Museum Carbarn Assignments.

[Fred W. Schneider III]

This is fun.....

Kenneth Josephson wrote:
> 
> "Fred W. Schneider III" wrote:
> 
> > That sort of problem is a perpetual problem.  It generated over 3/8ths
> > of an inch of printed e-mails last week! Car 1138 was already restored
> > once at PTM and then allowed to sit outside and rot.  This is the second
> > restoration.  That is why the PTM horse car is being stored temporarily
> > in a member's factory.
> 
> Thank you, Fred.
> 
> I appreciate the reply. I was also waiting for someone to take the bait and suggest that both
> cars go into the barn and another one get kicked out. So here are the choices (this is an
> eight car structure):

You've given me an eight car barn and seven cars to put in it so there
is no contest.  But I've explained what to add to fill the eighth space,
and which to scrap if you really meant a six car barn.  
> 
> 1.) The only known surviving Cincinnati Curveside single ended interurban.

It is your only example of a one-man, spartan, super lightweight car
from the 1920s.  The electric railway industry was going to hell in a
handbasket in the 1920s but the car builders were having their best
years because they were replacing old heavy two-man cars with newer
light-weight cars in what has proven to be a nationwide misguided effort
to preserve an industry that probably should not have been built in the
first place. It stays.
> 
> 2.) The only known surviving Atlantic City Brilliner.

This is the weakest candidate of all.  I see no need to keep a car as
proof of corporate defiance and stupidity. The Brill wing journal trucks
are an interesting concept ... they went on the Brilliners, the
Indianapolis Peter Witts, and some foreign applications.  Last time I
looked there was a trash cart at Muni riding on one of them.  Maybe the
Magic Carpet at Rio Vista had them, but it may have been one that had B2
trucks.  Regardless, there is a modern car on static display at Liege,
Belgium that has those trucks so no big deal.  The static car in Liege
also has series / series-parallel / parallel control and will run like
hell.  On second thought, lets steal the Liege car and leave the
Brilliner behind.   
> 
> 3.) The first multiple unit electric el car to ever operate.

What a wonderful example of elevator technology adapted to something
more practical. I have in Sprague's own words that he designed the
Chicago South Side MU control around an elevator remote control scheme
he designed earlier. Without it, Westinghouse would probably have gotten
there first with MU technology.  We would still have all the electric MU
trains.  But it serves as a second example of one man's brilliance. This
is an absolute must.  Its a keeper.  (Do you plan to steal it under
cover of darkness from CTA?)
> 
> 4.) A wooden Harmony Route car which had received a $350,000 restoration five years ago.

An example of how we got from city to city in the 1905-1930 period (or
rather from the farm to the city). Configuration wise, a great number of
suburban and interurban lines had combines.  They could carry mail,
flowers, baked goods, and here in Lancaster #13 was kept around into the
1930s for funerals. It really tells the story.  It or some other combine
belongs and the Harmony cars were sort of vest pocket beast that fit
nicely in a museum. 
> 
> 5.) A complete and well preserved cable car from a city other than San Francisco.

Great example of the most costly technology we ever had.  We need to
include a cable under it, a loop that constantly moves.  And a recording
of the clatter that comes out of the slots in San Francisco.    
> 
> 6.) An ordinary Philadelphia all electric PCC that happens to be the personal favorite of an
> eccentric but extremely wealthy traction fan who not only has contributed large sums of money
> to the museum over the years, but built the barn in the first place.

Ordinary yes because we've seen it. Contemporary might be a better word
than ordinary.  The wealth and eccentricity of the man is of little
importance because the vehicle is needed  if we are to be a world class
museum.  If this is a museum of the electric car, it certainly is
significant.  The PCC was the first and perhaps only example ever of
systems engineering applied to a transit car.  Most streetcars followed
an orderly evolutionary development but the PCC is the only design I can
honestly say was a stand alone creation.  It didn't come out of a parts
room; it came from a five year engineering effort to prove how the parts
should be made to produce a good car.  Much of what we learned between
1930 and 1935 about uses of rubber for sound deading, acceleration
versus passenger comfort, acceptable lighting levels, jerk limits on the
human body, sealed gear boxes, and so forth are still state of the art
today.  I'd keep it. (But I would rather have a Brooklyn car.)  
> 
> 7.) An 1888 Sprague Richmond car.

There was the man who put it all together.  Daft, van Deopoele, Bentley,
Knight, Edison, and the others did a lot of experimenting.  Frank
Sprague looked at it all and said ... take this and this and this and it
will work.  His principal important idea was axle hung motors ... got
rid of all those problems with chains breaking and falling off.  He
proved it worked in Richmond and by the very early 1890s, the others
were all has beens. There is no question it belongs. (I have a nice
picture of Sprague standing with Guy Richardson behind a Chicago Trolley
Bus in the late 1930s ... the man saw the industry come and witnessed it
go.)  

