[PRCo] Re: PCC___Quiz

[Harold Geissenheimer]

Greetings to all

The body does not make a PCC car.

Was it Twin Coach who built PCC model A and Pullman PCC model B (At Union)?

Did CSL cars have hand controllers?.  Also first MUNI

Most Belgian and French PCC's had their own style body.  Also Spanish
and Italian

My understanding was that it was the trucks, motors, controls and performance.
The Body really never entered into it. in my opinion.

Harold Geissenheimer

Fred Schneider wrote:

> 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.