The new PA Trolley car is P&WCT/PST car 83. The photos make it appear to be sister car 80, but Red Arrow 80 is in Scranton, operating at the Electric City Trolley Museum.

83 joins another sister car, 78, at the PA Trolley Museum, outside of Washington PA. The cars were not designed to operate in MU.

Phil Mulligan

I missed it completely! Red Arrow 83 is not a P&W (Philadelphis and Western) car; it is a P&WCT (Philadelphia and West Chester Traction) car. Both ran from 69th St. Terminal.

P&W was a RR gauge(4' 8 1/2") interurban to Strafford and Norristown. The Norristown Line still runs and SEPTA inludes it in their "High Speed" network.

P&WCT was a SE Pa trolley gauge (5' 2 1/4") suburban line to West Chester, Ardmore, Media snd Sharon Hill. Media and Sharon Hill still run and SEPTA shows them separately as trolley lines.

To round things out, NE Pa trolley gauge is RR gauge and W Pa gauge is 5' 2 1/2"

Phil Mulligan

As explained at the PTM website link provided by ADM IV above, this is actually car 83, which SEPTA had renumbered to 86 late in its service life. The original 86, which was reportedly in poor condition (but may have had time left on its insurance policy?) was scrapped at that time.

Sister car 77, whose trucks were converted to standard gauge by Lyons Industries, remains at the M&H. Of the original ten Red Arrow Brill Master Unit cars, six survive, although only 78 and 80 are currently operable.

As Phil notes above, not all Pennsylvania trolleys were broad gauge or even the same broad gauge. Generally, southeastern Pennsylvania was 62 ¼ inch track gauge while southwestern Pennsylvania was 62 ½ inch track gauge. Altoona used 63-inch gauge while Johnstown was actually standard gauge, as were virtually all the trolley companies in the northern part of the state. But, in addition to variations in track gauge, there were many variations in the amount of freeplay between the wheel flanges and the rail. Philadelphia & West Chester Traction, which futilely hoped to someday run all the way into Center City over the broad gauge Market Street Subway-Elevated, elected to provide more freeplay than Philly's city trolley system. I've not yet had a chance to crawl under 83 to see what its back-to-back wheel gauge might be and whether it will consistently play well with guarded specialwork in PTM's track. Sister car 78's back-to-back is borderline acceptable. Red Arrow's wheel profiles are also different, as their treads are both wider than city system wheels and cylindrical versus tapered. One of the great things about standards is there are so many of them!

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.
Director of Engineering
Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, Inc.