Many of those who pilot the old trolley cars along the local lakes are a charming lot -- gentlemen of a certain age whose air of decorum mingles with a whiff of mischief as they regale you with all they know. Imagine Morgan Freeman with a pinch of Steve Martin and the patter of Alan Alda.

But members of this old guard also acknowledge the reality of being, well, old, and are looking for the next generation of charmers (think Damon/Harrelson/Depp).

Many service groups today know how hard is it to entice new members, especially when the need involves not only time, but skills. On a recent evening, 12 men and one woman whose ages spanned several decades showed up to learn how to become streetcar conductors. Clyde Hawkins considered this a good start.

"Glad to have you potential operators here because, as you can see, I'm getting old," the 81-year-old Hawkins said, charmingly. The night was cold and damp, but he looked as crisp as Cracker Jack in his pressed gray shirt, dark trousers and snappy black motorman's hat. "You're the kind of folks we need desperately, people who can pick up on the details and essentials of running these cars."

Edmund Tunney smiled. He wasn't buying any of this talk about responding to a desperate need: "I'm just sick and tired of these retired guys having all the fun!"

Five years ago, Tunney moved his young family to Linden Hills, where the Como-Harriet line runs between Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun, and promptly fell in love with the trolleys. His family's Christmas card featured a streetcar last year. His 7-year-old son is entranced.

"There's a generation lineage being passed on here," said Tunney, who has lived in other U.S. and European cities with trolleys. "The moment that's gone, there's no amount of money that will bring it back, no amount of passion that can recreate it."

Yet generous amounts of money and passion are very much needed to keep the cars running in Minneapolis, and along Lake Minnetonka in Excelsior. Several mornings a week, a group of guys -- and yes, they're quite mature (and charming!) -- gather for the Minnesota Streetcar Museum's latest renovation project: restoring Winona No. 10.

In a train shed in Excelsior, the car's unsupported skeleton is suspended from rafters. The wheel assemblies, or trucks, have been detached. Windows and other woodwork are propped along a second-floor catwalk. Rotting sections of sills and ribs are carved out and new sections painstakingly mortised in. Often, some sleuthing is involved in finding both the problem and the solution.

"What we do here is forensic engineering," said Ken Albrecht, grinning. Help is needed for a variety of tasks: woodworking, wiring, painting, hot riveting, varnishing and keeping the coffeepot filled. Yet no one should think they need to arrive armed with a wealth of knowledge.

"It's surprising how what skills you have are good enough for this work," Albrecht said, then noted his motto: "Ignorance is curable, stupidity is forever."

Consider the story of how they learned the almost lost art of hot riveting, which is how Winona No. 10 was built in 1914. Detailed instructions were hard to come by until someone finally found a World War I-era book in Cleveland. "It was about how to build a steamship," Albrecht said. Although operating on a considerably smaller scale, the skills proved transferable.

Now this is the sort of information that the older volunteers want to pass along to younger caretakers of tradition. They also want to share the joys of craftsmanship, such as how the slots in the trolley's screw heads all were aligned vertically to shed the rain.

The newcomers who came for the first of several training sessions seemed drawn by a similar reverence for a bygone time.

"The love of history is a dying art," said Seth Paradis, who recently moved to Linden Hills, finding it "the sort of neighborhood where you want to be part of the community discussion, of taking its history and owning it."

Some of the trainees remember riding streetcars themselves. Jesse Starbuck said his imagination is stirred whenever he sees an old track rail just visible in the pavement. Some are retired transit workers. Others have always loved trains.

Some are women. Ten years ago, Jane Hanson got the idea of learning to be a trolley conductor, but then child-raising took precedence. "Now with the kids a little older, I can do something for myself," she said. Hawkins said there are several women in the crews, and that's historical, too: During World War II, women operators called "motorettes" ran streetcars while men were fighting overseas.

The streetcars in Minneapolis and Excelsior are running now most evenings and weekends into the fall. For a schedule and more information about becoming involved in activities of the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, visit www.trolleyride.org .

Kim Ode • 612-673-7185