[Long Island Mike]

Philadelphia rail transit vehicles-how old?

HD-PHLs rail cars are as you probably know different for each line or division. I know these: Market-Frankford Line: 1997-1999 - they are the newest by far-220 cars for this line. Broad Street Subway: 1982-83 125 Kawasaki-built in number; Sub-Surface trolley/streetcar routes 10,11,13,34 and 36 - about 125 Kawasaki LRVs. Similar cars run on Delaware County trolley routes 101 and 102. Route 100 has about 30 N5 cars in service built by Adtranz-they built the MFSE cars also. On regional rail the backbone of SEPTAs commuter rail fleet are the GE Silverliner 4 cars built between 1974 and 1976. There are 60 or so Silverliner 2 cars built by Budd in 1963 and 20 Silverliner 3 St.Louis cars built in 1968. There are 7 AEM7 locomotives built by EMD/GE in 1987 and one ALP44 from 1999. These pull a fleet of about 40 push-pull cars from the same time period including 10 newer cars from about 1999. These are all Bombadier built. I cannot forget PATCO to Lindenwold,New Jersey-the line runs across the Ben Franklin Bridge - pictured in the thread - Those cars date from 1968-69 built by Budd supplemented with a group built by Canadian Vickers in 1980.
I freelance study mass transit and I am very familiar with PHLs rail transit vehicles. Hope this info helps-LI MIKE

 

[Hydrogen]

Whether old or new, Americans certainly do architecture better than we do.

The rowhouses on the downtown residential streets of Philadelphia are a real treat. Wondeful to stroll around on a warm summer afternoon.

 

[smuncky]

just wanted to mention quickly that when i was walking down market street, i passed by the SEPTA office building. When i looked in, the bottom level had an old restored PCC that people could go into. unfortuently, it was past 10pm and the security guard said the building was closed and that i'd have to come in the next day to see it. but i couldn't since we were leaving that morning.

 

[Long Island Mike]

SEPTA HQ-1234 Market Street-Philadelphia

Smuncky: SEPTA HQ are at 1234 Market Street-they have a PCC trolley car on display at Subway level as you saw. There also is Philly's small Transit Museum. The Transit Store there has more items and info and is better then the Museum! Also in that lobby is SEPTAs best schedule rack-a good place to get SEPTA info as well as the main Customer Service office. LI MIKE

 

[Zephyr]

During my last week in New York City, I used the weekend to go over to Philly to experience firsthand the building of the Comcast Center. Not having gone there for some time now, I noticed a number of interesting changes in both the skyline and in what I saw of the streetlife. I might as well been in New York in some areas, there were the same type of characters you would expect, but for the most part, it looked like a town on the verge of transforming itself - at least downtown.

The neighbourhoods still looked kind of rough to me as per usual, but I didn't have the time to get into that extensively. I did notice that a number of bad roads had disappeared, and I saw the construction cranes out in force when virtually none could be found when I last traveled there over ten years ago. What can you say when you are only in town for about six or seven hours few hours, with half of those hours spent in a public library, looking at 'fiche from old newspaper articles.

Thanks for the photos. I only took photos of one thing, Comcast Center, and I'll be perusing your photographs for some of the things I missed along my journey.