The thread down below is talking about the possibliities of building a steam locomotive replica or reproduction if you prefer that term.

I submit that the various museums and craftsmen that restore street cars have been doing reproductions for many years. take any number of bodies of cars that have been put back in operating order. They run the gamet from cars that have a sets of trucks, motors etc from Melbourne W-2 class cars that have nothing to do with the body they ride under. To the beautifully re-constructed equipment that is turned out by the best of the museum Shops. They search high and low to get just the right example of everything from the trucks all the way down to the smallest switch in the car.

At my own Western railway Museum they are nearly finished with the re-building of the Sacramento Northern !005 a composite frame wooden Interurban from 1912. One would be hard put to find a piece of wood in the car that was there 5 years ago. The sub floor and the floor is new the side frames, window frames and the sash are all new. Some of the glass may be from revenue service I don't know.

This not to complain about the craftsmanship used on the car. It is of the highest order through out. The wood work, the metal and electrical work is supurb. It is just too bad that the car was out doors for so long including its revenue service years that so much historic fabric had to be removed and replaced.

Some day soom I will ride the car with great pleasure. I just wish that wood did not rot, metal rust and electric wire loose its insulation! And most of all that brass theves would stay away from maritime and railroad museums.

What do you think?

Ted Miles

Some interesting examples of replica trolley cars are running Friday through Monday on the San Pedro Waterfront Red Car Line in the Los Angeles Harbor area. They are based on the Pacific Electric 500-class suburban cars, which last ran in service in the mid-1930's. At least four bodies of this type of car survive, but to provide cars that could run in regular service, the LA Harbor Department ordered two replicas. The bodies are very close to the originals, but have steel frames hiding underneath the woodwork. The electric and mechanical systems, however, depart from the originals with an eye toward "maintainability". The Taylor trucks came from Boston "Blue Line" rapid transit cars built in the 1920's. The control systems were "built from scratch" using modern switchgear actuated by traditional-looking controllers. Probably the most noticeable change was using modern air compressors, rather than the classic Westinghouse DH-16 or GE CP-27, so the nostalgic compressor sound is missing. The motorman's air brake valves are similar to those in suburban railway control-cab cars, again, something that's easy to get parts for. A minor detail is the use of spring trolley bases instead of PE pneumatics. Since the target public for these cars is mostly tourists and cruise ship passengers, rather than rivet-counting railfans, the cars do their assigned job very well.
A comment on Melbourne tram parts: Many of the various W-class trams used GE K-35 controllers, something that would be right at home in an American streetcar or work motor. Although some of the W's had distinctive Melbourne-designed "bogies" (trucks), many had bogies that looked like scaled-down Baldwin interurban trucks--scale them up and they'd be right at home under a PE 1200-class car.
Regarding Sacramento Northern 1005: I've been following the progress of this project in the BAERA Review. "Exhaustive" and "painstaking" are terms that come to mind. Short of building a "time machine", this car will be as close as humanly possible to what it was during the chosen period of its existence.
Probably the best known replica streetcars are San Francisco's world-famous cable cars. Each one has been rebuilt a number of times; how much of the original cars is still rolling through the streets of SF is open to question. One of the locals said that "sometimes they can reuse parts, sometimes they just jack up the gong and build a new car underneath it."

Sometimes the Municipal Rwy. of San Francisco jacks up the roof and builds a "new" cable car under it. The complex curves of a Bombay roof are trouble to duplicate.
Ex-Wildwood, N.J. trolley 24 is being restored as its former version of a New York trolley. When the job is done, there will be a contest, "Guess the original Part!" Also, state the various names and locations of the organizations that have been doing the restoration since it started in 1960. Yikes, this 1908 car has spent almost half its life under restoration, certainly much longer than it spent in revenue service!

http://www.ectma.org/collection.html

I think the Muni craftsmen are past the jacking up the roof on the cable cars... they can now build entire new cars when needed.

We have one flat car at Ardenwood which had three original pieces of wood, all blocking for body hung brakes (which were never installed) Every other piece of wood is new.

I think SN 1005 at Rio Vista, along with the work on PE 717 at OERM (I still call it OET) are the leading edge of a new wave. The trolley museums were lucky to get complete running cars in the period just after WW II. Those cars, while compete, were also competently worn out... light useage allowed us to keep using the cars, but now, 60 years later these cars are getting the repairs that they might have received in the early 1950's if the railroads continued to use them.

The difference is that these cars are being treated like museum artifacts, and people are slavishly duplicating the original, now rotten and worn our fabric, instead of replacing parts as needed with current material. Compare the work on 1005 to how Strasburg rebuilds their passenger cars. They use marine plywood to replace the wall truss, then side over the plywood. They use a rubber membrane instead of painted canvas on the roof. This is not a criticism, they do not claim to be a museum, they are running a 21st century railroad using wooden cars... and they use what works...
Rio Vista is a museum, so they do things differently.

Compare SN 1005 to the two PE replicas at San Pedro (which are truly wonderful replicas, possibly the best ever). Both look old to the casual observer... but 1005 still has the original framing design, the original control system, and could be studied by a researcher trying to gain an understanding about how the car was built and designed, i.e. it is still a museum artifact.

Think of 1005 as a living historical piece that has to be periodically repaired. You as a living being is constantly having cells replaced or repaired. Likewise, the trolley cars were and are being repainted repaired and modified.

A great example is the USS Constitution. Less than 1/3 of the wood is original. Most of it has been replaced or modified or backdated at one time or another. In fact, more original wood from her sister ship the USS Chesapeake, captured in 1813 survives in the Chesapeake mill.

http://www.chesapeakemill.co.uk/historypdf001.pdf