[PRCo] Re: Air--Car__Designs_ -- WAS:_[Morning Sun Pa #4]

[Fred Schneider]

Cars 100, 1000-1299 and 1600-1799 had door leaves anchored at both the top
and bottom (or rotating around) a hinge.  The actual mechanism seemed to
change over time but the continuity was the concept of a hinge pin perhaps 6
feet long (the entire height of the door) around which the doors rotated.
This long pin kept the top and bottom of the doors aligned.  The hinge pins
were hidden in the corners of the door opening and behind the central
posts.

The 1400 series was built with the hinge mechanism only at the top of each
leaf.  A pin on the bottom of the door (or perhaps two separate pins)
followed a slot cut beneath it into the step well ... a slot that I could
never understand how it could work on winter days when people were tracking
snow into the stepwells. Not having those hinge pins also meant the cars did
not need a center door post to hide two of them..  But it also meant that
door bottoms were not as secure as they were on the earlier cars.  The slot
in the floor and the pins that followed them could all wear.  Might have
added an extra inch to the clear door opening but it allowed the doors to
flop around.  The 1500s matched the 1400s, perhaps because of the War
Production Board rules that we have been told controlled everything.  (I've
never really looked into WPB regulations.  And I also wanted to meet Felix
Reifsnyder, who was the principal engineer in the wartime Office of Defense
Transportation, but he died before I took the need for information
seriously.)

Clear as mud?

Jim Holland wrote: