Dec. 31, 2020



RIO VISTA — The San Diego Electric Railway No. 502, ...

It’s the first Presidents Conference Committee streetcar to arrive on the West Coast, said volunteers who helped bring the car to Rio Vista. PCCs were the last streetcars built in the United States prior to the light rail vehicles.

The car has been stored outdoors for nearly half a century. The previous owner purchased it in 1998 with the goal of establishing a proposed streetcar line in the South Lake Tahoe area. That didn’t happen.

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No. 502 and 16 of its sister PCC cars were sold in 1950 to El Paso City Lines for service on the international loop between El Paso, Texas, and the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, where it was numbered 1500.

This line was closed in 1973, and El Paso City Lines shut down a year later.

The city of El Paso opted to store the streetcars at a closed airfield.

The San Diego Electric Railway Association in 1984 purchased the 502 in hopes to restore it and use it on the new light rail line in San Diego. It was stored in the San Diego Trolley yard for some time, then ordered to move out.

Sometime after moving out, the 502 was damaged in a fire that was deemed arson.

The San Diego Electric Railway Association was unable to raise sufficient money for a full restoration. It was then sold to a private individual.

Now, it’s owned by the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association, a nonprofit, and the Western Railway Museum, which also has a similar restored version that is used.

Some of the volunteers traveled earlier this week to Colfax to help dig the streetcar out of the dirt. That task took about eight hours.

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