Dallas — PCC for McKinney

Rail Transit Online, January 2004

Volunteers at the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority (MATA) hope to have their latest acquisition, a PCC streetcar obtained from the defunct Tandy Subway in Fort Worth, ready to carry passengers by mid-year.  The heavily modified car was obtained nearly a year ago after the 5,400-ft. (869 meter) double-track subway, built some 40 years ago by the owners of Leonard’s department store as a parking lot shuttle, was shut down by the property’s current owner, RadioShack Corp. (see RTOL, Mar. 2003 & Sept. 2002).  The firm intends to build a new office complex on the site of the 5,000-space parking lot.  MATA workers have nicknamed the trolley “Winnie” because it’s boxy body, which replaced classic PCC coachwork, resembles a lumbering Winnebago motor home.  Among MATA’s modifications are headlights, turn signals and brake lights to enable the PCC to operate on city streets; the restoration of trolley poles and retrievers; new wiring; and original “bullet” interior lighting fixtures to replace the fluorescent units installed when the former DC Transit car was rebuilt for use in Fort Worth.  Also required were stairwells, which were ripped out of the cars when the boxy bodies were installed because the Tandy line had high platforms.  Finally, a new livery of red and crème will be applied.  “We’re trying to make her a little less ugly,” MATA Chief Operating Officer John Landrum told the Dallas Morning News.  MATA paid $3,600 for the 1947-built car and will spend another $5,000 — plus hundreds of hours of donated labor — to refurbish her.  Ridership on MATA’s existing fleet of four heritage trolleys now totals about 3,000 a week, and a proposed extension to the downtown Arts District and DART’s St. Paul light rail station is still on the drawing board.