[PRCo] Re: Wheels__&__Shoes

[Fred Schneider]

Please allow me the privilege of punching holes in the theory that you can't mix shoes and wheels.
And there is really no problem at Arden mixing the two.  The only potential frog problem is running northbound through the wrong side of Fair Grounds siding ... which is done every year during Santa Claus period.  Problem there is more the alignment of the frog than anything else, and if I run slow enough pole doesn't dewire.  The only problem we have is shoes not tripping Nachod signal contactors, and that too isn't a problem if
we run slow enough.

The principal reason for using shoes were 1) they were not as prone to dewirement at high speeds as wheels and 2) they were capable of collecting higher amperages than wheels.

Following up on Roger's mystery ... Johnstown used wheels until the trolley coaches replaced cars on Horner Street in 1951.  They they converted the cars to shoes but I have no evidence that the overhead was altered.

Many cities mixed shoes and wheels ... take Lehigh Valley Transit for example, where all Philadelphia Division cars (100s, 430s, 700s, 800s, 1000s, 1020s, 1030, freight and service cars) had shoes and cars on all other divisions (including Easton Limited cars) did not.  The only exception I can find to that rule is the front pole on the 1000s had a wheel so it could easily be backed, and snow sweepers all had wheels.  Obviously
mixing of shoes and wheels didn't cause a problem because there were a whole lot of frogs that cars with both current collection devices had to pass.  And they both also had to trip the same overhead wire signal contactors.  Like Pacific Electric, LVT used bronze (and not carbon insert) shoes, and ran a wire grease car over the Philadelphia Division every month.

Indiana Railroad used shoes on interurban cars in the 1930s but the Louisville-New Albany, Terre Haute and Anderson city cars had wheels.  Indiana Service Corp. city cars in Fort Wayne and Peru also used wheels.  Many of the older wooden interurban cars went to the grave with wheels.  And Indianapolis Railways, once part of the Terre Haute, Indianapolis and Eastern Traction Company, used wheels until they started mixing trolley
coaches and streetcars on the same overhead, and even then it looks like the second hand Peter Witts from New York State Railways never received new harps and shoes.

Ohio Electric used wheels.  Even the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton low 100s and the Cincinnati and Lake Erie "Red Devils" were delivered with wheels.  Shoes later (but very soon after delivery) became standard on all C&LE cars.  All?  Not quite.  The affiliated company in Lima, Ohio continued to run Birney cars with wheels.

How about Texas Electric?  Their interurban cars had two poles one with a shoe, the other with a wheel, the first for interurban use, the second for city use.  Ah, but that isn't the whole story.  The shoe was used on 1,200 volts on TE, the wheel was used on 600 volts on Dallas Railway and Terminal Company.  What did the Dallas city system use?  Shoes on PCC cars and wheels on everything else!   Perhaps someone mistakenly
convinced DRT people that the PCCs pulled so much power that they needed shoes?  I don't know.  But we have sufficient pictures to prove that even in the last weeks of service, the old cars still had wheels and the PCCs had shoes.  Northern Texas Traction used shoes even on Birney cars.

Seems to me, Jim, that there is abundant evidence that mixing wheels and shoes is only a problem in the eyes of modern transit people who don't understand what we did before.

I can remember most vividly one meeting of the Philadelphia Railway M. U. Car Club.  I need to first explain that this was not a fan group.  It was founded and run by a man from Exide batteries.  One of the more active people was Charlie Van Sciver, who was the Reading Company shop superintendent from Wayne Junction MU Car Shop in Philly.  The membership came from St. Louis Car, Budd, Reading Co., Penn Central, PATCO, General
Electric, Westinghouse, Exide, Red Arrow, PTC, later SEPTA.  It was an professional industry group.  While there were railfans in it, I was the only member who did not work in the transit industry.   One night we had a real treat ... no a speech on controlling voltage spikes or ATO systems, but Dick George came to show his Indiana Railroad movies.  George Krambles came from Chicago to narrate. George was pointing out all those
modern things that we just invented that we actually had 40 years before.  I remember him saying, as a train of Indiana high speeds roared across the screen, "See.  We ran train circuits through the couplers way back then."  That was probably the first time in the history of the club that the railfans didn't wait for the others to leave before they left for their own bar to imbibe.  That night everyone followed G. K. and the
railfans to a single watering hole.  And George continued to explain how we did years before.

"James B. Holland" wrote:

> Pittsburgh and Philly both used wheels.     Philly converted to shoes
> about 1975--1980  --  Pgh. converted to pantographs from wheels.
>
> More to convert with large city  --  frogs are different.     With
> wheel, only one point of wheel touches frog base whereas 3-4--inches of
> shoe touches base.     More runner // guide overlap on the frog for
> wheel which plays havoc with shoes.     They installed some wheel frogs
> here in San Francisco in the latter 1970s and on a turn like the 42-wye
> the pole would go straight thru.     Try to go straight thru at the same
> type of location and the pole would make the turn.
>
> Am told that Philly didn't convert frogs when they changed and they
> reportedly didn't have problems  --  but probably wasn't much left of
> frogs at that time because of wear!
>
> rogertrolley.1 at juno.com wrote:
>
> >It alway seemed to me a real mystery as to why PRC used wheels,when idustrywide most all companys used shoes so as to not wear out the overhead and to libricate it with carbon inserts. Johnstown used shoes and Pittsburgh didn't. Back in 1958 it seemed an achronism that it was that way,whereas you would think the big city would be far more modernistic than the small burg like Johnstown would have been !!!  cheers rogertrolley
> >
> >