[PRCo] Re: PCC Multiple Units

[Kenneth Josephson]

"Fred W. Schneider III" wrote:

> Would the company have bought MU cars and never used them as such?  Why
> not.  Nearly half of all corporate decisions are faulty.  Lancaster,
> Pennsylvania, for example, had eight MU cars for service to Coatesville
> but they never ran in trains.

Look at some of the interurban companies that purchased trailers and wound up
retiring or motorizing them during the heyday of the industry.

Joseph Canfield noted in CERA Bulletin 112 that the Dallas system, Lehigh Valley
Transit and Milwaukee Electric all ordered or built center door cars (all
numbered in the 700 series, oddly enough) and later had to rebuild these cars
into the more conventional end door arrangement.

I seem to recall reading that a number of systems ordered M.U. equipped cars, but
never utilized the feature. Chicago ordered their post war PCCs with hand
controls and had to change them over to foot pedals after one-manning them early
in their short careers. Then, starting when they were all about five years old
(1953), CTA wound up scrapping 570 of them for their running gear, etc. to be
used in new El cars. The remaining 29 or 30 were set aside for possible use in a
proposed publicly owned Chicago Aurora & Elgin service. That, of course, never
happened and those cars were also scrapped except for the one that went to IRM.

Pittsburgh's current fleet of LRVs are supposedly capable of 60 plus mph but have
their govenors set at about 30 mph.

Toronto replaced their trolley coaches with CNG buses. The CNG vehicles were not
up to the task on those heavily traveled lines.

Some large cities tried to save on power bills and other operating costs. They
purchased Birney cars and found them to be useless on their trunk lines.

NSL purchased two Cincinnati "Curvesiders" for their Mundelein branch and found
out they were better off standardizing with their heavy interurban coaches
instead.

The P&W purchased the NSL Electroliners for a planned service extension. The
extension never happened and ultimately, these long distance interurban trainsets
proved unsuitable for the short Norristown run.

IT purchased new streamliners in 1948 or so and retired them in 1956.

So to get back on topic, did Pittsburgh remove the unnecessary M.U. equipment
over the years (during major overhauls, etc.)? Or did they intentionally retain
it "just in case"?

Ken J.