Trolley Tuesday 9/8/20 - The Brill Company and The Cars of the PRT

The cars of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (up until 1940) seemingly set the standard for what an American streetcar roster should look like, as their carbarns were packed with Peter Witts and PCC's, both ubiquitous streetcars of the United States. Their proximity to the J.G. Brill Company of Philadelphia, PA, also gave them unprecedented access to new car classes and prototypes that would have otherwise remained on the drawing board. On Today's (late) Trolley Tuesday, we'll take a brief glimpse at the Brill Car Company and its association with the city of Philadelphia.

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The Brill Car Company

John George Brill, like a big beardy Santa Claus of streetcars.
(Powelton History Blog)

An 1874 Brill car built for the Virginia and Truckee,
demonstrating the company's innovation due to the
arch-braced roof, removing the need for underfloor bracing.
(Midcontinent Railway Museum) 

To understand the design philosophy behind the needs and wants of Philadelphia's streetcars (and by extension, the rest of Pennsylvania pre-PCC), it's important to understand who built them. In 1868, German immigrant John George Brill (born Johann Georg Brill, 1817-1888) established a horsecar-manufacturing firm in Southwest Philadelphia. The company's plan was simple: thanks to the huge demand for rolling stock as street railways took hold across the country, there'd be no shortage of customers to supply horsecars for. However, this business was short lived and the company moved its efforts into building heavy-rail passenger cars for companies like the Virginia & Truckee. Streetcar production resumed in earnest after the Brill company moved to their new location at 62nd Street and Woodland Avenue, still in Southwest Philadelphia, and son John A. Brill (1852-1908) took over the business as a tireless seller of streetcars.

John A. Brill, who would lead the company to success, never sacrificed good moustache care.
(Powelton History)

Early Cars of the PRT

Philadelphia Traction Co. No. 1117's builder's photo, fresh
off the factory floor in 1894. This later became PRT 517.
(Don Ross)

One loyal buyer of Brill cars was the Philadelphia Traction Company, a precursor to the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (PRT). One of the first non-horsecar-based streetcars they purchased were 5'2.5" "broad gauge" open summer cars in 1894. This later expanded to enclosed cars by the turn of the century, when the Union Traction Company (another precursor) purchased Brill's new double-truck streetcars from the company in 1901. These revolutionary cars had much bigger passenger capacities than their single-truck variants, and the newly-developed trucks could not only curve tighter but also carry more traction motors. Brill started experimenting with truck designs in the 1890s as more street railways electrified, which led to the "Pay Within" class of cars built in 1906, which were so-named due to being one of the first all-enclosed cars to operated in Philadelphia. This car later paved the way for the "Pay As You Enter" car design in New York, and soon all over the country and the world.

An early Brill truck from the 1890s, with chains, showing their skinny design.
(Powelton History)

A Brill elevated railway car rides on the Market
Street Elevated in 1907.
(Ron Trotto)

As the 1900s and 1910s wore on, PRT invested heavily in new classes of passenger and freight streetcars. By the time the Market Street Elevated opened on March 4, 1907, the line was served by Brill "high-voltage" cars similar to those used on the Hudson & Manhattan elevated railway system in New York City, and down on the street, PRT contracted Brill to build a new "refrigerated box motor" to compete with dairy trucks within the city. Though this service was short-lived, the unique car (F22) was one of many employed by PRT to fill any niche service they could find. Around this same time F22 was built, the Peter Witt design finally reached the streets of Philadelphia as its manufacturer, G.C. Kuhlmann Car of Cleveland, Ohio (another carbuilder of Germanic origin), was purchased by Brill as a subsidiary. These Peter Witts were different in build and delivery, as the flat PRT system meant they only needed two motors per car and they could be rolled right off the factory floor and right to work. Another Brill product, the "Nearside" cars (an end-entrance only variant of the Peter Witt) were later rebuilt with center exits.

