Portland Vintage Trolley

Heritage streetcar

The Portland Vintage Trolley was a heritage streetcar service in Portland, Oregon, United States, that operated from 1991 to 2014. It operated on a portion of the MAX light rail system, and for a brief time also operated on the Portland Streetcar system, in downtown and nearby areas. The service was managed by Vintage Trolley Inc., a non profit corporation, and the cars were owned and operated by TriMet, Portland's transit agency. For 18 of its 23 years, the service followed a 2.3 mile (4 km) section of what is now the MAX Blue Line, between Lloyd Center and the west end of downtown. In September 2009, the route was changed to a 1.5 mile (2 km) section of the MAX system, along the transit mall in downtown Portland, from Union Station to Portland State University (PSU). Introduced in 1991, Vintage Trolley service operated on most weekends or at least most Sundays, from March through December, in all past years through 2010, and ran seven days a week from 1994 through 1999. However, starting in 2011 the service was heavily reduced, operating on just seven dates per year, and it remained at that reduced level for its final four seasons. Rides were narrated by a conductor who identified historic points of interest along the way. After May 1994, rides were free, but donations were accepted. On December 22, 2013, the service operated for what was, at the time, scheduled to be the last time, as a result of a decision by TriMet on December 11 to sell the two remaining Gomaco built Brill replica streetcars (511 and 512) to a group planning a streetcar line in St. Louis, Missouri. Earlier in 2013, the other two Gomaco cars were transferred from Portland Vintage Trolley service to the Willamette Shore Trolley (WST) fleet, although their entry into service there was delayed to 2014 (and one of the two cars was not moved to the WST line until 2014). However, after the transfer of streetcars 511 and 512 to St. Louis was delayed from spring to September 2014, TriMet scheduled two additional dates of Vintage Trolley service: May 25 and July 6, 2014, and the latter was the final day of service.

Portland Vintage Trolley service began operation on November 29, 1991, as a way to lure back to the city center shoppers who increasingly preferred suburban shopping malls. One of its most enthusiastic and influential proponents was Portland businessman Bill Naito (who later became the first president of Vintage Trolley, Inc.). However, the idea only finally began to garner growing support following the 1978 approval to construct a light rail system in Portland, the "Banfield Light Rail" project, renamed Metropolitan Area Express, or MAX, shortly before its 1986 opening. Another impetus for the plans was a concern by the Portland Historical Landmarks Commission that introducing a modern light rail system would have a detrimental impact on the character of two downtown historic districts though which the line would pass, the Skidmore/Old Town and Yamhill Historic Districts. Operating vintage streetcars during off peak hours was seen as a way of alleviating those impacts. (a fourth car was added later), a carbarn was built in the Coliseum (now Rose Quarter) area, and a short length of track and overhead wire were built along Northeast 11th Avenue near Lloyd Center mall. The first two vehicles, numbered 511 and 514, were delivered in August and November 1991, respectively, and entered service on June 21 of that year. The service was wheelchair accessible, but with facilities for disabled riders limited to two stops along the route: a section of high level boarding platform at the Lloyd Center terminus and, in downtown, a wheelchair lift at the Yamhill District MAX station. From 1992 through May 1994, service was provided on weekends and holidays only, and suspended for the months of January and February each year (except the first year). However, midday service (10 a. m. to 3 p. m.) on weekdays was usually provided during the month of December to entice more shoppers to downtown and the Lloyd Center during the holiday shopping season. From mid 1994 through 1999, Portland Vintage Trolley service operated seven days a week, March through December. Hours of operation were 10 a. m. to 6 p. m. on weekends and holidays and 10 a. m. to 3 p. m. Mondays to Fridays. In 2000, Vintage Trolley service was reduced to Sundays only, and the hours reduced slightly, to noon to 6. This reduction came about in part because TriMet had opened a second light rail line in September 1998, with a resultant doubling of the frequency of service along the section of the MAX line used by the faux vintage streetcars. An additional reason was that a trust fund originally set up to pay for the operation had become mostly depleted by this time; TriMet took over most financial responsibility for the service in 2000. Two of the four streetcars (Nos. 513 and 514) were transferred from TriMet to the City of Portland in 2001 for use on the new Portland Streetcar line, while the other two cars remained with TriMet for continued use on the original Vintage Trolley route. It was used for the first test trips on the line's first completed section (in Northwest Portland) later that month, because the first modern Škoda car had not yet been delivered. It was then decided that the two replica vintage streetcars should receive a few modifications before entering service, primarily the addition of exterior mirrors and turn signals, which had been omitted when they were built in 1991 because the 1903 cars on which they were based had lacked them. These features had been viewed as unnecessary when these cars were operating only on the MAX line, because they were using separate lanes not shared with other traffic, but on the new streetcar line they would be mixing with general traffic. On this route, one Vintage Trolley car (of two available) was used at any given time, providing hourly service and replacing a regularly scheduled modern Škoda streetcar. Vintage Trolley service on Portland Streetcar was temporarily suspended around the end of November 2005, in part because of maintenance problems with the two cars, and in part because the opening of the Portland Streetcar's extension from PSU to RiverPlace in March 2005 caused operations difficulties with the Vintage Trolley cars. This suspension eventually became permanent, and after November 2005 Portland Vintage Trolley operated only on its original route, between Downtown Portland and Lloyd Center, until that route was also discontinued (modified), in mid 2009.

Until mid 2009, the Portland Vintage Trolley continued to serve the route it had followed since opening 18 years earlier, from the Lloyd District to Galleria/SW 10th Avenue station in downtown Portland, running on Sundays from 12 p. m. to 6 p. m., half hourly, using two cars, but the final day of service along that route was August 23, 2009. In September 2009, the service was changed to a completely different route, but which is also a section of the MAX system. Commencing on September 13, 2009, The route, frequency and hours of operation (on days of operation) remained unchanged. The schedule of operating dates followed the same pattern in subsequent years, and the scheduled dates of operation in 2013 were May 26, July 7, September 1, and four consecutive Sundays from December 1 through December 22. Car 514 was moved to the Willamette Shore Trolley line in March 2013, but in April 2014 TriMet posted a more precise date for the planned move, of August 2014, and noted on its newly reinstated Vintage Trolley web page that the service would operate on two dates in 2014, May 25 and July 6, with the latter being the (revised) final day of service.—were built by the Gomaco Trolley Company, of Ida Grove, Iowa, in 1991 and early 1992. They were designed to replicate, as closely as practicable, a design of streetcar which the J. G. Brill Company supplied to Portland in 1904. Those ten cars were originally numbered 201–210, but were renumbered 501–510 in 1905 and kept those numbers for the remainder of their working lives, which ended in 1950 with the abandonment of Portland's last three city streetcar lines. Although Brill cars 501–510 were not restricted to the Council Crest route, they provided all of the service on that line, and so came to be known by Portlanders as the "Council Crest cars". Two of the original Council Crest streetcars, 503 and 506, are preserved by the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society at its museum in Brooks, and Gomaco was able to use those cars as patterns for the replicas.