The Con-Cor HO PCC Car Model:
Con-Cor chose to model a "Pre-War" model of the PCC car as the Los Angeles PCC #3001 car has been preserved at the Orange Empire Railway Museum near Los Angles, this car was built in May 1937 and is still running and giving Tourists and Streetcar buffs a short ride at the Museum today, 71 years after it was first built !
The major difference between the "Pre-WW II" PCC and "Post-WWII" version was that those built after WW-II had the "Standee" windows above the side windows. Our model is of the "Pre-War II" car without the standee windows. Although some of the photos shown are of "Standee" cars where we could not find good color photos of that paint scheme on a Pre-War II car body. Please do not be confused, the only version of the PCC body we are making is the "Pre-War II" car as shown in the photo above of the Los Angeles car.
While the PCC car was a "Standard Design" bureucrates in the individual cities that bought them had to add some "personal" touches, such as extra lights, wider Anticlimbers etc etc. We can not model each and every variation. So we chose to stick with the Los Angeles car which is typical in most details to the original PCC Car design.
We wish to give a big THANK YOU to George L Huckaby, Custom Traxx, Inc. for helping us with this project and making various trips to the Museum to gather photos and do research on paint schemes.
Features
DCC Ready with NMRA 8 pin plug
Space for Speaker mount
All wheel drive
Powereful 5 pole motor
Interior with lighting
Working headlights, tail lights.
Authentic paint schemes
Runs on tight 9 inch radius
Motorman figure
"Next Car Light" (Where appropriate, see comments below)
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** Next Car Light:
Some (but not all) cities used what they called a "Next Car light". This was an extra Red light on the front of the PCC car which the motorman could turn on and off as needed. When turned on, it told the passengers waiting at the next stop, that this streetcar would not be stopping, either it was "full" or "out of service" and heading back to the car barn.
** Con-Cor is adding the "Next Car Light" to some of the cars were appropriate, but this fuction can only be accessed in "DCC" mode when you add a DCC decoder (not supplied with the model). And then the P-3 Function control can be used to turn the "Next Car Light" On or Off as it is traveling down the tracks.
Of the first 12 roadnames offered, only the Brooklyn; SF Muni; and Pacific Electric Roadnames will have a built in Next Car Light (Per Prototype). If you want to re-paint a model for your own Railway using the "Next Car Light" we suggest using the Brookyn car as that has the easiest paint scheme to re-paint.
Paint Schemes:
Most cities had various paint schemes on their PCC cars over the years, we picked out the one for the following Cities we felt best represented the Paint Scheme that is the most well known.
We are offering these cars two ways, first version is fully Decorated with appropriate colors, Car Number, and Transit system logo (if it was used on the car, some cities did not put a logo on all cars.)
Note on Colors:
Very few color photos exist from the late '30s and '40s. Many that exist have faded from true colors. Plus many of the paints used were lead or cadmium based which are now outlawed, so we have matched paint colors as close as we can from all the information available and taken into account photos taken in shade, cloudy days fading of paint colors due to exposure to the sun, etc.
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