Trolley Thursday 8/27/20 - The Peter Witt Streetcar

Before the introduction of the PCC car, there were a couple of honest attempts at a standard for street railway equipment. In 1918, the J.G. Brill company produced the Birney Car, a cheap little single-truck box that aimed at being economical for street railways big and small. However, the Birney was quite bare and uncomfortable, and never quite had the national spread that another streetcar did. It never claimed to be a "standard" national streetcar, but its innovative and adaptable design made it not only widespread in America, but across North America and even the world. Though it may appear antiquated compared to the sleek, stylish curves of a PCC, there is no denying the impact and influence of the Peter Witt streetcar, a Cleveland original. 

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The GC Kuhlman Company - A Brief Overview

Gustav C. Kuhlman, the Teutonic Top Lip of Trolleys
(Coachbuilt)

The Gustav C. Kuhlman Car Company (Kuhlman for short) started humbly under the care of its namesake and his father Frederick, one of many German immigrants to stake a claim in populating the state of Ohio. An 1880 census revealed Mr. Kuhlman and his father listed as "sawyers", and the family made a name for itself in the business of fine carpentry. Eager to advance their business, the younger Kuhlman led the way to horsecar construction in the mid-to-late 1880s, as did many other carpenters and fine woodworkers. With the boom in streetcar construction, Gustav established his namesake car company in 1892 at two former carbarns at Broadway and Aetna streets. By the turn of the century, the plant grew and moved closer to the New York Central tracks in Collinwood, Cleveland, and in 1901, the rival J.G. Brill Company of Philadelphia, PA, bought a majority stake in the Kuhlman Car Company. Brill allowed Kuhlman to continue making cars under their own name while Gustav retained a continued presence as a design consultant, leading the company into the diesel railcar business as well as expanding streetcar production. Before he died in 1915, one of the last projects Gustav Kuhlman entertained involved the manic ramblings of one of his most loyal hometown customers; little did he know, this one idea would change streetcar design forever.

Peter Witt's Big Idea

This Seattle streetcar of the West Side Street Railway
perfectly shows the "standard" design up until the 1910s.
(Seattle Curbed)

In the early 1900s, streetcar companies were trying to move away from the outdated, and small, horsecars around the country. As a testament to their tiny size, a normal horsecar could only fit 20 people like sardines, so companies like Brill and St. Louis Car simply combined two cars into one for a longer electric car. This may have solved the initial problem of passenger capacity, but as cities grow, so did rush hour loading times. Interurban roads could get by loading people on multiple cars, but attempting the same on a small streetcar resembled more the later fad of stuffing one's self into a Volkswagen Beetle or a telephone booth. Worse still, a conductor had a rough time trying to collect fares as their standard practice was to walk up and down the car, checking individual fares either when the car is stopped or in motion. This all led to delays at "dwell times", IE stop times, and put the responsibility of fare collection on the crew, which inevitably led to cheated fares and labor disputes when crews would do more while being paid little or less. Both the introduction of the "Pay As You Enter" car in 1905 and the low-floor center-entrance streetcar in 1913 helped advance streetcar design, but street railways still wanted an easier way to get people on-board and for the cars to remain on schedule.

A 1909 stock share of the Pay As You Enter Car Corporation, which invented the car in 1905.
(Public Domain)

Peter Witt at left, with Former Mayor Tom L.
Johnson at Center and Mayor-Elect Newton D.
Baker at right. Amazingly, not a moustache
between them.
(Teaching Cleveland)

Enter Peter Witt, Cleveland native and commissioner for the local public transit service. Unlike many electric railway executives who were more interested in selling land and gaining a monopoly, Mr. Witt was a progressive and a union man at heart, even being blacklisted from the foundry business in 1896 for union activities. Following his blacklisting, Witt penned Cleveland Before St. Peter, a treatise on Cleveland's wealthy tax-dodgers. This somehow got him a city council position as an appraiser, city clerk, and eventually street-railway commissioner by 1911. Seeing passenger-level inefficiencies in how the Cleveland Railway was being run, Witt completed a prototype for his center car design in 1914 and filed a patent the next year. His design was quite different to how other railways designed their center-car throughput (passenger loading and unloading): instead of a center-entrance and front end-exit, the new 45-foot, single-ended car had front end-entrances and center-exits, with a conductor stationed at the exit. With the bigger door as the exit, car-clearing was a lot faster and passengers had the option to pay as they entered or when they exited the car, easing fare collection with the incentive of getting the best of the 52 seats (the back seats) upon paying first.

