International Use
Its initial rise and fall notwithstanding, the Birney car was useful and durable, and many were shipped to streetcar systems in other countries, especially ones located in smaller cities and towns, where they served for additional decades. For example, the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, bought up Birneys secondhand from other systems across North America to build an "all-Birney fleet" and keep its streetcar system going in the difficult years of the Great Depression and World War II, finally retiring its last car in 1949.
Although the vast majority of the cars built were sold to streetcar operators in North America (including in Mexico and Cuba), a small number went to much more distant places, such as Australia and New Zealand. In the latter, Birney cars were imported for use by the provincial centres of New Plymouth in the North Island and Invercargill in the South Island, reputedly the world's most southerly tramway system. Cities in South America whose streetcar companies purchased Birney cars included Concordia and Paraná, in Argentina, while Guayaquil in Ecuador obtained Birneys secondhand from Trenton, New Jersey. The Colombian cities of Medellín and Pereira both were served by Birney streetcars, the former's fleet being made up entirely of Birney cars – 61 of them – of both single- and double-truck configuration.
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