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| A Former Washington, DC Streetcar in Barcelona |
We were hanging out by the rail watching a ship unloading across the pier. The cargo was a bunch of used street cars from Washington, DC which had shut down its trolley system the year before. All the cars were painted in DC Transit colors and had destination signs still in place. "I used to take that one to work" reported one of the oceanographers. When they were not aboard ship most of the NAVOCEANO people lived in the DC area.
Barcelona bought 101 of these ex-Washington "PCC cars", for years the standard model of American trolley car, used in nearly every US city with street railways. Built from the late 1930s through 1952, PCC cars have a distinctive tilted front window and "eyebrow windows" along the sides. Some were built to be driven from either end while most were single ended. Some PCCs are still in use in San Francisco painted in the colors of their original operators.
Barcelona's former DC Transit cars all all gone now, replaced by the sleek modern kind seen in other sleek modern European cities.
