Car Number Assignments

[Tom Phillips]

Hi Ken:

West Penn also did this on several occasions.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
[mailto:owner-pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org]On Behalf Of Kenneth
Josephson
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 11:12 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: Car Number Assignments


Tom's question reminded me to ask something I forgot to share with the list
some
time ago. Did Pittsburgh Railways ever engage in the practice of swapping
car
numbers within a series?

Sometimes, possibly for logistic reasons, if a severely damaged car was
going to be
shopped for a while (or perhaps retired prematurely), a transit company
would pull
a similar or identical car from another division and reassign the former
car's
number to the latter.

Milwaukee, for example, was rumored to do this. If a car assigned to a North
Side
carhouse was pulled from service for an extended period, its number would be
given
to a replacement from say, a South Side barn. The North Side car would then
assume
the former South Side car's number and barn assignment permanently when it
was
returned to service. I do not know if this really happened, but these sort
of
rumors seem to surface when a museum embarks on a major restoration effort
and
finds out the original number under layers of paint and varnish do not match
the
number the car had upon retirement.

BTW, if anyone is interested, Dave Mewhinney posted some shots of SEPTA
trolley
coaches struggling through a mid '70s blizzrd aftermath here:

http://davesrailpix.railfan.net/phila/phil.htm

Go to the bottom of the page and view the last sixteen images.  Ken J.