Sacramento Northern sees first PCC car

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:03 pm

The Sacramento Northern is a high speed interurban line which once ran from San Francisco to Chico. Service discontinued in 1941. About 20 miles of it are now preserved by the Western Railway Musuem, and 5 miles are re-electrified.

The SN owned Birneys for local service in towns. Birney 62 is owned by the Western Railway Museum, and on one occasion, it was taken to San Francisco and operated on city streets. This was a stretch for the little car, because it had full railroad size wheels. SN never contemplated PCCs, and if they had, their cars would requires some wider wheel comparable to the Shaker Heights wheels. This fact kept the Western Railway Museum's PCCs off the SN main.

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PCC Wheels.jpg [ 37.17 KiB | Viewed 2973 times ]

Enter the sale of the Brookins collection. It included a set of loose PCC trucks with the magical "Shaker Heights" wheels. It's little known that WRM bought anything from that collection, but it did buy those trucks. Some degree of knuckle-busting later to swap the wheels, and...

Voila. For the first time in history, a PCC car - a Muni car, no less - stepped out onto the Sacramento Northern mainline and ran the electrified length of the line. This is 1016, nearing completion in the WRM shop and in need of a road-test.

Bob Davis · **Joined:** Sat Aug 28, 2004 3:25 am **Posts:** 1025

A-mazing! The term "fish out of water" comes to mind. Good thing Muni PCC's have two poles. And the photo was framed to exclude the modern wind turbines that dot the landscape near Rio Vista Jct. Any plans for installing wider wheels on Muni 1003 or 178? I can just see SN 1005 either before or after 1016 in an electric railway parade, then add in Key System 271 for an even greater contrast. Also: 1016 looks good! I'm sure a lot of dings and dents from the days amid the chaotic traffic of MuniLand had to be dealt with.

Ted Miles · **Posted:** Wed Mar 31, 2010 11:44 am

Bob,
A fish out of water is sure right. But I can't fault over two years of hard work on that PCC by mainly two people. They did body work, had a new front fender made and installed it at the Shop, prepped and painted both the inside and outside of the car. Overhauled the seats and lots of interior details. To say nothing of changing out a bad traction motor so it can run again.

This is actually the second PCC type restoration at WRM back in the late 1960s the MUNI pre-PCC expirmental car #1005 was converted back to two man operation and painted back to the blue and gold of the 1939-40 Worlds Fair era. The car even has the red stripe that it had when it was new in the 1940s. Rather than the foot pedals of a usual PCC it has the hand power Cranston controllers. There are now compromise wheels available for the car for future installation.

Ted Miles

Bob Davis · **Joined:** Sat Aug 28, 2004 3:25 am **Posts:** 1025

Thanks for the reply. "Magic Carpet" car 1003 certainly is a showpiece, and being a double ender would be easier to run on the main line. Does WRM have a wheel press?--as I recall the car has the Brill rather than PCC trucks.

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Wed Mar 31, 2010 7:56 pm

Bob Davis wrote:

A-mazing! The term "fish out of water" comes to mind. Good thing Muni PCC's have two poles. And the photo was framed to exclude the modern wind turbines that dot the landscape near Rio Vista Jct. Any plans for installing wider wheels on Muni 1003 or 178?

I believe there are more Shaker Heights rims coming for two other cars, I suspect the 1003 and the 1153 which is our other PCC. I wonder if it would be possible to have more Shaker Heights wheels cast - I mean they are wearing items, right?

As for your (non) request, I'll happily oblige.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21971207@N05/
You really gotta zoom to get the "windmill" thing...