[PRCo] Re: Car Card for Car 100

[Fred Schneider]

If Ed fails to answer ... and he can't answer at this moment ... he is
on his way east....  Pittsburgh Railways maintained an equipment record
card for each and every streetcar.   We understand that the museum was
offered or perhaps even given the entire stack of car records, and that
the whole pile was either refused, or all but one in each series was
subsequently destroyed to save space.

The cards start with the initial car and all the apparatus built into
it, and then progress through all changes until the car was scrapped.

There is no guarantee that each car in a order was modified in the same
manner ... far from it.

Let's just start with the 4200, 4250, 4300 and 4350 groups.  The bodies
were supposedly identical on the last three groups, and the first group
was a little lower.  I believe all originally had Jones control and
single front doors.  By the 1950s there were cars with K-35 control,
others with HL (a Westinghouse copy of GE type M with solenoid switches
instead of air switches), and there may have still been a few 4200s with
Jones control but with the end seats removed and the controllers and
brake valves put in a conventional position where they could more easily
be serviced.  Most of the original style Jones cars (with the
controllers and brake valves under the seats) vanished in the 1930s.
The change to one-man cars resulted in some cars having the center doors
blocked.  Ten cars (including 4398) were speeded up.  Most cars were
rebuilt with a bell under the floor instead of on the roof.  If we had
the original cards, we could have quantified how many cars were changed
each way.  And we would know when it happened.  As it is, we can only
look at Charlie Dengler's pictures and try to piece it all together.

Get the idea?  So we are lucky that 100 was a single car and therefore
that card was preserved.

Ed can't answer at this moment ... he is on his way east.

boris6 at volny.cz wrote: