Going, Going, Gone....

[wallyworld]

A brief meditation on light rail and foreign manufacturing. The last run of the last of the ill fated Boeing Light Rail vehicle in Boston is due this month. Introduced in 1976, produced in a helicopter facility..these were a case history of technological advances run amok and poorly applied. A backhoe is currently flipping these over for recycling into scrap and these are barely operable for a last run...Remember St Louis Car..many other U.S based manufacturers come to mind which faded away, much like the interurbans they furnished equipment for, just prior to the dawning of a light rail revival...Boeing was the last stab at a U.S Vehicle...all foreign equipment rolls along city streets now.  Even the successful Canadian Light Rail Vehicle is a German design...a pity...

 

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

One of the reasons that St. Louis Car Co. ceased operations was that it was almost exclusively a manufacturer of somebody else's designs, like the various incarnations of the PCC.  It did not have an engineering staff that could design an LRV or rapid transit car from the wheels up and offer it as a proposal to various transit agencies.  The Electroliner was designed primarily by North Shore Line's engineering staff and CA&E's last cars (451-460) were little more than a modification of existing designs.