair for example attracts 380,000 people per year. Perhaps in between events the car would be jacked up, trailer frame rolled out and trucks rolled back under.

The challenges of this idea would be in the construction of the subframe and the cradle to hold the car, logistics in arranging transport to and from the venues, whether the car will hold up to this unconventional use and of course the purists who think that such use is blasphemy.

This in no way implies that we would do this, I am just saying that it was an idea that was tossed out there for discussion.

If you wish to have non standard-gauge equipment then I think it would be prudent to have a solid place in mind to operate, and in some cases that may be the ONLY place you could operate.

I would not consider it a 'for profit' venture in any way. I never have considered any of this for monetary gain. It's for enjoyment and/or history, and if you have more in the account when finished then when you started, then that's a bonus. (I understand that many of the larger operations HAVE to make money to survive, simply because they stand to loose an enormous amount of money)

I don't see why you would be limited to museums or non-profits. Maybe some of the city transit systems would be OK with it. It's not really any crazier then buying a bus and driving around giving rides. Memphis and Little Rock come to mind, only because they are local. Fort Smith has a museum trolley line.

If I did it I would have my own truck and trailer. You can get used ones for not a ton of cash. You might even be able to fit some of the smaller single trucks on a trailer towed by a 1 ton pickup.

Pennsylvania Trolley Museum - 5'2.5" gauge
Baltimore Streetar Museum - 5'4.5" gauge
Both have enough PCC cars so that they would have no interest in a traveling car.
I don't know what the third non-standard gauge museum is referred to, unless it is the inactive 3' gauge East Broad Top. (the adjacent Rockhill Trolley Museum is standard gauge)

There are enough loose PCC trucks around so that it may be better to pick up a pair rather than building dummy trucks. However, most of the scrap value of a PCC is in the trucks, so they are unlikely to be available fo free.

There is one narrow-gauge PCC operation in the US, but it's in Southern California at Orange Empire Ry. Museum. OERM has four ex-LA Transit Lines PCCs that run on 42" gauge track, the museum also has two San Diego PCCs that are standard-gauge.

Halton County Radial Railway, a museum in Ontario near Toronto, uses the Toronto gauge of 4'-10 7/8".

Halton County also has a sizable collection of PCC cars.

And just in case anyone out there has the hots for a PCC car, be aware that Pennsylvania Trolley Museum has available Pittsburgh Railways PCC 1613 (currently identified as Port Authority Transit 1799 2nd) a 1945 St. Louis product. PTM would like to place this car in good hands elsewhere as an alternative to scrapping it.

Contact info and further data on the car can be found at www.pa-trolley.org

PTM is located very close to I-70 and I-79 at Washington, PA.