OAKLAND, Calif. — Bay Area Rapid Transit, the 131-mile electrified rail network in the San Francisco Bay Area, is offering the public a last chance to ride the 1970s-era futuristic railcars that made up its original fleet.
On Saturday, April 20, at 1 p.m. at the MacArthur station in Oakland, BART will commemorate the cars with a ceremony and then run two 10-car trains using original cars for the last time. Anyone can ride for the usual fare.
“We understand that BART cars are iconic, especially the sloped-front A cars,” said BART spokesperson Jim Allison. “We just wanted to give them a proper sendoff so that people had a chance to say goodbye to the cars that have been serving the Bay Area for more than 50 years.”
The special trains will run about 24 miles from MacArthur to Fremont, the first segment of BART to open 52 years ago. The trains will make the usual stops and run more loops between the two stations if needed to accommodate everyone who wants to ride, he said.
The “Riding into History: Final Run of the First Fleet” event will include speeches, a raffle for a couple of railcar plates, and probably some merchandise for sale, Allison said. Some details were still being decided early this month.
April 20 is coincidentally the same day when the electric trains of the Key System, a BART predecessor, ran their final miles in 1958.
The legacy fleet ended regular service in September 2023; when that date was set, BART had indicated it would eventually hold a special farewell event [see “BART to retire last original cars …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 25, 2023]. Most of the legacy equipment has already been recycled, but BART is donating three cars — one each of the A, B and C versions — to the Western Railway Museum at Rio Vista Junction, which is run by the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association. Five other cars were awarded in 2022 for reuse ranging from an arcade area at an Oakland bar and grill to use in firefighter training [see “BART to award eight retired cars ..,” News Wire, March 16, 2022].
When it opened on Sept. 11, 1972, BART was the first entirely new rail transit system built in the United States in decades, built to an atypical 5-foot, 6-inch gauge for reasons the agency explains here. Its technology, advanced for the time, included central computer control, on-board electronic propulsion and “the lightest weight car per passenger ever built,” the museum says. The intended effect was space age, not subway.
Museum volunteers will ride the last trains, staff a table, and speak for a few minutes at the farewell, said Andy Payne, a museum archivist and author of “Legacy Fleet,” an upcoming book about the cars.
The museum will receive the cars in June and intends to place them in its Loring C. Jensen Memorial Car House 3. “We are planning exhibits near the cars showcasing the history of the BART system and the legacy fleet,” he said. “In the future, if funding allows, we would love to build the Rapid Transit History Center” that would feature the cars and other aspects of Bay Area electric rail history.
The museum runs historic equipment from several electric railroads on about 6 miles of ex-Sacramento Northern track with overhead wire, but can’t operate the BART cars, because of their gauge and need for third-rail power.
According to BART, the 669 cars in the legacy fleet used 1,000-volt DC electricity for propulsion, with one 150 hp motor per axle and four motors per car. The fleet had:
- 59 A2 cars and 380 B2 cars, built by aerospace company Rohr Industries. They began service in 1972, and were rehabilitated in 1997 and 2002.
- 150 C1 cars from Alstom. They entered service in 1988, and were never rehabilitated.
- 80 C2 cars from Morrison-Knudsen. They began service in 1994, and were never rehabilitated.
Each car was 70 feet long, except for the A model, 75 feet with a cab.
BART’s new Fleet of the Future consists of 775 cars from Bombardier, later bought by Alstom. Also 70 feet long, each car uses 1,000-volt DC electricity, gets power from a third rail, and has two trucks with one 194-hp motor per axle, and two axles per truck.
— Updated at 1:30 p.m. CT to correct caption information.
Are the Fleet of the Future cars as lightweight?