And since you specified that it is an eight car structure and I need to
find something else to round out the collection, let's add number 8:

  8.) A 1938ish General Motors TD-4501 coach   The TD-4001 was the first
of a 21 or 22 year run of the old look GM buses.  It was the first to
use a diesel poweer plant in city transit service. Available from 27 to
40 foot lengths, these were probably the most durable, most ubiquitous,
most popular transit vehicles ever built. Does not matter if you lived
in Minneapolis or Montgomery or Miami, Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or
Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco or Saginaw, you rode in them.  If we
cannot find a TD4001, I'll be happy to have a 1940 TD-4502 from Los
Angeles Motor Coach Company.  

(Note the word Pittsburgh in the last sentence ... I did stick to the
theme.)
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Now Ken, if you really meant a six car instead of eight car barn -- then
give the Brilliner to one of those museums that collects anything that
casts a shadow. 

******************************************************************************************************** 

But somewhere along the way, we need to build another barn to house a
modern LRV.  If this is to be a World Class museum, then I have some
other candidates.  I can dream and foam as well as the next person: 

    1.  The Pittsburgh low-floor which resulted in the development of
motors small enough to power a car that low.  I love the story from
Market Street Railway people, who tried the same concept and pronounced
it a failure, because "San Francisco has hills."  
  
    2.  An open car - even if the promoters hoodwinked money out of
people, at least there were some great managers who realized we can get
more nickels on a summer day if we offer cool off rides.

    3   A horse car - the greatest job creation triumpth ever created. 
Think how many people had jobs because of one horse.  And don't forget
those men in New York in white uniforms who went around picking up the
solid pollution.

    4.  A Hansome cab ... the horse car needed a parent.  Maybe also an
Amish buggy and a Roman chariot.
We'll need a grant to produce a small amount of coprolites  for these
and the horsecar.    

    5.  How about those crazy masonite sided evolutionary dead-ends
produced by the Lightweight Noiseless Car Co. (what a laugh) for its
parent Minneapolis, and for Nashville and Chattanooga.

    6.  And the Barber car ... a wonderful example of a chicken coop
carpenter turned loose where he didn't belong.  

    7.  A Daft car with a hole in the roof caused by the troller
dewiring and crashing through the roof.

    8.  A North Shore Merchants Despatch box motor pulling one of those
early piggy-back flatcars with a couple of 20 ft semi-trailers on it.  

    9.  An off-the-shelf semi-convertible.  Those critters were world
wide.  But they make a good example of a non-ADA compliant high floor
car.  A personal favorite might come from nearby Baltimore, but we could
pick a Philly Nearside, or any one of 35 or so from Lancaster PA, or
Hershey, or Boston.  You can add your favorite city.  

    10.  We need examples of how the industry attempted to reduce the
cost of crew per passenger, especially because of franchise contract
requiring a permanently stable fare, increase costs that one could not
recover from a passenger who would rather be in an automobile, and the
addition of fringe benefits to trainmen.  If this is to be a world class
museum, this section of the museum starts with 

          10a: An example of safety car control ... we need a Birney ...
one of those 5,600 flimsy, rocking horses with a shelf live of ten
years.  Something that would be run with one may.

          10b. And then we need a Hannover Germany Grossraumwagen from
1953, the first of the articulated cars that we know today as light rail
vehicles.  

          10c. And while the Germans produced longer cars, the Brits
went upward.  So, this being a world class museum, we need a double deck
British tram.  Because it came from a city to which the entire world can
relate, I'd pick a London maximum-traction truck class E1 car.  A great
way to shoehorn 100+ people into a 35 ft. car with two trainmen. 

          10d. Until the 1960s, Germany ran scads of two axle trailers
pulled by two axle motor cars. Two trailers and a motor would be nice
... shows how a motorman and three conductors can do the work of six
people on just motor cars, and it also shows that trailers were around
because the British, American, and Canadian forces blew the transit
systems to hell in the war and they were making do with what they could
muster.  

     11.  I think I'd like a Pacific Electric steeple cab locomotive
coupled to an outside framed 36 foot wooden box car, and maybe a flatcar
loaded with a nice piece of  machinery ... perhaps an honest to goodness
steam road roller.  

     12.  Finally, I think one of those 1930 Cincinnati and Lake Erie
steel box motors would nicely round out the collection.  We could fill
it with boxes of parts coming from Dearborn to Ford dealers all over
southwestern Ohio.  And we could set it in an indoor garden of weeds
growing up between the rails. The museum janitor's job is to water the
weeds daily.  

And would it not be nice to reconstruct a car shop, complete with all
the belted machinery, the forge, and all the other niceties.  Maybe we
could buy the one in Lisbon and ship it lock, stock, and barrel to our
imaginary museum. 

Have I dreamed long enough?