Museum Carbarn Assignments.

[Greg King]

A quick question to all that, is the Brilliner complete? (trucks)

Greg
----- Original Message -----
From: Fred W. Schneider III <fschnei at supernet.com>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: Museum Carbarn Assignments.


> 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?
>