Destruction of Montreal's PCC Streetcars

The Destruction of Montreal's PCC Streetcars

In the 1930s, the Presidents' Conference Committee was formed to design a new streetcar to help breathe new life into street railway systems in North America. The result was a sleek, modern streetcar named the PCC after the committee who designed it.
PCC trolleys could accelerate smoothly and brake faster than most modern automobiles, and provided an extremely comfortable ride, even on poor track. Each car could hold nearly twice as many passengers as an average city bus and in America the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association reported that a PCC car would use only $6 worth of pollution free electricity per hour of operation compared with $32 worth of diesel fuel per hour for a bus.
PCC cars differed in other ways. Braking was electromagnetic. The PCC motorman was seated (motormen on other type cars could stand while driving), and foot pedals replaced conventional hand controls for acceleration and braking.
The cars operated in a number of Canadian and American cities, including Brooklyn and Philadelphia and many are still in use in many localities today. For example, a number of PCC cars, painted in various cities' paint schemes, have now been restored to service on San Francisco's Market Street line, supplemented by more conventional Peter Witt cars imported from Milan, Italy. Plans are under way to restore PCC service to Brooklyn, NY.
In 1944, 50 of the streamlined, PCC streetcars were ordered for service in Toronto. However, because of the continuing war, the order was split among Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, with 18 cars, numbered 3500-3517, sent to Montreal. The car bodies were constructed by St. Louis Car in Missouri (just like Montreal's first electric streetcar, Montreal Street Railway number 350 - the "Rocket"), and completed by Canadian Car and Foundry in Montreal. The cars were modern looking with a number of differences from conventional streetcars. For example, these were the only PCCs built without a headlight.
Though most of their time was spent on the Outremont 29 line, they frequently operated in the Rosemount 54 service, travelling south on Papineau to turn at Dorchester (now René-Lévesque).
As sleek as they appeared, PCC cars were never really popular in Montreal, perhaps because of the extreme snow conditions. On August 30th, 1959, Montreal's last streetcar, PCC car number 3517, entered the Mount Royal Carbarn for the last time. Unlike her unfortunate sisters who met their fate in the Montreal waterfront scrap yard in 1964, number 3517 was preserved by the Canadian Railroad Historical Association at the Canadian Railway Museum at Delson, Quebec.
The following film clip, taken by the author, shows this destruction and was filmed in 8 mm, digitized, and converted to a QuickTime movie. It is the only known film of the destruction.

References

Angus, F. (1971). Remember Montreal's Streetcars. Montreal: Canadian Railroad Historical Association.
Brooklyn Historic Railway Association. (2002). History of the Streetcar.
Sebree, G. Mac. (2005, Spring) PCC: The Wonder Car. Classic Trains. 32-35.

June 12, 2003
8th revision 2005/04/16