[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh B-3 Trucks

[Fred Schneider]

Believe what you want but all of the engineering and manufacturing people I know still understand that the balancing speed was 42 mph and it took close to a mile on level track to reach that speed.  Jim is correct.  Boris is correct.  Read the speed chart in the PCC books.   As was pointed out before, the motor safe speed was no more than 50 mph ... beyond that you risked towing the car in and rewinding the traction motors.    That is why many PCCs had overspeed relays.  What a car would do down hill without an overspeed relay connected is irrelevant ... has nothing to do with what the cars should do.  YES, YOU CAN RUN A PCC FASTER IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY TO FIX IT AFTERWARD AND ENOUGH SPARE CARS TO USE DURING THE REPAIR INTERVAL.  SAME REASON THE TACHOMETER ON AUTOMOBILES HAS A RED LINE!

Car 1053 was an experimental car built in 1935 by St. Louis ... or as experimental as ten cars get.  It was not a Brilliner.  Trucks and propulsion package had never been used before.  Cars 1001-1010 were the Brill cars.  The St. Louis cars were 1051-1060.  Initially they were based in Georgetown and ran service on Pennsylvania Avenue to Rosslyn.  By 1937 they were moved to Western Carhouse in Friendship Heights for service on Pennsylvania and Wisconsin Avenues.  They remained there for the next 16 years.  The cars were being maintained to a very high standard throughout 1952.  However, service reductions across the system in 1953 resulted in the removal from service of all 20 pre-PCC cars.  All 20 first went into dead storage at Northern; then the Brills went to Southern carhouse.  In September 1958, when the Maryland lines quit, the PCCs at Eckington barn were moved elsewhere, PCCs went into storage, and the Tens were moved out of sight and out of mind at Eckington.  In 1959 19
of the 20 cars went to Benning coach yard and were scrapped.  Car 1053 remained for charter duties until the final abandonment in 1962.  It was stored in the empty Eastern Carhouse, and ultimately went to the National Capitol museum.

rogertrolley.1 at juno.com wrote: