San Diego, CA - Silver Line

Ah finally!

Made it San Diego on a day the Silver Line was actually running.  I went down last December hoping to cross it off the list but, incredibly, it had rained the previous day and there was electrical damage, so the PCC was a no go.

I made sure this time.

@vintagetrolleys Yes, the Vintage Trolley will be operating its regular Saturday/Sunday hours this weekend. Thanks for checking!
— San Diego MTS (@sdmts) May 19, 2014

So the Silver Line is a loop through downtown utilizing existing tracks which the regular MTS service uses. To ride the full loop it's best to start at the 12th and Imperial Transfer Center (bottom right on the map below).

We arrived at the station which, if you haven't been, is a zoo as it is THE station in San Diego. People & trains everywhere. Luckily we had a clue as to where to wait for our more unique train.

The excitement mounts. Will we finally catch a ride on the elusive San Diego Silver Line?

It pulls up about 5 minutes later and takes a breather as I try to buy tickets with my partially demagnetized debit card. But alas, success.

I'll let the pics do the talking from here until the conclusion...

Hey man, quit chatting...trying to get a picture here.

Not quite as clean as the Kenosha panorama. The driver was about to hit the road so it was kind of rushed.

They don't make 'em like they used to. Builders.

The guy on the left is also impressed with this majestic machine.

Anyway, I was happy to finally finish the California trifecta of San Francisco (although I will probably ride the Market Street line every time I go back), San Pedro, and finally San Diego.

In honor of this completion, I also made the San Diego Silver Line t-shirt if you want to check it out. Most other cities that had PCCs at one time are in the shop as well.  Feel free to check them all out! And if you have ideas for a new design, or want a certain combo of trains on a shirt, let me know in the comments, Twitter, or Instagram (@vintagetrolleys)

Shirts available at http://skreened.com/vintagetrolleys  Also, there is a $5.00 discount at checkout with this code although it expires on 6/6/14 : FIVEOFF4TH

The brand new San Diego Silver Line PCC shirt! 

Where to next? I hear Toronto has been rolling out their PCCs and older models lately. Maybe there?

Kenosha, WI - Downtown Streetcar Loop

Kenosha, Wisconsin is an often overlooked city on lake Michigan about halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago. It is the furthest northbound stop on the METRA, Chicago's commuter rail, and those tracks essentially separate the downtown from the outlying neighborhoods to the west.


View Larger Map

Anyway, I had a week off (still have some of that left) and it was time to visit mom in Wisconsin and my sister in Chicago. Finally I would get the chance to check off one of the more unique locations running vintage streetcars.

Not sure of how the system worked, my mom and I just started walking next to the tracks and looking back every so often. After a couple of blocks we saw it approaching in the distance.

Looking West on 56th St....train approaching.

As it got closer, something looked funny with the paint job. It was green in the style of the former Chicago streetcars of years past. This was all accurate except the nose of the vehicle. What was this white, strangely shaped area? Ugh. The Easter Bunny.

Why, Kenosha? Why?

So at first I was a little confused. I came all this way to ride a paper and electrical tape rabbit on wheels? Can't I just peel that rabbit off for my picture? Then I decided that it is these types of oddities on this streetcar adventure that will make this more than a bunch of words and pictures about trains. This was so weird. This was so Wisconsin.

We got on the completely empty train and paid our one buck fare. The train operator was very cordial and desperately bored. Any time he saw someone remotely close to the tracks he would slow down, while probably making puppy dog eyes out the window to guilt them into boarding. 

The interior was really well done. They modernized it a little bit with some cushioning on the seats and a wheelchair lift at the back doors, but the lights still had that 1940s glow to them.

Our operator looking for some additional company.

We did the full loop through downtown, past the lakeshore and back around. We thanked our friend up front, and hit the road to Chicago. Kenosha is great. From the people walking around and specifically the operator who wanted to show people around, I have a new city on my list to return to as much as possible.

My weird stitched together panoramic...

Goodbye, Kenosha. So long, Easter Bunny.

Boston, MA - MBTA Ashmont-Mattapan Hi-Speed Line

How could I not ride this line? I'm FROM here.

