The San Diego Electric Railway Museum ~ Sunday, June 27, 2021

While we were visiting San Diego, some local friends recommended meeting at the San Diego Electric Railway Museum (which I was unaware of), at the National City Depot. We arrived at opening time of what turned out to be the first day the museum had been open since before the pandemic, and our volunteer guide was happy to see people waiting to get in.

The first generation (Duewag) cars of the modern San Diego Trolley are now being retired to museums:

I rode some almost-twins of this car in Calgary.

Nathan testing the "quack horn" that the San Diego Trolley uses to encourage pedestrians to get out of the way.

Here's their oldest car, which was created by splicing two cable cars.

Like a lot of US cities, San Diego ran Birneys, and one is preserved here:

The car below and a few like it came from Vienna to San Diego for a proposed trolley line in the gaslamp district. But it turned out these cars don't turn very sharply because, even though they look like trolleys, they are actually subway cars. The project was eventually dropped and the museum got them for $1 each. These are also Duewag products (the couplers look compatible with the modern light rail cars).

Although the museum's collection focuses on electric railways, they have a few mainline railroad artifacts, like this handcar.

This Balboa Park car was restored by a private individual. Two other unrestored cars of the same type are on the property, giving some idea of how much work went into the restoration.

Note the PCC in the background above. I'ts painted like a San Diego car on the outside, but details on the inside reveal that this is a veteran of Muni.

This car is not part of the museum--it's on display (inside a glassed-in enclosure), across the street. We checked it out on a tip from our guide. It ran on the National City and Otay, San Diego's first interurban. Worth crossing the street to see!