Prototype Brilliner No. 6891 is seen in Atlantic City in its original two-tone green livery. The car was renumbered 6901 with the delivery of 24 new Brilliners in 1940. This photograph was probably taken near the inlet. Photo by David H. Cope.

BRILL'S LAST RUN:
THE BRILLINER

Edward Ridolph

For well over half a century, the name J.G. Brill & Company was virtually synonymous with the street railway industry. Brill not only grew to become the largest streetcar and interurban manufacturer in America, but eventually the company and its subsidiaries became the largest car builder in the world. It was literally true that the sun never set on a Brill-built car and the company's well-built products could be found on city streets throughout much of the civilized world.

The company was founded in Philadelphia in 1868 by John G. Brill and his son, George Martin

Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company No. 3 near Newton Square on the West Chester line, on June 3, 1954. Brilliners were rarely used on this line, as the olders 80s and the St. Louis cars were usually assigned. Photo from Collection of Edward Ridolph.

Brill. In common with other car builders of that era, it began by building horse cars. The street railway industry grew rapidly in the last decades of the 19th Century, and Brill grew along with it. By 1890 the company had relocated to a large plant on Philadelphia's Woodland Avenue, a facility it would occupy throughout its corporate life.

The new factory and Brill's proven success in building horse cars and cable cars put the company in position to meet the demands of the new and exploding electric railway technology of the 1890s. By the turn of the century Brill was ready to undertake a major expansion, and in 1902 the company began buying out rival car builders in an attempt to consolidate the industry. By 1908 five major competitors, including such venerable names as John Stephenson, Danville Car Company, Wason Manufacturing, G.C. Kuhlman, and American Car Company were part of Brill's growing empire. By 1912, when Brill opened a plant in Paris to sell trucks and equipment to the European market, the company had truly become a global enterprise.

Brill prospered as long as the electric railway industry prospered, and for the first decades of the 20th Century the company maintained its dominant position, turning out virtually every conceivable type of streetcar and interurban. But as the 1920s wore on, clouds were already beginning to gather on Brill's horizon.

The problems that beset electric railways in the 1920s are well documented. Postwar inflation which drove costs beyond the ability of the universal and politically popular nickel fare to cover expenses, rapid improvements in the motor bus, the growth of the private automobile and the taxpayer supported roads it ran on, and an increasing obsolescence in the more than 70,000 streetcars and interurbans in service nationwide were just some of the plethora of issues facing the industry.

To meet this challenge, in 1929 a group of railway executives met and formed the Electric Railway Presidents Conference Committee. Its principal goal was to design a modern car that would address many of these problems, and more than 50 operating properties, suppliers and major carbuilders, including Brill, eventually made up the membership. But Brill, despite its early interest, was not destined to play a major role when the committee's crowning achievement, the PCC car, finally came to fruition.

Although Brill remained a member of the committee for some years, the company soon became dissatisfied and quickly lost interest in the development of the PCC car. Brill had strong objections to the design of the PCC truck as well as the welded body construction, which contrasted with the riveted construction Brill preferred and was most experienced with. The control circuitry on the PCC, which Brill considered complicated, was another point of contention. Still another factor was Brill's affiliation with American Car & Foundry, which dated back to 1926 and gave the company a successful line of buses that could keep the Philadelphia plant busy. Finally, Brill wasn't eager to build a car that would require royalty payments to an outside source, if the company began building PCCs. By 1935, Brill was no longer enamored with the PCC.

In the mid-1930s PCC production was beginning to fill the order books at St. Louis Car and Pullman-Standard, but the Brill plant didn't build any cars in 1936 or 1937. Instead, the company decided to go it alone and develop its own streetcar which it felt could compete with the already successful PCC.

Following its two year hiatus, Brill re-entered the market in 1938 with a car appropriately dubbed the "Brilliner." The impetus came from the Pennsylvania Railroad, which wanted to upgrade the Atlantic City & Shore, its local transit subsidiary in the oceanfront city. For various reasons the PRR didn't want to get involved with the developers of the PCC, so it turned to Brill, long one of its major shippers, and the Brilliner became its car of choice.

ABaltimore Transit Company No. 7501 is in Towson, MD, in 1940, shortly after entering service. The solid two-tone paint scheme did little to improve the boxy design of the Brilliner. Photo from Collection of M.D. McCarter.

Similar in many respects to the PCC, the new car featured styling and colors by famed designer Raymond Loewy, well-known for his efforts on the Pennsylvania's GG1 electrics. Delivered in September 1938, the car was an immediate success on Atlantic Avenue, the eight mile route that ran the length of the city from the Inlet on the north to Longport on the south. The car proved so successful that the following year 24 additional cars were ordered, the largest order Brill had received since 1933. Delivered in 1940, they were the mainstay of the resort city's operating fleet for the next 15 years. In a bow to one of the city's principal tourist attractions, for a time each car carried the logo "The Miss America Fleet" in bold script just above the windowline.

Five other Brilliners left the plant during 1939. One went to Baltimore and another to Cincinnati, which was in the process of modernizing its system and wanted to compare the Brilliner in service against a PCC from each of the two major manufacturers. The remaining three cars were leased by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company in Brill's home town. Unfortunately, despite Brill's high hopes for its new car, all five were destined to be orphans on their respective systems. None would ever generate repeat orders.

