After ten years of planning and nearly two years of construction Portland's "Vintage Trolley" finally began operating on November 29, 1991. The Vintage Trolley follows the MAX light rail line through downtown to a terminus on a newly built single track spur on N.E. 11th Avenue across from Lloyd Center. The service, which operates year-round on weekends, is designed to attract tourists and shoppers to Lloyd Center and the downtown commercial district. It also serves as a link between the West and East sides, and runs past the new Oregon Convention Center and Memorial Coliseum. Vintage Trolley, Inc. is a non-profit organization of business and local government leaders formed in 1987. The vintage streetcar plan was part of the original Banfield Light Rail Project with the Urban Mass Transportation Administration funding 80% of the cost of rolling stock, carbarn and construction of the 11th Avenue spur. Operation is funded through local improvement district taxes, interest from a trust fund set up in the mid '80s, sponsorship from businesses on the line, and revenue generated by $1.00 fares. Four businesses agreed to be $100,000 "car sponsors" ($20,000 a year for five years) for the right to advertise on and inside their designated car. Eight other businesses made donations of $30,000 as "station sponsors" in exchange for signage at the stations and recognition in promotional literature. Tri-Met is reimbursed for all operating expenses, including operators' salaries. Conductors (officially known as "hosts and hostesses") work for VTI, and are either reimbursed directly or through donations to affiliated museums. As most readers of this bulletin know, about one-half the crew roster comes from the OERHS. The other half consists of Amalgamated Transit Untion retirees and crews from the National Railway Historical Society and the Willamette Shore Trolley. These traditionally uniformed conductors are employed to collect fares and answer questions about the cars and local transit history. Vintage Trolley operates reproduction Brill streetcars built by the GOMACO Corporation of Ida Grove, Iowa, which also made old-style cars for a heritage trolley line in Lowell, Massachusetts. The 40' long double-truck cars are patterned after Portland's 501-510 series streetcars, better known as the "Council Crest" cars. The Council Crest car design was chosen because these popular vehicles were used longer than any other Portland trolleys (from arrival in 1904 until the abandonment of city line service in 1950). The two Council Crest cars surviving at the Trolley Park (503 and 506) were used as models for the reproductions, which cost about $400,000 apiece. The new cars' numbers are a symbolic continuation of the original Council Crest series. Cars 511, 513, and 514 are now in the VTI carbarn, with a fourth, and final, trolley expected in May. Interiors are also like that of the original Brills, including carved woodwork and rattan-covered, walk-over seats. There are seats for 40 passengers and 28 standees. Other period interior features include hand-operated doors, pull-down window shades and leather standee straps. There is a difference, however, in the way the windows work. In the 1903 Brill "semi convertible" design side windows opened upward, into the curved roof. In the new cars, the windows drop down, into the sides of the vehicle. This design is similar to that used by GOMACO for its earlier enclosed Lowell streetcar so may have resulted in cost savings. There is more to Portland's GOMACO cars than meet the eye; they are actually a unique combination of three different components: reproduction turn-of-the-century body and fittings; 1950s PCC trucks and motors; and 1990s light rail electronics. Their handmade wooden bodies have been made heavier, and safer, due to the incorporation of steel frames. Beneath the floor are refurbished PCC trucks from Boston (ex Dallas) air-electric PCCs and Chicago rapid transit PCC cars. They feature air tread brakes plus magnetic emergency track brakes. The cars have modern Cineston controllers housed in replica K-35 wooden cabinets. Though rated for 40 m.p.h., the GOMACOs have proven capable of 55 m.p.h. Banfield light rail speeds. Passenger service is currently confined to the downtown area, where speeds are limited to around 25 m.p.h. 1903 vintage Brills collected current from standard trolley poles but the GOMACO repro-ductions use something more akin to a European bow collector. It is the result of a compromise between Tri-Met and the historical review committee, which wanted to avoid a full-fledged panto-graph like that on MAX vehicles. The unusual looking result looks some-thing like a trolley buses' dual poles with a pantograph shoe fitted across the top. They are similar to the current collectors still used on some cars of Chicago's Skokie Swift line. Each Portland car has two of these, mounted back to back. Like the poles on the original trolleys, they are raised and lowered by hand using ropes and retrievers. Most maintenance is carried out at the new four-car Vintage Trolley Carbarn located beneath the I-5 freeway adjacent to Coliseum station. Major work is done at Ruby Junction. Maintenance work so far has focused on correcting "bugs" in modern electronics carefully hidden on the new cars, including baulky motor generator sets, inventor boards and low voltage circuitry. Portland Vintage Trolley has operated on weekends and holidays only since the beginning of 1992. However a week of daily operation is planned during Japan-America Week at the end of May, and various evening charters are planned, including one for the Electric Railroaders' Association next summer. Ridership dropped when "free" holiday rides ceased in November (a month that saw close to 25,000 riders), but has steadily risen. In March over 5,000 people paid $1.00 apiece to ride these delightful reproduction "Council Crest" cars. Even more are expected during Portland's annual Rose Festival celebrations during the month of June. So things are going extremely well for the new Vintage line, whose inauguration has made Portland the trolley capitol of the Northwest, with three operating trolley lines within a 40 mile radius. The other two are the Willamette Shore Trolley, which runs between Portland and Lake Oswego, Oregon, and the Glenwood Electric Railway at the Trolley Park in Glenwood, which is operated by the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society from May through October.