[PRCo] Re: your mail

[John Swindler]

>Fred W. Schneider III commented:
>
>
>Therefore, it does not matter a twit what control is in a PCC car.
>
>If the Portland cars have PCC trucks, which were built under license,
>there can be an argument that those heritage cars are PCCs but they
>certainly do not embody any other aspects of what Thomas Conway and
>Clarence Hirshfeld considered to be modern.
>
>Remember also, in your argument, that the main purpose behind a PCC was
>to recapture lost business and to upgrade the fleet in order to do so.
>Conway was very much concerned that the average streetcar in 1930 was
>nearly 30 years old!  If the old man was still living, I'm absolutely
>convinced that he would not accept anyone calling a Portland car or any
>heritage car a PCC.  If the organization was still in business with the
>same motives today, you can bet they would be building chopper
>controlled, air-conditioned, light rail vehicles but they would be mass
>produced to standards that would fit everywhere.
>
>God hath spoken.
>


While I think several of us will take issue with your last statement, Fred, 
your comments about the PCC design evolving into a chopper controlled, 
air-conditioned, light rail vehicle is supported by several persons on 
another list who work in the technical side of the transit industry.

Your right on target, Fred, because this evolunary process of the PCC design 
is exactly what Thomas Conway told the transit industry executives at the 
annual AERA meetings during the 1930s. Following are some extracts from the 
1936 meeting:



THE FIRST MILESTONE OF COOPERATIVE RESEARCH IN THE TRANSIT INDUSTRY
By Thomas Conway, Jr., President Transit Research Corporation and President, 
Philadelphia & Western Railway Company.

Within a few days, Brooklyn & Queens transit Corporation will inaugurate 
regular service over an important heavy-duty line equipped with P.C.C. type 
cars, and shortly thereafter, similar service will be inaugurated in 
Baltimore, Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Los Angeles.

We stand on the eve of a great forward stride in urban transportation, the 
full significance of which we cannot now fully appreciate or appraise, and I 
detect at this convention the quickening efforts for this epochal 
development upon every part of our industry.  All here present sense that 
the unremitting efforts and toil of the last six years of research and 
development are about to come to fruition and that, while we cannot now 
accurately determine the measure of our success - what these new cars will 
mean to us in attracting lost traffic, reducing expenses of operation and 
increasing net income, reversing the vicious economic cycle which has 
relentlessly gripped us - there is, on every hand, the confident belief that 
we are about to turn the corner and that much better times lie ahead.

Something over six years ago our industry faced an emergency so grave and so 
apparently insurmountable in its desperate need for better equipment that, 
by common consent, we banded together in a cooperative effort to evolve, if 
possible, a better car by jointly financing a comprehensive research and 
development program.  The remarkable esprit de corps and the loyal 
cooperation which have been rendered by the subscribing companies in the 
last six extraordinarily difficult years are the foundation for whatever we 
have achieved.


Through common basic car plans and specifications, suitable for practically 
all properties, we have been able to buy cars as a saving of approximately 
&$3,000 per car under the average cost of later purchases of conventional 
type cars of like capacity - a saving of some $1,200,000 on the 396 cars 
heretofore purchased, which is approximately twice the total amount spent on 
the entire P.C.C. project.


As we pause at the first milestone of cooperative research in our industry, 
which marks the achievement of our initial goal, let was glance at the road 
ahead of us.  I see two alternative courses open to us - on the one hand, we 
can be easily satisfied; fall into a false sense of security; conclude that 
the new car solves all of our problems, and revert to the highly 
individualistic scheme of existence which preceded the formation of the 
P.C.C.  If we take this road our success will be ephemeral; centrifugal 
forces of disintegration will speedily lead to the practical abandonment of 
our common basic plans and specifications, each property, was heretofore, 
reverting to its own design.  The advantages of low first cost would then 
disappear.  The difficulties of financing car purchases would be 
tremendously increased.  Above all, we would stand still while the march of 
progress would go on uninterruptedly in increasing the competition of the 
automobile.  In brief, in a very short time we would be as bad off as we 
were in 1930.

On the other hand, this industry can benefit by the impressive results which 
have followed this first and modest venture in scientific research  We can 
be able to in the signs of the times, realizing that there are now upwards 
of 1,600 research laboratories operated  by industries and individual 
industrial companies; that over $100,000,000 per annum is expended in 
scientific research work, and that the industries which have been 
predominantly successful invariable are those which make liberal and 
continuing provision for well-directed, uninterrupted scientific research.

