[PRCo] Re: West Penn

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Did I read that correctly ... after pulling the four actuator hooks it
is now ready to be towed.  Better be secured to another car with a
tow-bar first or it will be found at the bottom of the next ravine.   
BFG

I know it is easy to ascertain, Herb.  I just never kept data on which
air cars had drum brakes.  Washington rebuilt may of theirs.  Pittsburgh
1200s, I believe, had air drums and maybe some others were rebuilt.  I
had a page-long list of various brake deviations on Pittsburgh PCCs. 
The key to all-electric cars was extended dynamic braking down to almost
a standstill.  To allow spring applied, air release drums to be useful,
you would need to similarly alter wiring to extended dynamics.  While
air applied drums would work fine without extended dynamics, I suspect
that such would be impractical drums would get a lot more wear and would
be a lot more mentally and physically stimulating to replace than
shoes.  

HRBran99 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 3/10/02 1:42:39 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> fschnei at supernet.com writes:
> 
> > Whether or not they were air applied and spring released, or
> > spring applied and air released is something on which I never collected
> > any data.  Both designs were feasible and may have been built.
> 
> Very easy to determine, if you can look inside one of the cars. If there is
> an emergency hand brake then the brakes are air applied. If there is no
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