I used to ride PCCs similar to, or exactly like these when I was a kid.  They were painted green back then as I grew up on the D branch of the Green Line and my mom would take me into preschool at Copley while she went to work at the French library a couple of blocks away in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Unfortunately, this is what has become of most of the old Green Line PCCs.

There was even a train driver we called "The Singing Conductor" who sang each stop through the intercom. Occasionally he would let me stand up front, ring the bell, and open the doors. Yes, a 3 year old driving a 21 ton train. Hey, it was the 70s.

Back to a more recent past...

As usual, we went back to Boston for the holidays to revisit our roots. I planned on taking the Red Line from Alewife (closest stop to where we were staying) all the way to Ashmont in Dorchester, then grabbing a roundtrip ride the Ashmont-Mattapan line, or the M-Line as it is casually known. As many holidays are, especially when visiting old friends and family, things got busy and things didn't look great for riding the M-Line. Fortunately because of the horrible weather that had been going on, JetBlue (best airline) was offering free changes to tickets. So why not stay another week?

A look at the Red Line. Alewife is top-left. Ashmont-Mattapan is bottom-middle.

A couple of days before our flight, we decided it was time. We jumped on the Red Line and headed out. About an hour later, we arrived at Ashmont and waited....and waited...it's about 20 degrees, so 5 minutes feels more like 30. At last, there it was. 

The M-Line after it dropped us back off at the Ashmont station.

It's a strange line because it runs the seam of two very different neighborhoods. On the right side of the car (traveling outbound) you have Dorchester and Mattapan, two historically working class and sometimes impoverished areas of Boston. On the left is Milton, MA, an upscale town where families rake in an average of $131,000 per year. Kind of Boston in a nutshell though. Something as narrow as the Neponset River can be the difference between the struggle and the good life. Crazy place I grew up in.

This was my favorite so far of the three cities. One, it's home. Two, this train isn't a tourist attraction like the San Francisco and San Pedro. People use it to get to work and home. It runs through a graveyard and the backwoods next to the river. So I guess this just felt the most genuine and brought me closer to 1979 than the others.

BONUS:

On our way back we jumped off the Red Line at Park Street and headed over to the Boylston (Green Line) stop. I wanted to see if they still stored 2 old streetcars there, a PCC and an even earlier generation MTA car. Indeed they were. They're enclosed on an isolated track so there was no way to take much of a closer look, but they were still worth the detour.

An old MTA Boston Elevated Railway car behind a fence at Boylston.

San Francisco, CA - F Market Line

Next up...San Francisco.

I actually lived in San Francisco and Oakland from 2009 to 2012 and these passed me by some 4000 times and I never gave them a thought. I always liked streetcars, but I guess my head was elsewhere. Instead, I was usually jumping the less aesthetically pleasant BART to City College of San Francisco from MacArthur Station in Oakland and back.

How very late 1960s. It does the trick but it ain't pretty.

Anyway, we had a trip planned for SF in October of 2013 and figured this was the time to do it. We parked in the Castro section of town and hoped to get on a true vintage San Francisco train, as the line runs trains modeled after many different cities, including Milan, Italy. Amazingly, the first train to pull up...a double ended San Francisco PCC (President's Conference Committee).

The glorious 1006 SF-painted. double-ended PCC picking us up.

There was some Italian festival toward the end of the line so we were cut short by a couple of stops. We got off to see what train was going to get us back to our cars. Up pulls a PCC with a Louisville, KY paint scheme. The funny story about this, is that Louisville never actually ran PCCs. They got cold feet after buying a handful of them and ended up going with buses. How boring.

It was a bumpier ride back but nonetheless we returned to the Castro and considered the trip a success.

The Louisville PCC freshly after kicking us to the curb.

San Pedro, CA - Los Angeles Red Car

I should have started this last year when I decided to attempt this odd feat, but I didn't, so I have some catching up to do.

I began my quest to ride every vintage trolley line in the U.S. and Canada this past August 24th. I am currently living in Long Beach, CA so my first stop was just over the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro. There they have a single line running from 22nd St and Miner to the World Cruise Center just north of downtown.

The 501 trolley before we stepped on at 22nd St in San Pedro. 

We went up and back, and while it was a short trip, it allowed me to see a part of Los Angeles that I wouldn't otherwise have any reason to go to. They mentioned that they may be expanding the line more, but this was definitely a start.