Mr. Witt's original design patent for the streetcar that eventually bore his name.
The car was majority bench seating up front, with row seating in the back.
(Picasa)

A later Peter Witt, 1305, on Cleveland rails. Note the
continued use of an Eclipse Safety Fender, commonly
referred to as the "people catcher".
(Cleveland Landmark Press)

After Mr. Witt and Mr. Kuhlman met to discuss his new design, 130 Kuhlman-built cars were delivered to the Cleveland Railway between 1915 and 1916. They were an immediate success, as throughput increased and stop times decreased across all Cleveland, and Mr. Witt's name was soon attached to the cars. As streetcar schedules sped up, parent company Brill advertised the "Peter Witt" design to satisfy the national need for high-capacity streetcars. The design was even licensed out to other manufacturers, primarily Cincinnati Car and St. Louis Car in America, and Canadian Car, Ottawa Car, and Preston Car across Canada. Mr. Witt continued as a mass transit consultant from 1916 to 1923, helping other cities grow, before retiring from railways and city government in 1932. He died in 1948.

The Peter Witt in America

A standard, later-era Peter Witt car for the Baltimore Transit
Company, featuring a flatter roof and squared-off front end.
(Tripadvisor)

Altogether, 14 American cities from Baltimore to Los Angeles employed the Peter Witt car in some fashion. Some, like the Chicago Surface Lines, used 100 "sedans" to bolster their enormous fleet of Pullman cars, while others like the Baltimore Transit Company and Philadelphia Rapid Transit (who ordered 525 cars between 1923 and 1926) employed them heavily on rush-hour lines. The sideways seating in the front and front-facing seats in the rear precluded the standard city bus seating that would become the norm, all to maximize passenger loading. Not all Peter Witts were alike on the outside, as over time many changes were introduced to make them safer or to update their style. Some even received unique, and often incongruous, letter boards, such as Detroit and even Cleveland. The octagonal front end was squared off by the 1930s, adapting a modern style shared with the smaller, end-entrance "Brill Master Unit" that were employed in Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon. Over 2000 Peter Witt streetcars roamed America's street railways from their debut in 1915 to the usual end of streetcar service in the mid-late 1950s. 

A small smattering of Peter Witt streetcars from around the United States, with examples from (left to right, up to down) Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Brooklyn.
(Mitchell Libby, AtDetroit.net, Trolley Dodger, Ken Fitzgerald, Trolleyville, Trolley Dodger, Dave Klepper)

LARy Type M No. 2601 in preservation, wearing
Los Angeles Transit Lines "Salad Bowl" colors.
The severe overhang is evident.
(Myself)

Interestingly, a large number Peter Witts were built with two ends. One type was developed for the Brooklyn & Queens Transit Company in New York, which also was one of the largest fleets in America at 586 cars. These were later converted to single-ended cars for more effective loading. Two other double-ended examples from St. Louis Car Company were sent to the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) on October 16, 1928 as a way to ease tensions with the citizens after raising their fares to an eye-watering 7 cents. As the "LARy" lacked any turnaround loops at the time, making Nos. 2601 and 2602 double-ended was imperative. Inside, the cars had bi-directional seating (one row sideways, one row front facing on each end) and spring-loaded standee grips that swung out when grabbed. Unfortunately, the "Type M" cars had a glaring issue that seemed to not bother other street railways: due to the short wheelbase to negotiate tight curves, the Peter Witts had a pretty severe overhang. This was fine on the single-ended cars, where the rear was deliberately rounded to avoid hip-checking obstacles, but the Type M's front ends gave it a severe 9-foot overhang on city corners. Because of this, the two cars were eventually relegated to the V Line, which was straight as an arrow, until they were retired in 1950.

The Peter Witt Around the World

A schematic of the "Small Witt" after significant
rebuilds in 1937. This is the only type that survives.
(Transit Toronto)

One of the first big customers for the Peter Witt was the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), which ordered 575 cars from 1921 to 1923. The cars were split into two classes, the "Large" and "Small" Witt, along with a number of purpose-built trailers (of two or three doors). The "Large" Witts were 51 feet, 10 inches (52 feet for the original Brills) while the "Small" witts were 47 feet. The reason for the small Witts was due to TTC ordering them at a time when the system was being re-tracked, and the company wanted two lengths to cover any kind of clearance. Each car and trailer set could sit 113 passengers (58 in the Large, 51 in the Small and 60 in the trailer), with 140 being the maximum "crush" capacity, and those numbers were vital as the Peter Witts were put to work on the busy Bay and Yonge lines. While they served Canada dutifully, the new subways rendered them obsolete and reduced the Witts to retirement by 1965, with all but ten going to the scrapyard.

The only surviving TTC-operated Peter Witt, Small Witt No. 2766 on heritage charter duty.
(Narcity) 

A carbarn full of Milanese "Peter Witt" cars with one
undergoing rtestoration on the far left.
(Alamy Stock Photo)

Interestingly, though the Peter Witt car was prolific all around Italy (in Genoa, Naples, Padua, Trieste, Turin, and Milan), none were ever built by American manufacturers. Originally designed in Milan in the 1920s to replace their aging "Type Edison" trams (a standard European design), the ATM Class 1500's design took primary inspiration from the Peter Witts but possessed a much taller appearance with a thinner width, reduced seating capacity (29 seats instead of 58), and front-and-center entrances and a full-width rear exit. The 1932 Neapolitan Peter Witts were designed with end-entrances only, and were significantly shorter at about the same length as the TTC "Small" Witts. By the 1970s, these were the only operating trams in Naples and most were rebuilt with modern bodies to remain in service, while others were retired or scrapped. Amazingly, only one car in Milan was destroyed in World War II while the rest were rebuilt, and out of the 500 originals and 2 prototypes, 135 remain operating in Milan today. 70 were purchased by the Gomaco company for refurbishment and US sales, while 11 were purchased by the Market Street Railway in San Francisco after popular demand and excellent reliability.