The need for research in this industry is ever present.  The car of today, 
no matter how perfect, cannot suffice for the needs of the future.  As the 
world moves on we must keep pace.  We must continue to apply scientific 
research to the constant perfection for the tools of our industry - to our 
methods of maintenance and operation - to the analysis of our market, the 
improvement of our methods of merchandising and, above all, to the 
scientific, analytical investigation and test of new equipment and apparent 
betterment of operating technique as they are presented.

We have given you our best efforts in the past six years in bringing this 
work to its present stage of completion; other hands and other 
instrumentalities must carry on if our industry is to succeed.  We must pass 
a succession of milestone if we are to regain our place in the sun.  The 
significant thing is not this car and its very interesting possibilities, 
but the demonstration of the results which can be obtained through 
intelligently directed cooperative research, if we have the courage and the 
wisdom to use it effectively


PRODUCTION OF THE PRESIDENTS' CONFERENCE COMMITTEE CAR
By C. F. Hirshfeld, Chief Engineer, Transit Research Corporation, Detroit, 
Michigan

You all know that the Presidents' Conference Committee Car, as now being 
produced and sold commercially, is built around the findings of several 
years of research.  It is intended to represent the best commercial 
embodiment of the newly developed ideas which was possible at the time of 
tits final design.

Historically, specifications were prepared for what has been called the 
Basic Car.  These specifications were intended to describe a car usable on 
may properties and easily modified to meet the individual needs or 
convictions of other properties without significant departure from the basic 
design.  Such an arrangement was essential to yield the degree of 
standardization necessary to make possible the required low first cost, 
while at the same time permitting the cars to be adapted to the operation 
conditions of different properties without too great a monetary penalty.

The first draft of these specifications were roughed out by the engineering 
staff of the Presidents' Conference Committee with the assistance of certain 
key men of the manufacturing and the operating branches of the industry.  
This was done in order that something tangible might be made available for 
discussion by the so-called equipment Advisory Committee.  This committee 
consists for engineers named by the operating company members of the 
Conference Committee as an advisory committee to the latter's engineering 
staff.

The rough draft for the specifications was discussed with the Equipment 
Advisory Committee at a series of meeting held during 1934 and early 1935.  
Representatives of the car builders and of the major equipment manufacturers 
were invited to attend certain of these meetings in order that their advice 
and cooperation might be secured.  After many modifications of the original 
draft and after many compromises among the conferees that was produced a 
specification know as "1935 Specification for P.C.C. Standard Cars."  This 
was incomplete with respect to certain major sections and may details, but 
it did describe in a fairly specific way the type and function agreed upon 
and many of the component parts.

At about the time this stage of the development was reached, Brooklyn and 
Queens Transit Corporation decided to place an order for such cars.  This 
made it necessary to develop further and to amplify the specifications that 
had been prepared as just described.  The resultant specification was known 
as "Specification for P.C.C. Standard Car for the Brooklyn and Queens 
Transit Corporation" and was dated March 15, 1935.  In preparing it every 
effort was made to conform to the previously adopted P.C.C. specification.  
This was achieved to a truly remarkable extent by the virtue of the fact 
that the B and Q T executives were willing to submerge individual 
preferences for the sake of the maximum possible degree of standardization 
between properties.
Later, as you know, Baltimore, Chicago and Pittsburgh ordered cars of the 
new type.  Each company prepared its own specifications, using those 
previously evolved as the ground work and making only such modifications as 
necessary to meet the operating requirements of the property.

The design and later the construction of car body, trucks and equipment for 
the B. and Q. T. order proceeded in the same cooperative spirit as had the 
preparation of the specifications.  As other companies placed orders the 
same rule was followed.

One result is that all these companies are receiving substantially the same 
car even though different track gauges and radically different operating 
conditions are involved.

A second result is that these cars have been purchased at prices much lower 
than could have been obtained for equivalent equipment had each company 
acted completely independently with respect to specification and design.

A third result is that the cooperative action has enabled the staff of the 
Transit Research Corporation, which succeeded the Conference Committee, to 
develop a draft of a greatly improved, more definitive and more commercially 
usable specification. This draft is now about complete.  It will be 
presented to the Equipment Advisory Committee for criticism, modification 
and ultimate adoption in some final form as soon as possible after the close 
of this convention.

It is hoped that when it is thus adopted it will become the standard 
specification of the industry for the time being, and that it will be used 
for car purchasing purposes with only such modifications as are necessary to 
meet the physical characteristics of the purchasing properties.  Experience 
has shown already that adherence to standardization to the degree suggested 
by the Conference Committee does make possible the purchase of cars at 
comparatively low prices, Moreover, there is ample indication of the 
possibility of still lower prices, with other things equal, through the 
process of further simplification and production economy, if this form of 
program is adhered to.  On the other hand, when the manufacturing side of 
the industry is completely equipped for the type of repetitive production 
now made possible, any radical departure from the basic specifications must 
inevitably increase the cost to the company demanding such departure.  Such 
action not only affects the non-standard company directly, but also affects 
all other purchasers indirectly, since under the new conditions the cost may 
be reduced as the number of standard products ordered is increased.

