160 of these unique cars were delivered in 1946 and 1947, but they ran only for ten years before 80 cars were sold between 1954 and 1957 to Philadelphia/PTC (40), Toronto/TTC (30) and Tampico/SCTET (10). Controls, motors and trucks from another 79 were sold to Bruxelles, Belgium for use in construction of street cars being built for that city. The bodies were scrapped. In 1975 with the cars already approaching 30 years of operation, 11 of the 30 cars in Toronto were sent to San Francisco to deal with the longer running times caused by the building of BART. Another 11 were sent to Philadelphia to help deal with a car shortage caused by the loss of many streetcars in the Woodland Carbarn fire.
Bowser intends to provide high quality DCC ready and DCC/Sound HO scale models of the cars in their Kansas City attire, in their Philadelphia PTC green and the SEPTA Bicentennial, Gulf Oil and ex-Toronto paint schemes.
The SEPTA Bicentennial cars consisted of two cars for each of the thirteen original colonies but three for Pennsylvania, we will produce three cars completely finished in the Pennsylvania livery but also a Bicentennial without state and road number. A decal for the other twelve states will be included.
Our model features: injection molded plastic body, window glass, operating roof poles, operating headlight, DCC Ready with 21 pin plug, accurate painting and decorating, can motor drive with flywheel. Sound trolleys equipped with LOK Sound Decoders (DCC and Sound). We do not recommend LOK Sound for use on DC (analog) layouts.