An as-built Neapolitan Peter Witt from 1932 on the left and the rebuilt Peter Witts on the right. Quite the stark difference.

(Public Domain, Henrik Boye)

A surviving LM-33 and LP-33 emerge from the 
St. Petersburg Electric Transportation Museum.
(Alamy Stock Photo)

Most surprising of all was the Peter Witt ended up as another American technology reverse-engineered in Soviet Russia. During the 1930s, engineers from Leningrad toured the United States under designer D.I. Kondratyev and returned to Russia to adapt the Peter Witt for themselves. Classified as the MA-33 ("Model American", and PA for the trailer), the trams were more popularly known as the "Amerikanka" ("American Lady") and combined both the Toronto designs and the Milanese designs as well. The cars had three doors (front, center, rear) all-bench seating, a single end with a rounded wooden slat bench in the back, a conductor's compartment, and even a trailer for rush hour service. 232 cars exited the Petersburg Tram Mechanical Factory between 1933 and 1939, and lasted in service until 1979. For political reasons, the name was later changed to "LM" (Leningrad Motor) and "LP" (Leningrad Passenger trailer). Two LM-33s survive in St. Petersburg, along with one trailer, and are undergoing continued restoration.

The Little Streetcar that Did, and Still Does

A Cleveland Peter Witt shares a loop track with a 
PCC car in the late 1930s.
(Trolley Dodgers)

For all the innovation and loyal service the Peter Witt brought to both the companies that owned them and the people who rode on them, one thing it could not stop was progress. The new PCC car introduced one-man operation to many streetcar systems, eliminating a separate conductor and enforcing an entrance fare for streamlined operations. Some systems tried to one-man their Peter Witts, but even they began to look outdated compared to the comfort, style, and smoothness of the PCC. Despite many in the United States and Canada being sent to the scrapheap, in Europe the Peter Witts proved that they had so much more to offer. Naples rebuilt its Peter Witts to match the modern Tatra trams (ironically based on the PCCs) and gave them longer working lives than ever imagined. Granted, they look nothing like the 1930s originals, but even when you look at them today, you're basically looking at a tram that's almost 80 years old. Milan's cars still see revenue service as well, with a dedicated shop force keeping the fleet modernized for years to come.

7 of the 11 Milanese Peter Witts arriving in San Francisco in the 1990s.
(SFGate)

Built in 1918 for the City of Rochester, Saskatoon Car No. 202

instead started working in Cleveland before being sold in 1923

to the city of Saskatoon. It's currently undergoing heavy restoration.

(Edmonton Radial Railway Society)

Of the hundreds of Peter Witts that survive in preservation, whether on display or operating, there are a few that stand out. Los Angeles Railway 2601, one of the two M types and the only double-ended Peter Witt left, was saved by the Southern California Electric Railway Association (SC-ERA) in 1955 for $200 and placed on display at Traveltown, then the Southern California Railroad Museum in Perris, California. Today, the car has just completed a multi-decade restoration to operating condition and will soon make its public debut. 2601 is certainly one of many "last ones of their type" Peter Witts, as TTC keeps "Short" Witt 2766 on their heritage charter fleet as the only operating Canadian Peter Witt, while the only two Cleveland Peter Witts left were sold to the London Street Railway in 1923 and are now on display at the Edmonton Radial Railway Society (No. 202) and the Saskatchewan Railway Museum (No. 203, body only). Other American survivors include Baltimore Transit 6144 at the Seashore Trolley Museum and 6119 at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, Indianapolis Railways 152 at Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company in Noblesville, IN, and Detroit Street Railway 3865 at the Illinois Railway Museum. Obviously, there are so many Peter Witts in preservation that listing them would take a lot of time, but it's yet another testament to how widespread, popular, and well-loved these cars really were.

Viva Peter Witt.
(Milano bon ton)

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It's not very often that I get to talk about a single design of streetcar, but I can assure you, dear readers, that more episodes like this will feature in the far future. If you would like to learn more about the Peter Witts, you can read a more in-depth history on the Toronto Peter Witts (and I'll cover the TTC as a whole next year), a biography of Peter Witt, and more information on the G.C. Kuhlman company. More information on the equipment cited can be found through the Illinois Railway Museum, Southern California Railroad Museum, Edmonton Radial Railway Society, Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company, Seashore Trolley Museum, and the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. And, as always, you can follow myself or my editor on twitter if you wanna support us, and maybe buy a shirt as well. Next Tuesday, we take one more look at a heartland icon before we jump across Ohio's eastern border border and finally cover the long, complex, and interesting history of Pennsylvanian streetcars! Until then, ride safe!