Patience Pays Off: New Equipment!

On Thursday I acquired a pair of St. Petersburg Tram Collection 2000-series "L" cars. The particular pair is 2153-2154. (Initially I liked the random numbers for the set, then later realized that there was nothing random about that pair at all.)

I first laid eyes on these cars about eight years ago as they sat illuminated behind protective glass on the shelves of Chicagoland Hobbies. At the time I was an unemployed college student trying to squeeze pocket lint into pennies so that I could actually eat after buying textbooks. The $800+ price tag meant that, while extremely beautiful, these particular cars were not in my future. Someone else would buy them and that would be that.

Fast forward about seven and a half years. While doing a casual run-through of my usual search terms on eBay I happened to see a pair of SPTC 2000-series cars for sale. Lo and behold! they were the same cars I'd seen years earlier in the store. They were still to expensive for me so I let them be. They continually popped up in my eBay runs for the next few months but never thought about them until earlier this week when I noticed that the price had dropped to the upper limits of what I'd be willing to spend. I quickly conferred with my father (who also has a pair of SPTC 2000s) and determined that the two sets had different car numbers and were both signed "Lake B." With the possibility of some day running a four car train now on the table, I wasted no time in acquiring them. (So much for getting that electrical outlet fixed!)

The cars came with a Wagner power truck and trailer for a PCC. I almost certainly won't use this to power the 2000s, but I may use it on some PCC that crosses my path down the line. It is also entirely possible that I will sell or trade them for something else.

These cars will be 2-railed and equipped with a DCC decoder. Unlike their full scale versions, they will not be equipped with trolley poles.