Article on making replacement parts for 100+ year old streetcars

[y_p_w]

The San Francisco Municipal Railway (which ironically is primarily a bus operator) operates cable cars and streetcars that can be over 100 years old. Apparently without any maintenance manuals that have been lost to time, as well as inconsistent build standards where parts may not match others (reminds me of Soviet era military aircraft).

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/muni-cable-cars-streetcars-19549971.php​

“We had no drawings,” said machinist Bob Brown, who Rullhausen described as “the conductor” of Muni’s historic streetcar fleet. “We had to look at the wore out parts, try to figure out what size they used to be, make them and then make everything fit by measuring all the widths of the (frame’s) holes that go in to make each piece fit that location.”​

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In 2022, after months of calculations and manufacturing the necessary components, the machinists mounted the streetcar’s newly built frame — a spitting image of the frame it debuted with more than a century ago — to its set of wheels. It was a snug fit.​

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Repairing another historic streetcar, No. 916, required Brown to custom make more than 600 individual parts, including new axles, bolt gears, motor bearings and hundreds of bushings.​

 

[Kira]

Three cheers for old rolling stock, but, wouldn't it be smarter to design something new from the ground up using existing parts / methods.

For the cable cars all you need to fit is the clamper which goes into the street and grabs the cable and the track gauge.

I was at one of the termini (where the big cable drive wheels are) when a truckload of oak friction brake blocks was delivered.

 

[74DartSport]

If we’re discussing the cable cars, they are a national historic landmark and probably restricted to appearance.

 

[ecotourist]

And if they're still running after 100 years they were probably a pretty good design in the first place.

 

[eagle14]

If we’re discussing the cable cars, they are a national historic landmark and probably restricted to appearance.

New Orleans has a similar situation, with the green Purley Thomas streetcars (aka trolley cars). As I recall, most of them were made in the 1920s and parts, as expected, are not available, so the transit company makes those parts themselves. They too are considered historic. They were saved from Katrina by being stored in one of the uptown trolley barns during that storm. The red ones are much newer, were not stored that way during Katrina, and most were destroyed by Katrina's floodwaters..

 

[gman2304]

Many streetcars from over a century ago were built by a company in the city I live in, High Point, N.C. Perley A. Thomas Car Works started building streetcars around 1920 and built many of the SF cars as well as many for New Orleans and many other cities in the U.S. In Tennessee Williams’ play ‘ A streetcar named desire ‘ number 922 was built in High Point and still operates in NOLA. In the 1930’s buses started taking over city public transportation and Thomas started building buses. Thomas Built Buses is still building buses but were bought by Daimler ag/Freightliner LLC quite a few years ago. The company employs over 1,600 people.

 

[y_p_w]

The streetcar that was featured in the article still isn't ready to roll. Apaprently it was finished in 2018 but then damaged during transportation from the vendor in Southern California to San Francisco. This says it was made by the Jewett Car Company of Ohio back in 1914.

https://www.streetcar.org/streetcars/162-162-muni-1950s-livery/​

2018​

Repairs are completed by vendor, who damages the car’s trucks on return to San Francisco; reentry to service is delayed while trucks are being rebuilt by Muni shops.​

 

[SC Maintenance]

Getting paid to make a streetcar from scratch sounds like a cool job. Where do I apply?

 

[PandaBear]

If we’re discussing the cable cars, they are a national historic landmark and probably restricted to appearance.

You can't modify / repair an antique too much without making it no longer an antique. That's the biggest problem. Most of the riders are tourists and if you just put them on the equivalent of a school bus they would be kind of disappointed.

 

[y_p_w]

You can't modify / repair an antique too much without making it no longer an antique. That's the biggest problem. Most of the riders are tourists and if you just put them on the equivalent of a school bus they would be kind of disappointed.

Depends. MUNI has built some cable cars from scratch fairly recently. They had to retire a few because there was no way to safely reuse their bodies. Here's one that was built in 2009.

https://www.streetcar.org/cablecars/15-No-15-MSRy-yellow/