Westinghouse -- GE -- Again -- !!!!!!!!!

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Hold it.  Don't take it out of context.

The Picture Window cars had MCM control, the only PCC cars built for domestic
sale with cam control.  The design was totally unrelated to the commutator
control marketed by GE on all the other cars.  MCM was an evolutionary advance
(or whatever) from the earlier PC (first built circa 1917 for four of the IRT
Steinway tunnel cars) and PCM (1928 for Chicago Sedans).  Unlike the PC and PCM
units which used air over oil engines to rotate the came shafts to make and brake
resistance, MCM used an electric motor drive.  Cam controls were, at least in the
1950s and later, the standard rapid transit car scheme until it was supplement by
and later virtually supplanted by solid state thrystor control schemes.
Interestingly, I worked all day today with another trainman at Arden who created
his own version of history ... hour by hour ... tidbit by tidbit.  One of his
gems was that cam controls were a Westinghouse invention and something that GE
never used.  I have never found any reference to cam controls prior to the IRT
application.  However, the other four IRT cars in that Steinway tunnel order had
Westinghouse PK control, which was simply a K-controller mounted under the car
driven by a pneumatic head in response to the commands from the platform
controller.  And what was a K-controller?  Simply another form of cam.  One
friend described PK as a poor man's PC; it fell out of favor very early on but
some examples have survived at Seashore (Montreal was the biggest fan of PK and
Seashore actually took four ex Montreal PK controllers and put them on two open
cars in an interesting attempt to run MU open cars in a museum).  In general,
however, Westinghouse still favored pneumatic unit switch control, under an
alphabet soup of HL, HB, AL, AB, VA, ABLFM, etc. for most remote control
applications until after WWII while GE used electric solenoid switches for hand
advance schemes under the term Type M or cams for automatic progression
controllers.  The beauty of a cam is the lack of a need for complex electrical
interlocks for automatic progression schemes.


Jim Holland wrote:

> Greetings!
>
>         A while back we had discussions on the split of the electrical gear
> between these two suppliers and were wondering why this was done, esp in
> Pgh a Westinghouse town.  While this does not specifically answer the
> question of 'why-the-split' it does reveal reasons as to 'why the cars
> were scrapped.'
>
>         Again from the very last para-giraffe on pg.34 *PCC From Coast to
> Coast* I quote:::::::
>
>         "The confusion with which the MBTA dealt with its PCC fleet is
> exemplified by the scrapping program begun in late 1976.  Of the 12
> all-electrics eliminated, half had been overhauled under the federal
> rehabilitation program between 1973 and 1976.  Some of those cars had
> gone directly from overhaul at Everett to pre-scrap storage at
> Arborway.  Also hard hit by the scrapper's torch were the Picture Window
> cars, both groups being singled out because of their non-standard
> General Electric control systems."
>
>         While I personally prefer Westinghouse, I am still quick to point out
> that this GE scrapping was probably due more to expediency than
> inferiority - the only GE cars on the Boston system were the
> all-electrics (25-cars) and Picture Window cars (50-cars) out of a total
> of 346 PCC cars.  With just better than 20% of the fleet being GE, they
> were more oddball and a nuisance and ultimately used as a *reason(?) for
> fleet downsizing regardless of the fact that they were the newest
> vehicles on the property.
>
> James B. Holland
>
>         Pittsburgh  Railways  Company  (PRCo),   1930  --  1950
>     To e-mail privately, please click here: mailto:pghpcc at pacbell.net
> N.M.R.A.  Life member #2190; http://www.mcs.net:80/~weyand/nmra/
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