Bobby Ogage posted:For Brooklyn Dodger baseball fans, here is how the team got its name.
Dodging trolley cars to get into Ebbets Field.
Car No. 1000 is the first PCC car.
Hi Bobby:
Nice shots of trolleys in front of Ebbets Field. But are you sure about car #1000 being the first PCC car?
Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp. did place the first ORDER for PCC Cars. But sources disagree on which PCC car was the first to be delivered to a customer. One source (#1 below) indicates that Brooklyn car #1001 (not #1000) was rushed to completion by St. Louis Car Co. and was the first PCC Car delivered in May 1936 albeit with some hand-made components. Source #2 says Pittsburgh Railways car #100 was also rushed to completion and the first to be delivered to a customer but that source does not give a delivery date. I did see a delivery date elsewhere of June 1936 for Pittsburgh car #100 so I believe the honor of first DELIVERED PCC car goes to BQT #1001. Car #1001 is referred to as the first “Production” PCC.
Brooklyn car #1000 in your photo was a one-of-a-kind PCC built by Clark Equipment using an aluminum body supplied by Alcoa. The table in the appendix of Source #1 says that it was delivered in 1937. BTW the standee windows on car #1000 were a first for a PCC as standee windows did not become an option on PCC’s until after WWII.
Now we Pittsburghers would rather define “first PCC car” as the first PCC to carry fare-paying passengers. That honor does go to Pittsburgh Railways #100 which went into service no later than September 1936 (again sources disagree on the exact month) whereas the first Brooklyn PCC car did not go into service until October 1936.
Among the sources I used were:
1. The 1986 book “The PCC Car – An American Original” by Seymour Kashin and Harre Demoro. (FWIW - the relevant info on Wikipedia came from this book)
2. The 1980 book “PCC – The Car That Fought Back” by Stephen Carlson and Fred Schneider.
3. The 1983 book “PCC From Coast to Coast” by the same two authors
Bill
