ONLY ON ABC-7: Restoration of El Paso streetcars ‘a pretty big feat’
The El Paso Streetcars undergoing restoration are making progress.
It was two years ago when six El Paso Streetcars arrived in Brookville, Pennsylvania for restoration.The Presidents Conference Committee streetcars or PCC’s were manufactured in 1937.
The City of El Paso visited crews with the Brookville Equipment Corporation to see the process firsthand.
The first step in the restoration process, is tearing the cars down.
“When it arrives, this is tore down to a little bit of further state,” Joel McNeill with Brookville Equipment Corporation said.
Then crews work on what’s called the metal blasting process. “With high pressure air, we blow through the nozzle what looks to be air, it’s actually steel grit. And so that blast against the frame of the streetcar, and removes everything down just to the bare steel substraight,” McNeill said.
Crews also analyze the parts that have been corroded and replace it with new steel.
The streetcars will be much more advanced and accessible to all riders, crews are incorporating a wheelchair lift into this stairwell. The crew cuts the interior structure to make way for the wheelchair lift and engineers work to test the and retest the frame.
“From an engineering standpoint it’s a pretty big feat, we have to go in and structurally make sure the car has got the same strength, by redesigning how it was what was originally built to structurally hold up the car,” McNeill said.
Crews are making the old cars, new again, using the same color scheme as before, but revamping them, adding LED lights, wifi and air conditioning.
Once the streetcars are ready, they’ll ride along a 4.8 mile route, coming back to service for the first time since 1974.
“These are the cars that ran on city streets previously so that’s something special but what will actually incorporate it are things that we as riders expect today so you have your wifi, your air conditioning, you have modern propulsion that’s going to make these cars super reliable really inside this historical car is a modern street car so it’s really the best of both worlds,” McNeill said.
