hard to believe today but not so long ago cle was one of only a handful of cities where rapid rail transit remained up and running after the transit holocaust fallout. that is reinforced by this these soac (state of the art car) articles below.

 

does anyone have any photos or news about the soac program cars on the cleveland stop of their nationwide tour? this would have been early to mid-seventies.

 

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Thanks to Jeffery Mora (Transportation Systems Manager, US Federal Transit Administration) and Bill Mosteller for the information below.

 

The State of the Art Car (SOAC) Program was initiated by the United States Department of Transportation in 1971 and completed in 1977. The Program was designed to demonstrate the newest rail car technology, such as Director Current Chopper Control, to the older rapid transit systems (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Cleveland). The "new technology" San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) was under construction in 1971 (it opened in 1972) when the SOAC project was initiated.

 

Boeing Vertol was retained as a Systems Manager for the SOAC and related work. Boeing contracted with St. Louis Car Company to build two rapid transit cars based on "BART or better" technology. St. Louis was building R-44 series cars for New York at that time, so an R-44 frame was used for the frame. The cars were extensively tested at the Department of Transportation's High Speed Ground Test Center, Pueblo, Colorado in 1973. The cars were then sent on a national tour in 1974-1975, and visited New York City during 1974.

 

TABLE I. SUMMARY OF CITY DEMONSTRATIONS 

 

                              NYCTA New York  MBTA Boston  CTS Cleveland  CTA Chicago  SEPTA Philadelphia  Total 

Revenue Service Days  30  22  15  13  24  104 

Round Trips Made  86  176  85  149  121  617 

Car Availability (Percent)  70  99  88  100  95  92 

Estimated Passenger Count  100,000  125,000  20,000  7,500  60,000  312,000 

Miles in Service  5,680  4,730  4,217  1,968  3,000  19,595 

 

http://www.nycsubway.org/cars/soac.html

 

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i think this soac is in evanston? not sure:

 

http://www.umcycling.com/cta3.htm

 

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soac up some more - soac brochere:

 

 

A tribute to a luxurious, experimental subway train

 

 

One of the most awsome subway cars ever built were the State-of-the-Art (SOAC) cars.

 

SOAC was a program administered by the Urban Mass Transpartation Administration in the early 70's to assess new technology and design in subway car construction.

 

Only two SOAC cars were built. It was a married-pair non-articulated set built by the St. Louis Car Company/GSI Industries during 1973-74. The car bodies sides were patterned after, and nearly identical to the R-44 type cars of the New York City Transit System which were built by SLCC in the early 70's. They sported lightweight trucks and a large two-pane windshield with the UMTA/DOT symbol on the left.

 

While the train was a landmark in testing new equipment and materials, they were not entirely unique, however. San Francisco's BART system were already running similar space-age inspired rapid transit cars. Thus, SOAC was basically to test new technology in existing, older systems, of which there were five in 1974.

 

After testing at  UMTA's test track in Pueblo, Colorado, the SOAC cars ran on the properties of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and Cleveland during the summer and fall of 1974. It did not run in San Francisco. These cars were also used as test-beds for future rapid transit systems in the planning stage, such as Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.

 

more:

http://sites.google.com/site/vintagetransitmaps/soac(stateoftheartcar)

i think this soac is in evanston? not sure:

 

...Evanston in Chicago?  The CTA line up there ("Evanston Express") was on overhead, not third rail, as in the pix.  Though it looks like a pantagraph on one of the cars.

The SOAC cars briefly ran on the Skokie Swift (now the Yellow Line) in Chicago, which is where the photo above was taken. The station platforms at Dempster and Howard stations had to be slightly modified to accommodate the wider (10'-0") SOAC cars, as the CTA's normal fleet is only 8'-6" wide.

 

I believe the Evanston line (now the Purple Line) had already converted from overhead catenary to third rail by the time the SOAC cars came along. The Yellow Line, however, still had catenary for a portion of its length until just a couple years ago. The trains would switch between catenary and third rail pickup "on the fly" without slowing down.

 

The SOAC cars are now in the collection of the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine, and are awaiting restoration. I've been inside them, and although they now appear quite dated, one can see their similarities to the R-44 and R-46 cars still running on the NYC subway.