[PRCo] Re: PCC Multiple Units

[Fred W. Schneider III]

RESPONSE TO YOUR LAST PARAGRAPH:  Most but not all 3750s, 5000s, 5100s,
5200s retained that bastard Westinghouse HL control (functionally it had
solenoid switches like GE Type M instead of pneumatics like normal West.
installations). The cars had to be used and there were enough HL cars
that the shops and carbarn (Ingram, Bunkerhill as examples) understood
them.  The couplers were retained.  Once in a while you have to tow a
car ... and all cars carried adapters to mate the Westinghouse couplers
with the Van Dorn automatics.  On 3756, the air hoses to the coupler
have been cut. I've never crawled under the car to see how it was
removed.  The indicator lights to tell the motorman that the second car
is ready are still on 3756 ... after all, the panel wasn't in the way so
why waste money removing it.  I fully understand that my answer doesn't
tell you what you really want to know, which is did they plan (at least
for a while) to maintain the MU capabilities.  The best I can say is, I
doubt it.  

The Pittsburgh riding habit was no where near as extensive as other
cities.  Baltimore's UR&E, for example, in the middle 1920s lifted two
million fares on a typical weekday in a city of around 700,000 people
... and remember that kids under 6 don't pay fares.  Probably hidden in
the Baltimore numbers is the fact that cars running outside the city
collected an extra fare ... this would have applied to both ends of
route 8 (Catonsville and Towson), route 14 (Ellicott City), routes 20
(to Dundalk) and 26 (to Sparrows Point).  While some of them were very
heavy routes, I doubt that without the additional zone fares, that
UR&E's ridership would have been lowered to anywhere near that of
Pittsburgh.  

I'm pretty well convinced that PRC would not have even considered
running the cars in trains again. The reasons for trailers, MU trains,
double deck cars in England, and double truck cars in general over
two-axle cars, is simply to increase crew productivity.  In the 1930s
Pittsburgh converted all cars from two-man to one-man operation, and
thus there was no longer any economic justification for running trains,
be they all motors or motor/trailer sets.  Indeed, there was a more
compelling reason for running one-man cars singly on shorter headways in
order to keep the business from going to one of the competing bus
companies.  Even in World War II (when so many 5100s were put back into
service), PRC did not restore train operation.

And yes, Ken, I like your tabulation of mistakes.  The Birney cars in
Boston, San Diego, and Detroit did, however, provide a great source of
cheap, second-hand cars that smaller systems needed to convert services
to one-man. 

I'm even more astonished at the number of companies which acquired the
center entrance cars.  Some like Dallas and West Penn bought them in the
middle 1920s, long after the horrid inflation in World War I that
prompted so many companies to convert to one-man cars.  How about West
Penn?  The last of the West Penn cars ran for no more than eight years
before being converted to one-man front entrance cars, and probably less
than that.  The last West Penn cars in two-man service were some of the
oldest (701, 702, 703, 704) and some middle range cars (716-720) and
they sat idle in Oakford Park, Iron Bridge or Connellsville for as much
as ten years until converted in WW2.  By the way, West Penn did use
two-man 700s during the war to take military inductees to railroad
transfer points but they were not used in day-to-day service.  

Enough male bovine defecation for now. 

  
Kenneth Josephson wrote:
> 
> "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.