[PRCo] Re: Railroad crossings

[Fred Schneider]

Your hypothesis is perfectly correct.  Better than some people working in the
transit industry could dream up.  I'll get to that in the last paragraph.

Simple reason for the trolley guard was to maintain power to the vehicle if the
pole(s) came off the wire when the car or bus was crossing a railroad.

It was a standard product.  They were called trolley guards in Ohio Brass's
catalog (catalogue if you learned British English).   They were sold in ten foot
lengths, and could be used to make up a continuous guard over a railroad
crossing. OB suggested that it be long enough that the poles are in the guard by
the time the front bumper is within ten feet of a crossing, and that it continue
until the rear of the coach or car is eight feet beyond the crossing.

They were direct connected to (energized by or grounded to) the wire.  Therefore
the guard over the trolley wire for a streetcar or the positive wire for trolley
buses was always hot.  The negative wire was also directly connected to its
guard.  I can only think of two long lasting double-wire trolley systems in
North America ... Cincinnati, Ohio and Havana, Cuba, both of which lasted until
1950.  They may have also used trolley guards on both wires.

I imagine that a pole leaving the wire on a railroad crossing would probably be
more likely caused by failure of the shoe or wheel as opposed to misalignment of
the wire.  Poles with good shoes or wheels and harps don't normally leave the
wire except at poorly aligned frogs.  Of course this argument does not preclude
the railroad from running a "high, wide and handsome" load over their railroad
and tearing the wire down in the process.

For what it is worth, we don't always understand what was done in the past and
we often don't care to know.  History is a "useless" thing that we are forced to
take in schools.  We don't believe in history because no one seems capable of
convincing us that we need to know.  The result, for example, was that SEPTA
removed the wire guards where the 11 DARBY carline crossed the B&O (CSX)
railroad mainline in the Borough of Colwyn.   That was probably the last active
wire guard that I can remember.  You get an A+ for figuring out what it was used
for.  And I'm sure you understand what grade I give INEPTA.

fws

Boris Cefer wrote:

> Hello, folks!
>
> I have noted, that PRCo used some protective device mounted closely above
> the trolley wire at points where the trolley tracks crossed railroad. Was
> e.g. at crossing with PRR Panhandle Div. on Main St. in Carnegy, clearly
> visible in PCC From Coast To Coast, page 170. Does anybody know what was
> that wire roof for? Seems it could provide an emergency power supply in case
> of dewirement to prevent the streetcar stay on railroad track.
>
> Boris