Officially known as the Pikes Peak Historical Street Railway Foundation, this group has a number of assets, the best of which is their people. Every Saturday from 10-4 is a work day so I scheduled my trip to Pueblo for July 7th. Stuck back in a light industrial area, they were a little hard to find. I introduced myself and ask if they were running anything today. Well the regular group was not there that day but the gentleman I was talking to took me to meet Irene who was working in a flower bed. Irene was a very charming lady who I would estimate was about 85 years old. She said she would be glad to take me for a ride in one of their PCC cars. While the first fellow was looking for the key, Irene explained that she had first operated one of these PCC cars in Pittsburgh in 1942. She did that for many years though I can't recall how many she said. The key was located, the power was turned on and off we went ... for about 150 ft. This group rents the remains of an old Rock Island round house and a few acres of land from the City of Pueblo and the only track they have to run on is 150 ft to the gate. Before we started back, Irene entertained me with several interesting stories from her days as an operator in Pittsburgh. On one trip she just had to shut down the car and wait because of the bonfires built on the tracks by people celebrating the end of World War II.
After a couple of more passes on that 150 ft of track we put the car away and I got a short tour of the other projects the group was working on. They had several early 1900's trolleys that were receiving extensive renovation, in some cases requiring fabrication of major wooden components. They also have several more of the PCC cars, all needing only minor work to get them running. Their long range plan is to install tracks in part of downtown Colorado Springs and restore streetcar service there using these PCC cars.
No comments:
Post a Comment