A 1962 Streetcar Rides Again After a Decade in the Shed
Two retired engineers and a lot of coffee brought the line's last car back to life for the neighborhood.
By Tomas Reyes · Staff writer
Car 202 spent eleven winters under a tarp behind the maintenance shed, which is where most old streetcars go to be politely forgotten. It came out on a Tuesday, on a borrowed flatbed, with a rust hole you could put a fist through.
Two retired transit engineers, Lena Hoffmann and Desmond Cray, had been asking about it for years. When the transit authority finally said yes, they said yes back before checking what it would cost.
It cost three years. Volunteers rewound motors, machined replacement brake parts from photographs, and matched the original maroon by scraping down to an untouched patch behind a seat bracket.
The line runs a single mile now, along the riverfront, on weekends. It carries no commuters and solves no transport problem. On its first Saturday, 1,400 people rode it.
"People keep asking what it's for," Cray says. "It's for riding."