PRT Milk Car No. F-22, in its builder's photo from Brill.
(PA Trolley Museum)

The Birney

Birney Car No. 2 squidges itself under the Market Street
Elevated on an otherwise quiet service day.
(HJ Adamcik)

The 1910s proved to be a fruitful decade for streetcar design, as not only did the Peter Witt find popularity as a streetcar for all cities, so too did another fantastic Brill product. During World War I, streetcar companies were experiencing labor strikes and decreased ridership all across the country and all executives were looking to stop the money from bleeding. In 1915, two men named Charles Birney and Joseph Bosenbury presented their idea for a streetcar to the head of the company. Birney worked for the Stone & Webster firm of Boston, a streetcar operator and holding company, while Bosenbury applied and issued the patents. Their idea was for a single-truck streetcar weighing just a third of a normal car, with rugged, inexpensive construction and (most important of all) a single operator. Due to the executives' desire to streamline crew operations, cut employee costs, and avoid labor shortages, the "Birney Safety Car" debuted in 1918 as a resounding success. PRT purchased 24 Birney cars in 1919 to fill in the rural Delaware County lines inherited from another subsidiary in 1906, while ten more were purchased from the Philadelphia & New Jersey Railway in 1921 as spares and light-shuttle services. The only original PTC Birneys were cars 1-5, which were delivered in 1922 and technically owned by the city. (If you want to learn more about the Birneys, read our article on the Fort Collins Municipal Railway in Colroado.)

Two "Hog Island" trolleys run motor-and-trailer standing at PRT's Southern Carbarn.
(HJ Adamcik)

"Lightweight" car 5205 demonstrates its revolutionary
construction that gives it its name: a streetcar with 
a steel main-section that dropped its weight significantly.
(NYCSubway)

Two other important classes of note came about the same time as the Birney, and for similar reasons. In 1918, Brill was contracted to build 45 end-entrance cars for the Hog Island Shipyards of the American International Ship Building Corp. Possessing the largest shipyard in the world at the time, Hog Island desperately needed a fleet of streetcars to circumvent rationed gasoline and get workers to their site on time. Classified as the 4000 class, the "Hog Island" cars looked uncannily similar to the design philosophy behind the "Perley" streetcars of New Orleans, and operated similarly to them as well. Among other oddities, due to the lack of a trolley loop on the Hog Island line, the cars were also among the only double-ended cars operated by PRT. A few more were built later in 1918 as the 5000 class, and these would form the basis of the 134-strong 1923 "Lightweight" class. Their name came from their monocoque body construction, with a one big metal box supporting the two wooden cab ends. (Brill never really did let go of that design philosophy.)

Non-Revenue Cars

Sweeper C110 and plow/flanger C2 stand at a PTCo yard, waiting for service.
(HJ Adamcik)

PTCo crane car W36 photographed at the Southern
Carbarn, 1955. It's definitely huge.
(Don Ross)

Something I usually do not cover when doing car history recollections is the non-revenue equipment, the notable work cars that kept Philadelphia's streetcars running optimally. Today, I'm here to rectify that and discuss them a little bit, as usually I'd put whatever freight engines they had here. As Pennsylvania's climate was usually mountainous and snowy, plenty of old Brill cars were rebuilt as snow flangers and plows. These cars were privately-run by the transit company, as a common deal between companies and cities were that the transit companies had to keep the streets they ran on immaculately maintained; as such, companies like PRT were often responsible for snow-clearing, trash collecting, and street paving. PRT even hosted a fleet of coal dump cars, dubbed "coal motors", to feed the powerhouses with fuel and deliver coal to houses in winter. Flangers of all sizes worked on the PRT, with bogied and non-bogied variants rebuilt or built between 1913 and 1925 by Brill. Often, retired passenger and express cars became flangers and sweepers as well, and even some more-recent "Hog Island" cars were turned into rudimentary "line cars" with the fitting of a hand-powered insulated elevator. One of the largest non-passenger trolley based cars was W36, an enormous electric-powered self-propelled crane that was placed on what I can charitably call a "self-propelled flatcar". Due to their niche usefulness, many operated in Philadelphia right up until the 1980s. 

