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| DC Transit 1101, the first PCC type street car to arrive in Washington, DC, passes the passenger shelter at Fishhook Siding in January 2019. The wooded surroundings of this part of our railway provide a decent idea of what some parts of the 82 line, the route shown on the roll sign, would have looked like. Photo by Bill Monaghan, NCTM Collections. |
St. Louis Car Company, 1937
Washington, D.C.
Principal Features
Double truck, Single end PCC city car
Four Westinghouse 1432 motors
Clark B-2 trucks
99 Step Westinghouse controller
History
The Electric Railway Presidents' Conference Committee (PCC) car brought to the Nation's Capital years of design work to create a standard of modern excellence for street cars in the United States. Capital Transit inaugurated PCC service with the 14th Street line on August 24, 1937. Nearly twenty-five years later on January 28, 1962, DCTS 1101 wore a large banner across its dash, "D.C. Transit / Last Day / of Streetcars," to commemorate the conversion of the 14th Street car line to diesel bus operation.
Although the PCC represents standardization in street car design, operating companies and car builders individualized their vehicles. Conduit current supply and forty-four foot transfer tables gave Washington's PCCs two unique characteristics, underground plows and one less window on a side. As an early PCC, DCTS 1101 does not have the standee windows of the "post-war cars" and does employ compressed air for windshield wipers, door engines, and brakes for the final stop. The Company replaced the original external, wheel-mounted brake shoes with internal, propeller shaft-mounted drum brakes when it extended the dynamic braking down to two miles per hour.
Mr. O. Roy Chalk, president of D.C. Transit System, donated DCTS 1101 to the Museum in March, 1970.
Join us next week as we present a special article about the museum and how we preserve the legacy of DC's street car network, one of the best transit systems in the world.
