Route 23

Who owns or has the rights to the PCC design? Is it in the public domain? Would new PCCs be legal to run in the US?

The last holder of the PCC patent that I have seen is the Transit Research Corp. which was the 1949 successor to the Electric Railway Presidents' Conference Committee, the original patent holder and the organization for which the car is named. I don't know whether TRC still exists. If it does, and still holds the patent, then permission would have to be obtained and a royalty paid before a new vehicle using PCC technology could be built.
( As an aside, the necessity of paying royalties in order to build PCC cars is one of the reasons J.G. Brill Co. opted not to build the car and settled on building the short lived Brilliner)

walt wrote:I don't know whether TRC still exists. If it does, and still holds the patent, then permission would have to be obtained and a royalty paid before a new vehicle using PCC technology could be built.

Admittedly I might not know what I'm talking about, but patents expire after twenty years. So wouldn't that mean that by now, you wouldn't need to pay royalties to build PCC cars?

Generally, you are correct, there is either a 17 year expiration or a 20 year expiration depending on the type of patent held. I haven't been able to find out whether a patent can be extended ( as copyrights used to be under former law) but I did see something on expiration for failing to pay a maintenance fee. In any event, a potential builder of a new PCC car would be well advised to research the status of the TRC patents before undertaking construction of PCC cars.

I ran out to Wayne Junction today and poked around the station while I stretched. Everything looked fine (save for the hoodlums spray painting grafitti in the station) EXCEPT...

the wires are down on the 23 under the Wyane Junction RR tracks!

The trolley wires seem to be fine in other places, but under the tracks, GONE. How much do you think that SEPTA will tell us it will be to replace said wires to restore service?

"It will be too much of a hassle to replace those lines and ensure safe transit underneith. We are going to scrub the who... wait! We already did."

Those wires havent been there since AT LEAST February 2003.