Dan-
There is one other possibility you may wish to consider. As you may know, SEPTA operated used CTA 6000-series PCC el cars on the Norristown line in the 1980s/90s. MTH CTA sets for these cars still show up on ebay from time to time. Make sure you get the red-white-blue CTA Bicentennial livery. From there, you can operate the cars almost as-is after you change out the car numbers, destination signs, and logos. They ran this way initially until subsequently repainted into SEPTA's Bicentennial livery. I have some of these cars already and intend to repaint full SEPTA at some future date.
If Joe Ogden finally does come out with O-scale Almond Joys, however, I'm ready to play.
Good luck and best wishes.