Great tidbits!

[Fred W. Schneider III]

I almost hate to even bring this up for fear of patronizing most of you folks.
On the other hand, a lot of you are youthful.   Pittsburgh Railways did not push
cars if they could avoid it.  If a car had to be taken long distances, it was
pulled.  Remember, tow car M-197 (one of the old high floor 4100s) was the beast
that started the 1955 Homewood Car House fire.
After it was creamated, another 4100 snow scraper was hastily converted to
tow-car M-200, which today sits in the shop at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum.
I was never lucky enough to get a picture of either one at work though I did bag
M197 coming down Sandusky Street light.    I'm sure Holland will remind us that
Muni used one of the Iron Monsters as a tow car in the days when he was a
motorman.

Baltimore Transit and Los Angeles Transit Lines used tow trucks of substantial
weight.  Ed Miller snapped the Baltimore emergency truck towing two dead PCCs
toward Carroll Park Shops at South and Lombard in 1950.  I've been told that the
BTC truck exists in private hands.   The Los Angeles truck ( believe it's a
White)  is at Orange Empire Railway Museum.   Dave Garcia told me the LATL beast
exceeds normal two axle allowable weights for California highways and required a
special permit for an oversize load to drive outside the City of Angels.  OERM,
by the way, uses it for its intended purpose.  I have a color slide of it towing
dead PCC 3165 at the museum!

"Dietrich, Robert J." wrote:

> It was one of those
> "nod-nod-, wink-wink, " statements.
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From:   mrb190 [mailto:mrb190+ at pitt.edu]
> Sent:   Tuesday, May 09, 2000 9:41 AM
> To:     pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject:        Re: Great tidbits!
>
> SUPER ILLUSTRATION of this topic!  Doesn't get any better!
> What a task, though, to shove a car over like that?  Are you serious?
> Wow.  I didn't know it was possible.  (or is this one of those
> "nod-nod-, wink-wink, know what I mean?" statements?)\
>
> I guess I envisioned a motorized repair truck coming out with crossover
> tracks and the car was then pushed & pulled over to the other track.
>
> Matt
>
> Dietrich, Robert J. wrote:
> >
> > Then again sometimes they would just shove the broken car over to the
> > inbound track just as an inbound car was passing :).
> > http://www.voicenet.com/~dietrich/SHJ/outback.htm  I'll bet doing that
> > gouged out the street making it rough for those buses.
> >
> > Bob
> >
> >  -----Original Message-----
> > From:   Jim Holland [mailto:pghpcc at pacbell.net]
> > Sent:   Tuesday, May 09, 2000 6:38 AM
> > To:     pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> > Subject:        Re: Great tidbits!
> >
> > Greetings!
> >
> > mrb190 wrote:
> >
> > > . . . OR tell me folks, was it a common thing to
> > > have a car coming up behind to push a disabled car to a car house?
> Maybe
> > that
> > > was the most efficient way to correct such a situation?
> >
> >         Yes - that was / is extremely common.  Rarely anything in front of
> a
> > broken down car to pull so the one coming up behind has to push.  If
> > there is ever a possibility of turning another car to come in front of
> > the broken down car, that can be done and has been done.  Either way it
> > is a strain, esp on hills.