BY STEVE “JUICED UP” BARRY PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
I
T ALL STARTED A QUARTER CENTURY AGO. Your author was looking for an activity for Super Bowl weekend that would be close to home and occupy only Saturday, leaving Sunday available for the big game. Perhaps others were looking for the same thing. Since I was (and still am) trip organizer for the Wilmington (Del.) Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, I contacted SEPTA to arrange for a streetcar charter in Philadelphia on that day. Since it was the day before the Super Bowl, the trip was given the name “Super Saturday Streetcar Special.” I don’t remember the exact year that first trip ran, but it was a huge success. A couple of years later, the Chapter ran the same trip on the same day. In keeping with the Super Bowl tradition of Roman numerals, this
would be
Super Saturday Streetcar Special II. Either starting with that second trip, or perhaps the third trip, the Special has been run in consecutive years ever since, with the 2016 version marking Super Saturday Streetcar Special XXIII. The 23rd outing was held on February 6, 2016, and featured one of SEPTA’s Brookville-rebuilt PCC-II streetcars. Over the years, the trips have used a Peter Witt car, various retired PCCs (SEPTA maintained a small fleet of historic cars for a short time after PCCs were retired from regular routes), and the PCC-II cars before they were put into regular service. One trip, XXI, went out on SEPTA’s Red Arrow Division to Media and Sharon Hill.
the
In the early days, SEPTA maintained wire and track on some of
its
“temporarily bussed” routes, so some trips ran the length of Route 23 (the longest streetcar route in North America,
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stretching over 12 miles from Chestnut Hill to south Philly), while others used Route 56 on Erie Avenue (both of these
routes are now abandoned). Trips are now confined to the southwest subway- surface routes and Route 15 on Girard
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