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

[Fred W. Schneider III]

The Boston chapter was written by Steve Carlson ... because he lives in Saugus, MA,
I made no attempt to ascertain the validity of the statement. He made his share of
errors; I made mine.  Steve had his own personal pipeline right into Everett Shops.
In such a case, until proven otherwise, one is prone to accept the gospel you are
fed.    John Swindler has since indicated that there were not enough Picture Window
cars to rehabilitate, forcing them to keep wartime cars for consistency.  Its up to
you to decide if the "pipeline" or John is correct.  We were also a lot younger
then and more willing to accept what we were told.  As I age, I'm not even sure if
consistency matters.  In a government operation, I don't believe that anything
other than politics has any true influence.  But once in a while, we do find some
decisions that make economic sense.

I'm not sure yet if the person who told me this has retired from Muni or not, so
I'm not going to give his name.  We were sitting in his home looking at slides one
night.  He had a gorgeous snap of a newly painted orange and cream Muni PCC car ...
the standard paint scheme in the early LRV era.  The story that went with it was,
as best I can paraphrase it after 20 odd years, is: UMTA paid to repaint PCC cars.
UMTA was sending some officials to San Francisco to see how the work was
progressing.  There was nothing being painted at that moment, for whatever reason.
Therefore, a car was pulled from the scrap line and painted so that the
Washingtonians could see a car being painted! After they left, the car was
scrapped.  But not before my friend took the picture.  Isn't politics wonderful?
He who has the proper connections and writes the best grant applications wins the
trophy.

Not everyone disliked General Electric products.  Shaker Heights was quite fond of
GE.  They claimed, in the event of a problem even in the late 1970s, the people
from Erie would be there in a day to attempt to solve it.   They had a somewhat
less favorable opinion of the gang from West Mifflin.

Jim Holland wrote:

> Greetings!
>
>         YES, Fred, I concur.  It is NOT a GE issue.
>
>         PLEASE NOTE:  I said this in my very first post.  Let me quote:
>
> ". . . 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."
>
>         And Yes, I agree that this is a math problem  --  *M-Y*  math problem
> which is included in the post above.  When I first looked at the tables,
> I somehow thought there were only 75-GE cars on the property.  Looking
> at the tables again I find that there were a total of 170-Westinghouse
> Cars and a total of 176-GE cars.
>
>         And again, please let me include the quote from your book, *PCC The Car
> That Fought Back* pg.34::
>
> "Also hard hit by the scrapper's torch were the Picture Window cars,
> both groups [1-picture windows--2-all-electrics] being singled out
> because of their non-standard General Electric control systems."
>
>         I originally took *non-standard* to mean that the balance of equipment
> was Westinghouse with little GE equipment around.  But I now believe
> that *non-standard* means *type-of-GE-equipment---MCM* (at least in the
> case of the picture window cars.)
>
>         So the decision to go with Westinghouse was a matter of *expediency*
> (*as-I-said-in-my-very-first-post!)  and not a matter of quality
> concerning Westinghouse or GE.
>
>         I am including a couple of the posts as forwards so this information
> might be checked in context.
>
> 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/
>
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: Re: Westinghouse -- GE -- Again -- !!!!!!!!!
> Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 21:14:55 -0700
> From: Jim Holland <pghpcc at pacbell.net>
> Reply-To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Organization: Holland Electric Railway Operation
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> References: <3992E7FF.15B1 at pacbell.net> <3994C524.1946C77D at supernet.com>
>
> Greetings!
>
>         So that fits the oddball theory even more - the cars were unusual
> compared to the bulk of the fleet, needed different and special parts,
> so it was easier to mothball these than keep them going.  And that is
> still in keeping with my final paragraph in the quote below.
>
>         Is this cam control similar to that used on trolley coaches?
>
> Fred W. Schneider III wrote:
>
> > 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/
>
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: Re: Westinghouse -- GE -- Again -- !!!!!!!!!
> Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 14:23:01 -0400
> From: "Fred W. Schneider III" <fschnei at supernet.com>
> Reply-To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> References: <3992E7FF.15B1 at pacbell.net> <3994C524.1946C77D at supernet.com>
>      <3994CF3F.5FF8 at pacbell.net>
>
> Not necessarily so.  How many MTA or MBTA rapid transit cars also had MCM
> control?
>
> John Swindler is standing next to me.  He points out that this is a math
> problem and not a GE issue.  His understanding is that UMTA gave MBTA money to
> rebuild 50 PCC cars with possible add-ons and that there were not that many
> Picture Window cars remaining.  Eventually some one got the bright idea to
> find 50 matching cars and they just happened to be Westinghouse, for whatever
> reason.  John believes that they could also have picked GE wartime cars.
>
> Jim Holland wrote:
>
> > Greetings!
> >
> >         So that fits the oddball theory even more - the cars were unusual
> > compared to the bulk of the fleet, needed different and special parts,
> > so it was easier to mothball these than keep them going.  And that is
> > still in keeping with my final paragraph in the quote below.
> >
> >         Is this cam control similar to that used on trolley coaches?
> >
> > Fred W. Schneider III wrote:
> >
> > > 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/