Any operating company is, of course, at liberty to purchase what  it wants.  
Nothing can be done or should be done to prevent this.  But, every 
prospective car purchaser should weigh very carefully the value of each 
desired departure from standard against the cost of obtaining it.

I have used above the expression "basic car" is one of a certain length, 
certain width and certain height and with standard wheel gauge; believed to 
be usable, without dimensional changes or changes of door arrangement or 
equipment arrangement, on the great majority of properties in this country 
and Canada.  The specifications for this car provides for its ready and 
inexpensive modification to meet the known physical needs of properties 
requiring or desiring other physical dimensions or characteristics.  The 
basic car and its contemplated modification constitute what I have referred 
to above as "standard."

If any company desires a different window spacing, a different door size, 
different size motor, radically different truck, different control, 
radically different braking systems, etc, it is obviously departing from 
standard in the sense in which that expression is here used, and the result 
of such departure inevitable must be an increase of first cost.

On the other hand, it is not the intent that the industry shall be shackled 
by hard and fast standards, that improvement shall be checked and the street 
car crystallized in its present stage of development.  Obviously this would 
represent a departure from the spirit that made this project possible and 
would constitute a definite backward step.  It is intended that the 
specifications shall be modified as increasing experience, maturing judgment 
and probably renewed research may indicate to be desirable and profitable.  
The Equipment Advisory Committee and manufacturer's representatives as well 
as the T.R.C., staff are counted on for continuing suggestions for such 
improvement and it is expected that the Equipment Advisory Committee will 
approve revised specifications at such intervals as may prove to be 
technically and commercially advisable.

I think it fair to say that each of these three companies has been 
enthusiastic over the general performance of its pilot car.  Company 
executives have expressed themselves as highly pleased with the product in 
so far as they could judge on short acquaintance.  The platform men appear 
particularly enthusiastic and take pleasure in putting the car through its 
paces.  This is not to be interrupted as meaning that these cars are 
perfect; it should be taken as indicative of a long step in advance which 
does not appear to have been accompanied by uncorrectable errors of design 
or construction.  The car is as agile as we had expected and the very great 
braking capacity provided produced the result intended in that the operators 
take full advantage of the car's agility in maneuvering through congested 
traffic.


The principal saving estimated is, in all cases, based on the expectation of 
higher schedule speeds.  Where an entire route can be equipped with these 
cars and older cars from other routes do not run part way on the same track, 
the possible increase of schedule speed run from about 10% to a maximum of 
25%.  Such figures are roughly translatable into dollars if one is willing 
to assume the saving in number of cars required for a given service as 
equivalent to the increase in schedule speed.  In the case of a large 
property operating a great number of cars this undoubtedly would be 
substantially true.  We may therefore estimate that the use of the new cars 
under such conditions should make possible the rendering of a given service 
with from 10% to 25% fewer cars than now required.


To the engineers of the industry in particular I would suggest that 
attention should be focused on the overall result produced by such an 
innovation as the new car represents.  Do not be misled by reports of 
initial troubles with the new cars.  I happen to be relatively new to your 
industry.  As I endeavored to familiarize myself with some of your practices 
and experiences, one of the amazing situations that early attracted my 
attention was the volume of difficulty and operating troubles that 
practically every operating property has experienced in putting the older 
types of conventional cars into service.  This experience has been so common 
that it almost became traditional with you.  In the light of this 
background, remember that the present new cars are a radical departure from 
all previous practice in a great may directions.  We have every reason 
therefore to expect our share of troubles and I am looking forward to a busy 
period for all concerned in detecting and eliminating faults in detail of 
the design and construction of these cars.  But at least it seems worthy of 
note and is perhaps of some significance in evaluating the intelligence with 
which  this whole project has been carried out that the executives of 
properties having experience with the pilot cars report that these cars have 
gone into service with less adjustment and fewer snags than have been 
experienced frequently in the initial operation of even conventional type of 
new cars in the past.

I conclude as I have on previous occasions.  The industry seems to have made 
a forward step of magnitude.  It may be that the step is of sufficient size 
to turn the tide for the time being.  It would be fatal to assume the 
industry can now rest on this accomplishment.  It must provide for the 
continued improvement of all its instrumentalities or inevitably it will be 
left behind in this period of rapid advance along many different fronts.




>ROGER Jenkins wrote:
> >
> >  To continue , the Portland cars do not use PCC CONTROL , just the
> > trucks of same so they really are not PCCs .
>


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