« Good Morning! | Main | Maison Blanche, 1890s »

November 21, 2004

Car 29 Restored

Streetcar #29, the last 1898 Ford, Bacon & Davis single-truck streetcar in existence, fell victim to a controller fire several months ago. The damage was extensive enough that the craftsmen at Carrollton Station decided to do almost a total re-build of the car. This photo, taken two weeks ago, shows #29 just out of the paint shop and almost ready to resume her role as the “sand car” on the RTA trackage.

There were originally about 350 FB&D streetcars working the rails in New Orleans. The single-truck design enabled the FB&Ds to maneuver on the secondary lines where the larger, double-truck carw would have encountered difficulties. So commonplace were the FB&Ds that they can be found in many of the photos of Canal Street in Ed’s book. While the “Palace” and Perley Thomas cars worked the main Canal Line, the FB&Ds can be seen popping onto Canal Street on the outside tracks for a block or two, before returning on their outbound runs to the outskirts of town.

All but one FB&D streetcar were scrapped by the 1930s. Streetcar #29 was kept on by NOPSI as a rail grinder car, then later was equiped to deposit sand on the rails to improve traction on wet days. Number 29 also gets a lot of work at Carnival time, running slowly in front of the 900-series streetcars, checking the St. Charles Avenue trackage after parades.

Posted by Edward J. Branley at November 21, 2004 8:43 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.nola-blogs.com/cgi-bin/mt/ruebourbon.cgi/74