On another forum someone mentioned that the ex Melbourne streetcars that were operated on the waterfront in Seattle WA. have been sold but the city is not saying who they were sold too. They had been in storage for several years. Does anyone know anything about this? I wonder who bought them.

I have no inside info, but I hope it's true. The cars will never run again in Seattle, that's become quite obvious. In fact, I was told as much years ago by somebody who was in a position to know. Problems included the wood bodies, age of the cars, trolley poles rather than pantographs, the car's need for high level platforms (this is a total deal breaker on it's own) and the fact that while the cars were maintained to very high standards, they're simply wearing out and would need significant work to continue maintaining them to the standards needed for daily transit service.

Like the Portland Historic trolley replicas, they're victims of a transit system that has expanded and is no longer interested in maintaining a few "oddballs", especially ones for which parts are difficult to obtain.

The funny part is that most of the line is still there, complete with the stations and all the signage (I think the tracks are now isolated). The last time I was down in the dock area a few weeks ago, I saw someone just off a cruise ship sitting at the one across from pier 66, waiting impatiently for a trolley that would never come.
They look like this:

Memphis, Tenn. might take them.

One of my moles in the heritage trolley business believes the Melbourne cars are going to the proposed Delmar Loop trolley in St. Louis.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.

Since the new owners appear to be holding their cards close, I won't comment on where they are going.

I can confirm they are not coming to Memphis.

Gord

As someone who actually knew George Benson, I have to say that the city's (and county's) inaction over the last 10 years has been disappointing, to say the least. While I don't yet know where the cars are going, more than likely it will be a much better place, with good caretakers/stewards, rather than sitting forgotten and forlorn in a warehouse.

I consider myself lucky to have ridden the cars in 1995.

Update from the APTA Streetcar & Heritage Trolley website (posted in January):

First Hill (Line) Begins Service & New Plans for Waterfront Streetcars

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Additions and corrections are welcome. Thanks in advance.

Seattle, Charlotte, Pueblo, a town near you?

It is a tough call. These are three examples where a heritage trolley started, because that was what the public was willing to experiment with. In each case, the public transitioned to a willingness to get serious about public transit and light rail. And I can say certainly for Seattle and Charlotte, that the modern systems are a great success.

So, we are sad at the heritage line abandonment, but can we be happy for the transit renaissance that they started?

In Seattle I think it's a bit more complicated than that. First came the effort, spearheaded by George Benson, to build the heritage line along the Waterfront in the 1980's (and later to extend the line up S. Main Street to just east of King Street Station, at the western edge of the International District/Chinatown), and around the same time that the Waterfront Line's fate was being decided, there was another effort to establish the beginnings of a new modern streetcar network, basically copying what Portland, OR, had done (Seattle and Portland kind of have this unofficial "conflict" of trying to outdo and upstage one another; i.e. "anything you can do I can do better").

The popularity and success of the Waterfront Line, while maybe setting a good example to go by, did not necessarily directly lead to the eventual construction of the current South Lake Union and First Hill Lines; i.e. it's not the usual case of "one thing led to another". However, I will say that the planned First Avenue Line, which will be located (depending on where exactly along the northwest-southeast axis of Downtown you're looking at) one to three blocks east of Alaskan Way and the former Waterfront Line, has been for some time "the backup plan" to reestablishing the Waterfront Line.

If the Waterfront Line is ever reestablished using modern cars (and it's looking more and more like that's not going to happen with First Avenue Line plans moving forward), it will now have to wait for two major infrastructure projects to be completed:

1) The Seawall Replacement Project. The Seawall in some areas is over a hundred years old, and replacement has been on the drawing board for years, and is now finally underway, albeit in "phases", so that additional funding will need to be allocated to start "Phase 2" along the northern half of the Waterfront.

2) The Alaskan Way Viaduct* Replacement Project (i.e. the new State Route 99 Tunnel). If you live around here, you know of the continuing sagas of the "World's Largest Tunnel Boring Machine!", known as Bertha. We came up with a fitting acronym for this constantly-having-issues machine: "Bad Earth Ruins Tunnel Hopes, Alas!".

*The Alaskan Way Viaduct, the 1950's-era structure which currently carries Highway 99, should not be confused with the surface-level Alaskan Way, which is the one-and-only northwest-southeast thoroughfare along the Waterfront, which the former Waterfront Line paralleled.