[PRCo] Re: PRCo___MU--Cars

[Fred Schneider]

I don't deny that PRC operated such services but they did not appear in the
route cards.  The official record shows:

Route 82's card shows trailer operation beginning April 27, 1925 and
continuing until January 6, 1930.

Route 88's card shows trailers as early as June (no date) 1907 and as late
as August 29, 1931.  The face or schedule side shows multiple-unit cars
beginning March 5, 1925 and ending April 11, 1925.  A note on the reverse
side of the card shows multiple unit car service beginning December 10, 1924
and ending April 8, 1925.

The 4700s were built with Jones control and did not have air brake piping
needed for trailers.  The 4800-4939 group came with K-43 control to enable
them to work in 6-motor trains (4 motors on the motor car and 2 on the
"trailer").  The 5400s had K-35 control -- single cars only.  The 5500s came
with K-43; I have seen a picture of one of them with a Westinghouse
automatic coupler on the rear to pull a trailer ... but the other 49 cars
and perhaps all 50 had Van Dorn couplers in my lifetime.

Don't forget that, regardless of what the 1951 cited copy of Headlights
says, there were two other groups of multiple-unit cars, i.e. 5200-5282 and
interurban cars 3750-3769.  I don't know if any of them ever ran in trains.
I've never seen a car barn assignment list old enough to prove if any of
those cars were even in barns from which MU trains ran.   There is always
the remote possibility that 3700s might have run in trains to the County
Fair ... very remote because one might suspect that no operators /
conductors at Tunnel or Castle Shannon were ever trained to set up and run
an MU train.

I would be much more willing to accept a record completed at the time of
operation [the route cards that PRC's transportation department maintained]
than a fan magazine published in 1951 with an editor who was born in the
late 1920s in New York and a Pittsburgh reporter who didn't come to
Pittsburgh until the1940s.



Jim Holland wrote:

> Good Morning!
>
>         Quoting from  *ERA--Headlights*  Vol.13 No.1 January--1951,
> 3rd-photo pg.3:::::::
>
>         ""AN  M-U  TRAIN  of 5100s on Route 88-Frankstown  [turning from
> Penn to Frankstown outbound].    Both the 5000 and 5100 series
> cars were MU equipped and used on Routes 82 and 88 from 1924
> through 1928.    Other single-end cars in the 4700s and 4800s
-- Trailing quotes stripped by Listar --