This car’s design is based on streetcars that operated in Boston, Massachusetts and is built on a heavily modified VW Beetle chassis. It was built in Tucson in the early 1980s by an ex-Bostonian and appeared at some of the early Old Pueblo Trolley events when we were organizing and raising public support for an operating streetcar line to connect the University of Arizona to downtown Tucson.
The windows on this side were badly rotted after years of outside storage in San Diego, California. They blew in while the car was on the truck to Tucson. The owner took the car when he left Tucson and eventually sold it to a trolley museum. It bounced around from one museum to another, eventually ending up in San Diego where Art Jones (one of our major supporters) found it. He bought it from the museum there and paid for the transportation to Tucson. It has been donated to us on the condition that it be included in our permanent collection and stored indoors.
Here is the interior of the car, complete with miniature “walk over” reversible seats. If they look child sized, it’s because they are! The owner built it with his kids in mind-they and their friends could ride around the neighborhood in the trolley.
This shows the driver’s platform. The steering wheel, transmission shifter, throttle, brake and clutch have been moved to the center of the car. On the left you have a dummy motor controller and a dummy air brake stand with hand brake wheel on the right. The rear platform also has a full compliment of dummy controls. It also has dummy trolley poles, but they were taken off so it would fit in the transport truck.
I believe that our main use of the car (once restored) will be promotion of the museum and educational outreach-taking the streetcar portion of our museum to schools and other organizations.
