St. Charles — PCC Proposal

Rail Transit Online, June 2007

Nine former St. Louis/San Francisco PCC streetcars have been trucked to New Town, Missouri, a suburb of St. Charles, for possible service as a local circulator.  New Town is a planned retro community located northwest of St. Louis and is now about half finished.  There are to be five compact neighborhoods connected by a wide boulevard surrounding a series of lakes, with homes that resemble century-old designs rather than typical post-war ranch houses.  One neighborhood contains a traditional town square lined with mixed-use buildings.  New Town developer Whittaker Builders Inc. arranged the purchase and transportation of the streetcars at a cost of $243,000.  The former owned was Gunnar Henrioulle, who two decades ago purchased 18 cars from the San Francisco Municipal Railway and stored them outdoors on his South Lake Tahoe property in hopes of building a heritage streetcar line in Sacramento or in the Lake Tahoe resort area.  

The city of St. Charles and Whittaker Homes have formed a committee to negotiate restoration of the cars, many of which are significantly deteriorated.  An initial seven-mile line has been suggested that would act as a circulator within New Town.  It would also connect to St. Charles’ Main Street historic district and to employment and health centers, a casino and to another Whittaker development near Interstate 70.  A consultant will conduct a feasibility study on the idea.  “It may be pie in the sky or it may be practical, we don't know,” St. Charles City Councilman Michael Klinghammer, chairman of the trolley committee, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  “It's too early to tell.”  Where the estimated $26 million for construction will come from hasn’t been determined, although federal funding has been suggested.  A local tax increase appears to be unrealistic; St. Charles County has twice voted against financing a MetroLink light rail extension and the city’s small bus transit system has experienced disappointing ridership.

Whittaker reportedly wants to restore two PCCs to promote the trolley line, and it’s been suggested that the cars might temporarily be placed on sites around town and used as everything from a diner to a bookstore.  Meanwhile, the PCCs are being stored outdoors on a former farm.  They were built by St. Louis Car Co. and delivered to St. Louis Public Service in 1946.  They were sold to the San Francisco Municipal Railway in 1957, where they remained until being retired in 1982.  St. Louis scrapped its last streetcar line in 1966 but the last trolley to serve the St. Charles area ran in 1932.