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Fred Maloney photo, all rights reserved. Used with permission.
A Streetcar Named Desire was the title of a famous Tennessee Williams play, whose movie version opens with a shot of one of these cars. A roll sign relating to a route over the French named street had inspired the playwright, though the Rue Desire line had been abandoned in 1948, before the play first appeared. Nearly 40 of these traditional cars still run on two streetcar lines in New Orleans, the only North American city that now runs conventional streetcars in regular service. Most run on St. Charles Avenue, whose entire operation has been designated a Historic Landmark, and the streetcars have become almost as synonymous with New Orleans as the cable cars are with San Francisco. A recently built Riverfront line for tourists also uses some New Orleans cars brought back from museums.
Canal Street in New Orleans shared with San Francisco's Market Street the distinction of having four sets of streetcar tracks along its downtown section, but the Canal line was abandoned in 1964 and car No. 966 was given to the Heart of Dixie Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society in Birmingham. Having decided to concentrate on steam railroading for its museum, the Heart of Dixie Chapter kindly made No. 966 available to Seashore in 1982. Although the car suffered vandalism during storage in Birmingham, it was sound overall, and is now fully restored. Its wide gauge (5 ft. 2.5 in.) trucks have been converted for standard gauge operation at the Museum. Car 966 was a 1924 product of the Perley Thomas. The firm still exisits today, now building school buses.
History from Historic Cars: The National Collection at the Seashore Trolley Museum by Ben Minnich
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