Car Number Assignments

[Kenneth Josephson]

Tom's question reminded me to ask something I forgot to share with the list some
time ago. Did Pittsburgh Railways ever engage in the practice of swapping car
numbers within a series?

Sometimes, possibly for logistic reasons, if a severely damaged car was going to be
shopped for a while (or perhaps retired prematurely), a transit company would pull
a similar or identical car from another division and reassign the former car's
number to the latter.

Milwaukee, for example, was rumored to do this. If a car assigned to a North Side
carhouse was pulled from service for an extended period, its number would be given
to a replacement from say, a South Side barn. The North Side car would then assume
the former South Side car's number and barn assignment permanently when it was
returned to service. I do not know if this really happened, but these sort of
rumors seem to surface when a museum embarks on a major restoration effort and
finds out the original number under layers of paint and varnish do not match the
number the car had upon retirement.

BTW, if anyone is interested, Dave Mewhinney posted some shots of SEPTA trolley
coaches struggling through a mid '70s blizzrd aftermath here:

http://davesrailpix.railfan.net/phila/phil.htm

Go to the bottom of the page and view the last sixteen images.  Ken J.