[PRCo] Re: PCC___Quiz

[Fred Schneider]

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Jim Holland wrote:

> 095.>--       What defines a PCC car?

I wish I could remember all the misstatements that have appeared in railfan
magazines .   One friend even misquoted me to my face (before he knew who he
was talking to) ...  "Mr. Schneider, who did the book on PCCs said this
.........."   I responded, "No, I don't think he said that."
the disagreement persisted.  I changed the wording to, "No, I never wrote that
in the book."   A PCC is often whatever a railfan wants to believe.

For those who want the poop from the car's designers, "A PCC is any car that
either incorporated PCC patents or on the sale of which the Transit Research
Corporation collected a royalty."    This statement came from David Gaul, who
was the last living employee of TRC.  We can't go back and ask him again ...
Dave died in the late 1990s.  No cash royalties were paid on the Brooklyn cars
because B&QT pointed out that they had put up with ERPCC people on their
property using their facilities for five years and enough was enough.  So we
work on either the logic that the Brooklyn cars contained patents held by TRC
or perhaps we could use the logic of in-kind royalties (rent, light, heat, and
so forth).   I don't remember if we put a list of PCC patents in the books.

Steve Carlson chapter title, "Trucks and Body Make a PCC" probably would have
been better if the words "and Body" had been deleted.  The rights to ERPCC's
(or TRC's after 1935) truck designs, particularly the wheels, were jealously
protected.  But, even though the original, single-end, St. Louis body style
was protected by a design patent under the name Dan Bell of Pittsburgh
Railways, and assigned by Bell to TRC, the corporation never made an issue of
the body.  I've never seen design patents for a Pullman body, a double-end
car, or a standee-window car.  However, mock-ups of wood were made.

One of the most common railfan misstatements is "this is a PCC because it has
PCC foot control."   Sorry but there never was a patent for foot control ... I
doubt that it could have been patented unless some automobile manufacturer
forgot to do it first.  I imagine that, by the time the PCCs came down the
assembly lines, auto foot pedal patents were so old as to be in the public
domain.   And the electrical hardware was protected by patents owned by the
electrical suppliers, and not by TRC.   All we have there is a performance
specification from ERPCC saying that a car must conform to these acceleration
and braking rates and jerk limits.  GE and Westinghouse were free to build
whatever they wanted as long as it did the job.

Why did I include the Brilliners in the PCC book?  Well, if TRC successfully
litigated the issue of resilient wheels, that would have proven that the
Brilliners incorporated ERPCC (TRC) patents.   There was a wonderful story too
about the TRC attorney getting the Brill attorney drunk the night before the
trial ... you decided if it is true or not.... hearsay evidence and all the
participants must be dead by now.

Do we need to carry this any farther?

Derrick J Brashear wrote:

> On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Jim Holland wrote:
>
> > 095.>--       What defines a PCC car?
>
>
>
> I'm trying to resist answering, but i couldn't let this one pass. My
> recollection (I'm too lazy to go up and *dig* it out) is a certain book
> has a chapter entitled "Trucks and body make a PCC car".
>
> Maybe, but with just those there'd be nowhere to sit, and the car wouldn't
> move very fast.