Slow Rides!

[Fred Schneider]

This is essentially for Jim Holland ... the rest of you can ignore or read
at will.  

1.	But the shop car didn't need to stop to drop passengers.  And there
would not be anyone waiting if it wasn't near the time for a regular car.  

2.	On the Jones or Low-Floor cars.  Remember that all the 4800s and
4900s were built with K-43 control (the same as the high floor 4000s) so
that they could tow 2-motor trailers.  The K-43 could handle six motors.
The 5000s, 5100s, 5200s, and 3750s had Westinghouse (and again my quotes)
"HL" control for multiple unit operation.  In my whole life, I've only seen
about four pictures of MU trains.  The 5400s and 5500s were intended for
single car, non-MU operation and had K-35 control.  I think the 5500s
specifically had K-35KK.  

3.	Regardless of the control package, those critters were a figment of
Jones's creative genius. Trailers were not much different from Baltimore and
Boston low-floor trailers ... I don't know who came first.  The design as
probably structurally sound for trailers but it was found lacking for motor
cars, especially starting with number 5000 (and the retrofitted 4700s,
4800s, and 4900s) which had double-stream front doors.  The side sheets and
girders under the floor were just too weak to support the front platforms.
One almost never saw a Pittsburgh low-floor car without a crease in the
panel under the first window, door side, indicating that the platform was
sagging.  In fact, Osgood Bradley took a builders photo of two 5200s coupled
together at the factory ... the crease was already forming and the cars
hadn't even been loaded on a flat car yet for shipment to Pittsburgh! 

4.	Regardless of their short comings, Jones' efforts at low-floor cars
were significant ... his insistance that his former colleagues at
Westinghouse build a compact, medium speed traction motor made it possible
to later build Birneys and a host of other lightweight cars in the 1920s.
Jones was in there first.

5.	You mentioned brakes on the speeded up  cars, Jim.  They were also
changed.  The high-speed cars got not only rewound motors but self-lapping
brake valves, either changes in the brake cylinders or linkage to improve
braking, and stop lights.  I think there might be too many variables in the
argument to believe those changes improved the accident situation.  Did the
company also improve motorman training at the same time?