thumb|300px|right|[[Fort Collins Municipal Railway Birney Safety Streetcar No. 21|Fort Collins Municipal Railway Birney car 21, built in 1919]]

A Birney or Birney Safety Car is a type of streetcar that was manufactured in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s. The design was small and light and was intended to be an economical means of providing frequent service at a lower infrastructure and labor cost than conventional streetcars. Production of Birney cars lasted from 1915 until 1930, and more than 6,000 of the original, single-truck version were built. Several different manufacturers built Birney cars. in North America.

Invention

The Birney car was the joint 1915 invention of Charles Birney and Joseph Bosenbury (who was issued the patents in 1917 and 1919, and assigned half to Birney; see Brill page 140). Birney was an engineer with the firm of Stone & Webster, an operator of a number of trolley systems in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. The design was named the "Safety Car", and became known as the "Birney Safety Car" and ultimately simply as the "Birney" car. Double-truck Birney cars were sold to a number of systems, including that of Tampa, Florida, In addition to 11 double-truck passenger cars, which featured deluxe interior appointments and toilets for interurban service, the Texas Interurban operated three unusual Birney-based double-truck express cars without passenger seats or windows– the only cars of this type ever built.

Although the vast majority of the cars built were sold to streetcar operators in North America (including in Mexico and Cuba), a small number went to much more distant places, such as Australia and New Zealand. In the latter, Birney cars were imported for use by the provincial centres of New Plymouth in the North Island and Invercargill in the South Island, reputedly the world's most southerly tramway system.

Cities in South America whose streetcar companies purchased Birney cars included Concordia and Paraná, in Argentina, while Guayaquil in Ecuador obtained Birneys secondhand from Trenton, New Jersey. The Colombian cities of Medellín and Pereira both were served by Birney streetcars, the former's fleet being made up entirely of Birney cars – 61 of them – of both single- and double-truck configuration.

In Australia the Municipal Tramways Trust, Adelaide purchased four as its Type G tram; the Melbourne & Metropolitan Tramways Board purchased two as its X class; and the Melbourne Electric Supply Company (Geelong) purchased two. The two Birneys in Geelong were unusual, having been built with longitudinal seating. These and the four Adelaide cars were transferred to Bendigo in 1947, where four of them remained in revenue service until 1972. One each of the Geelong and Adelaide cars is operational on the Bendigo Tramways heritage line; the three other Adelaide cars are held by the Tramway Museum, St Kilda, South Australia, with one in regular service.

Preservation and continued use

thumb|right|[[Sacramento Northern Birney car 62 at the Western Railway Museum, Rio Vista, California]]

Australia

Seven of the eight Birney cars imported there have survived in operating condition:

  • five are at Bendigo Tramways, - two ex-Geelong cars and three from Adelaide.
  • one G type at the Adelaide Tramway Museum, St Kilda.
  • one Melbourne X class housed at the Hawthorn tram depot in Melbourne. Thus, Australia has a high proportion of the world's surviving, operable Birney cars.

Canada

  • The Nelson Electric Tramway (in Nelson, B.C.) has one fully restored Birney car.

New Zealand

  • New Plymouth Birney No. 8 is preserved by Wanganui Tramways.
  • Invercargill Birney car No. 15 was restored by the Tramway Historical Society at Ferrymead Heritage Park, Christchurch. It operates on the Christchurch tramway.
  • Invercargill No.16 was recently rediscovered and recovered to the Bill Richardson Transport World in Invercargill and is being restored for static display.

United States of America

A number of Birney cars remain in use today in North America at trolley museums and heritage streetcar operations. Single examples of original Birney cars are in service on heritage streetcar lines in Tampa, Florida; Fort Collins, Colorado; San Jose, California, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, as well as on the M-Line Trolley line in Dallas, Texas. Three of these cars, Fort Collins car 21, Fort Collins car 22, and Fort Smith car 224, are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Additionally, replica Birney cars built by Gomaco are in service in at least four U.S. cities (see below).

Replica Birney cars

In the United States, the Gomaco Trolley Company has built at least 18 replica Birney cars, in the style of the less-common double-truck Birney car design, since 1999. Gomaco fitted these with trucks from ex-Milan, Italy Peter Witt streetcars. These have been supplied to Tampa, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee. Gomaco also restored an original single-truck Birney car body in 2002–3 for the Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District in Fresno, California; this was intended for static display in a local park.

See also

  • Peter Witt streetcar
  • PCC streetcar

References

  • History of the J. G. Brill Company by Debra Brill (2001, Indiana University Press, Bloomington) (She is a great-great-great-granddaughter of company founder John George Brill). (Birney safety cars pages 140–145, 162)