[PRCo] Re: To PCC or Not to PCC?.......That is the Question.

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Item 1:  TRC put out enough literature on their own that I would look at
what they called them.

Item 2:  The use of Charles O. Birney's name seemed to be used more by
railfans than by the industry, although it did have limited industry
acceptance.  The expression Safety Car was much more common in the
industry.  And, of course, your example would be the McKinney Avenue
Transit Authority reactivation of a Dallas safety car body fitted today
with non-safety car K control and Metropolitan Vickers 101 motors
scavanged from a Melbourne, Australia car.  The head of that operation
openly tells people it isn't a Birney.  

When Steve and I were doing the PCC books, there was only one person
left from the old Transit Research Corp. team and that was David Gaul,
and he too has since passed on.  Dave was working for WMATA when I
interviewed him.  When I asked him what constituted a PCC, he had a two
part answer: 1) any car that embodied TRC held patents; and 2) any car
on which TRC collected patent royalties.  The Brooklyn and Queens cars
1000-1099 fit under item 1, because no royalties were ever paid.  BQT
held out claiming that they had put up with ERPCC staff in their 9th Ave
facility for five years and now it was time for retribution.  The Boston
Orange Line cars from the 1950s make a good example of the second point
... I think they may have had PCC king pins, but in general they were
PCC cars and counted as such by TRC because Ed Dana of MTA believed in
the TRC efforts and essentially voluntarily paid royalties on those
cars.  Because of patents and court suits, the Muni Magic Carpet cars,
all the Brilliners, and possibly even the Red Arrow 11-24 series, could
be covered under Gaul's two definitions, and that is why Steve and I
included them in the PCC books.

Those odd ball situations were, however, state of the art cars for 1938,
1939, 1940, 1949, and 1957, which is totally different from applying
those same definitions to a wacked together heritage trolley in 2001.  


Kenneth Josephson wrote:
> 
> John F Bromley wrote:
> 
> > And how would you then convince a rider that had been used to an A/C bus to
> > ride what would be a sweltermobile?
> 
> Fortunately, these cars are going to have "real" air conditioning (as in a
> cooling plant which replaces hot, humid air with refrigerated dry air, like most
> modern transit vehicles.)
> 
> Incidently, there were SEPTA riders who stated years ago they'd prefer noisy,
> smelly diesel coaches to the PCCs since the buses were air conditioned.
> 
> There are those who insist the St. Louis built Red Arrow Cars and the Muni Magic
> Carpet units were PCCs (they weren't) and that the CTA  "Spam Cans" were not
> PCCs (they were.)
> 
> Was it Mr. Carlson, Fred the Third or perhaps even Harre Demoro who pointed out,
> "The body style does not make it a PCC" ? No matter who said it. It's the truth.
> 
> Now for the next Moot Point Debate:
> 
> 1.) Suppose TARS, Milwaukee Electric or the Key System decided to go a step
> further and had ordered all new PCC trucks, controls and passenger equipment
> from the various suppliers to rebuild their some of their older cars? Would
> these have become PCCs?
> 
> 2.) If somebody finds a Birney body in a barn (or doing duty as a shed),
> fabricates a truck, and gets the thing running without the original style safety
> equipment (controls), is it no longer a Birney?
> 
> Have at it, guys. ;-)
> 
> Ken