The Trolley Bus That Ruined Everything

Builder's photo of "Railless Car" No. 60, originally a 
commercial vehicle but later rebuilt with a passenger body.
(Phillytrolley)

Unfortunately, despite Brill contributing plenty of good onto the PRT, for many streetcar enthusiasts it also unintentionally spelled the beginning of the end. When the "Route 80-Oregon Avenue" line opened  for service in October 1923, it was served by an enterprising fleet of "trackless trolleys" developed by Brill for the PRT. 10 of these interesting models were dubbed the "Railless Car", numbered 51-61, with No. 60 being an experimental electric truck for freight operations. Though it would take 18 years for the next trolley bus line to open ("Route 61-Ridge Avenue"), it did not stop PRT from buying eight more Brill T-30 trolleybuses in 1935, numbers 71-78. Seeing this disturbing trend and correctly predicting it was only a matter of time before the trolleybuses replace streetcars, street railway executives were filled with new desire to keep the passengers in their railcars.

The Brillliner Heralds Change

Prototype Brilliner 2021, one of two, at the company
shops on September 19, 1939. Definitely a "mockbuster"
if there ever was one.
(Harry Foesig) 

Brill was not one of the companies contracted by the President's Council Committee to build their new PCC cars, but they could see why it tempted the market so much. Like their Birney and Peter Witts, the PCC was a one-man, economically-built and frugally-operated streetcar that took America, Canada, and the world by storm. Wanting in on this, Brill developed two copies of the PCC dubbed the "Brilliner" and trialed it on the successor to the PRT, the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC). The car featured plenty of Brill's old stalwart designs, such as a boxy floorpan and a riveted steel body, and this is eventually what did the design in. The riveted frame made it heavier than the PCCs, which were welded, and the boxy floorpan meant when the PTC trialed it, it fouled almost every tight clearance it was tested on. PTC unfortunately said no to Brill's desire for a large order, purchasing only three and putting them on whatever was the widest line they could run on, while 10 went to the Red Arrow Lines interurban railway and more were purchased by Baltimore and Atlantic City. The Brilliner was the last trolley car designed and built by Brill, as they were absorbed into American Car & Foundry (who overtook Brill and bought a controlling stake in 1926) in 1944. The name vanished in 1954, with its only activities being licensing their Peter Witt and bus designs to Canada. 

Survivors

PRT "Peter Witt" 5326 operating at the PA Trolley Museum.
(PA Trolley Museum) 

The PTC's fleet was later filled with the more-ubiquitous PCC but that's a story for another post. Of the over 3000-strong streetcar fleet once owned and operated by PRT, 24 have found homes in railroad museums in varying conditions; of these 24, 15 are non-revenue cars including milk car No. F-22 (now "trash sweeper car" T16) at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA. This museum is also home to line car/snow-sweeper C125 (now PTM No. 2), "Lightweight" car No. 5326, Peter Witt No. 8042, and snow-sweeper C145. Another museum, the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton, PA, hosts "Pay-Within" car No. 2282 (the oldest surviving passenger car of the PRT), "Lightweight" 5205, Peter Witt 8534 (which was later leased to SEPTA twice), sweepers C127 and 128, line car D37, dump car/coal motor D7, and double-derrick crane W55. Even SEPTA still owns a small heritage fleet of equipment, continually updated with new motors and control systems to keep the system in tip-top order. 

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Though the PRT may be gone, its story is far from over. On Friday, we look at what became the Philadelphia Transportation Company (including its many PCC cars) before we save the very end for the end of the month where we talk about the SEPTA. Information for today's post can be found on the Powelton History Blog's coverage of the Brill Family, PhillyTrolley.org, and the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, which is also a museum shoutout along with the Electric City Trolley Museum. Until our next post, you can follow myself and my editor on twitter and hit up our merch store on Redbubble! (We even have a brand new sticker for sale!)