Today we celebrate the arrival of HTM 1329, which arrived at our Museum exactly 20 years ago!
HTM 1329 was delivered to the Haagsche Tramweg Maatschappij (HTM) in The Hague (the Netherlands) on December 17, 1971, and was placed in service on January 19, 1972. The car had an uneventful life in The Hague – it ran on just about all tram lines without major incidents during its (relatively short) working life. Its last day of regular service was on June 30, 1993, when the era of all PCCs in The Hague came to an end.
On May 7th, 2001, HTM 1329 said goodbye to The Hague and started its transatlantic journey via Amsterdam and Baltimore (on the “Hual Trubadour”) to Colesville, where it arrived on June 1st at 3:15 p.m. to begin a new chapter in its life at our Museum.
By acquiring HTM 1329 the Museum obtained what can be referred to as a “third generation PCC” because of its solid state circuitry boards. NCTM is the only museum in North America with all three generations of PCC cars in its collection (see picture), namely air-electric (generation 1: Washington cars 1101, 1430, 1470, and 1540), all-electric (generation 2: TTC cars 4602 and 4603), and solid state controlled (generation 3: HTM 1329). Also, the HTM PCCs were the last ones manufactured in the world that still retained much of the original PCC curvilinear body design dating back to 1936. Their modern design shows us what might have been the evolution of the PCC car in North America, had major abandonments not occurred here during the late 1940’s and 1950’s.
The Museum would like to acknowledge its Maintenance & Restoration crew under the leadership of Bob Clarke, and especially George Epperson, John Novack, Kirt Stanfield and Steve Serra, who have spent numerous hours understanding the technologically advanced 1329 (with documentation in Dutch and French). We also thank Bert de Lange in The Hague (former procurement liaison at HTM) for his invaluable support, not just during the acquisition process, but also throughout the last 20 years. The 1329 has, at times, presented some unique challenges and Bert has been willing and able to provide technical information and support during the car’s “second life” at NCTM.
Special thanks go to Jim Hogan for his dedication and perseverance to add HTM 1329 to NCTM’s PCC collection, and for his contributions to this article.
Photos
Photo by Bill Monaghan, April 2018
Museum members: please see the latest edition of the Headway Recorder NCTM newsletter for a more in depth discussion on HTM 1329.
For additional information on this car, click here to read an article by former NCTM Treasurer Charles Tirschman.