Although few in number, the Brilliner in some respects compared favorably with its arch rival, the

A special section of the Atlantic City Press featuring information on the new Brill Streamliners purchased by the Atlantic City & Shore. The issue was published in July 1940. Image from NRHS Collection.

PCC. Brill's bolted trucks, a major point of contention during early PCC development, were generally long lasting and smooth riding. The cars had a weight advantage over the PCC and in areas such as cooling and heating, as well as controls, both the Brilliner and the PCC were quite similar.

One major drawback of the Brilliner was its square, boxy design as opposed to the more rounded, streamlined design of the PCC. This wasn't a problem in wide open Atlantic City or on the semi-rural lines of suburban Philadelphia, but both the Baltimore and Cincinnati cars were restricted to certain routes during their lifetimes, and the first Sunday a Brilliner ran in Philadelphia it hit a wall that previously posed no clearance problems for the PCCs.

Unfortunately, the career of most Brilliners was destined to be short and unremarkable. Baltimore Transit's lone car, No. 7501, saw regular service during World War II on Route 8, the busiest line in the city. Its use rapidly declined after the war, and it was finally removed from regular service in 1954. After two years in storage, it met the scrappers' torch in 1956.

The Cincinnati Street Railway's only Brilliner (see image at bottom of page), originally numbered 1200, saw heavy service on several routes in the city. The car was later renumbered 1128, refitted with Clark B-2 trucks to correct a gearbox problem, then worked Route 78 until all rail service ended in the Queen City in April 1951. Then, after Toronto purchased Cincinnati's PCC fleet, No. 1128 also met an ignominious end courtesy of the scrapper.

The three Philadelphia Brilliners were purchased by the Philadelphia Transportation Company in 1940, after the system had already operated 20 PCC cars for about two years. The three Brilliners ran through World War II, a time when everything that could turn a wheel was pressed into service, right down to salt cars that were reconverted into passenger carriers. But in January 1947, Nos. 2021 and 2022 were retired and cannibalized to keep the lone survivor, No. 2023, running. As an oddball car in a large and growing PCC fleet it never really found a home, and it was finally sold for scrap in August 1956. PTC reportedly felt the Brilliner was structurally inferior to the PCC, and both clearance and maintenance problems doomed any further interest. Philadelphia, the city that was both home to Brill and once one of its largest customers, had turned its back on the local company.

The 25 Atlantic City cars, the largest Brilliner fleet in existence, remained a familiar sight in the coastal city until December 28, 1955, when with a parade and a good deal of fanfare they rolled down Atlantic Avenue for the last time. In common with most Brilliners the entire fleet was scrapped. None was saved for the burgeoning trolley museum movement or went on to a new career elsewhere.

Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company No. 5 approaching the Ardmore terminal on June 8, 1961. Photo from Collection of Edward Ridolph.

The most successful example of Brill's attempt to challenge the PCC took place close to home. The Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company, popularity known as the Red Arrow Lines, needed new cars for its four suburban lines out of Upper Darby. After comparing the Brilliner to the PCC, Red Arrow decided to go with the local product and in 1940 ordered eight cars from Brill. The original order was quickly upped to ten cars, and in September 1941, they began arriving. Numbered 1 through 10, mounted on special high-speed 99ER1 trucks, and somewhat heavier than the standard city version, they were the only double-end Brilliners ever built. Several years later as wartime traffic expanded, Red Arrow approached Brill about duplicating the series. With a vanishing market and no interest elsewhere in the Brilliner, the company declined. There were no other inquiries.

For the better part of a century the Brill plant had turned out thousands of cars, sometimes building orders that ran into the hundreds. By 1938, when Brill tried to go back to its roots and begin building streetcars again, the success of the PCC and its popularity among transit operators was simply too much to overcome. Brill's insistence on going its own way and competing in a fading market that didn't have room for two similar but different cars was destined to fail. Ultimately, the 40 Brilliners the company managed to put on the street simply weren't enough to capture a lost market.

In 1944, after 76 years in business and more than 45,000 transit vehicles later, the J.G. Brill Company was formally dissolved, replaced by the ACF/Brill Motors Company. Then in 1954 the newly-named company itself ceased all production. It was truly the end of an era.

Finally it came down to just ten cars on a small rail system right across town from the Woodland Avenue plant. The cars Brill built for Red Arrow in 1941 were destined to run for over 40 years, a record for the Brilliner and certainly a long life for any type of rail car. October 8, 1982, was the last day of regular service for the last streetcar ever built by Brill. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, the publicly-owned successor to Red Arrow, was modernizing its two suburban trolley lines and the remaining Brilliners were taking their final bow. Their replacements, built by the Japanese manufacturer Kawasaki, were already on the property and the next day they took over the service. On October 17 a fantrip including Brilliner No. 7 was run over both remaining lines. When it was over, the world's largest car builder had made its last run.

Cincinnati Street Railway No. 1128 on Route 21 at Westwood Loop, January 7, 1950. Photo from Collection of M.D. McCarter.

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