This particular trolley car was saved by the afore mentioned National Capital Trolley Museum, but like many hotels shown on Shorpy, it was burned in 1970, by arson.

The Silver Sightseer started life as a standard PCC-type streetcar (fleet number 1512) that was fancied-up in the late 1950s with air conditioning, plush seats and other refinements to ferry tourists around D.C. It was also said that it was a demonstration of how the fleet could be upgraded, at a time when the transit company, still privately owned, was involved in franchise controversies with the government.

After the D.C. streetcar system was closed in 1962, the car went to the new National Capital Trolley Museum, where it was set on fire by vandals several years later and completely destroyed. Fortunately the museum has other PCC streamliners in its collection, but the Silver Sightseer was one of a kind.

When FDR traveled by train during WWII, he often boarded the presidential car in the railroad tunnel under the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. There was a now-abandoned spur connecting the building to the main line tracks between Union Station and the "Long Bridge" railroad bridge across the Potomac. He left from there on his last trip to Warm Springs, Georgia shortly before his death in April 1945.

The DC Trolley Museum offers rides on some of the historic cars that served the area in times gone by. Sounds like fun.

One wonders what sights they see.

Chartered? And empty. Interesting.

I have never heard of a trolley with "air conditioning" before.

And if I may digress, why don't they call it cooling, like heating? The term "air conditioning" must've originated with a corporate source to sound more appealing.

[The "conditioning" encompasses cooling, filtering and dehumidification. - Dave]

This appears to be a genuine PCC car. That ungainly thing onetwo pics back, lurking outside the amusement park, was one of 20 lookalikes -- though I guess not too alike -- delivered before the design had been finalized.