[PRCo] Arden Progress

[Fred Schneider]

1.  In a take off on the somewhat more common help me move for dinner or
playing the guitar for beer, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum this
weekend offered people a chance to build a trolley loop at the East Site
in exchange for being fed.  There was a small group there from
Pittsburgh lead by Dan Bower.  Our track foreman from the Baltimore
Streetcar Museum, who does the same thing for Amtrak, arrived with an
Amtrak track gang in tow.  I was told that there was also a contingent
from Illinois (I guess that meant IRM).   By 18:00 yesterday, the rail
was cut, bolted, and spiked about about half way around the loop.  The
gang also planned to work today. Bruce and Sarah Wells kept the army
fed.

2.  What about PST 14?  I never realized how big the trucks were until I
saw the pair reassembled in the shop yesterday.  Those suckers are
huge!!!!   Justin expects to have them under the car this week.  When
was the last time you saw one of them with every moving part new and the
lathe cutting marks still on the wheels?  Yesterday afternoon came the
discovery that Reliance Electric had wired something backward in the MG
set.  After they changed the brush holder polarity, it ran and all the
battery lights on the car body were shining.  When will it be moved for
tests?  Best case is mid April.

3.  And what about Pittsburgh Railways 4398?  Justin told me has to
start on it on May 13th.   That will be the car that cannot ever be
restored to one time frame without a great deal of effort and our own
gold mine.  Pittsburgh changed them so much over time that there may not
have been a handful of identical cars by the time they were scrapped.
Some had level floors, some drop center.  Some had center doors that
worked; some had blocked center doors with seats added.  Some had  25 hp
motors, some 37 hp.  Some went to the scrap yard with Jones control,
some had the Westinghouse copy of GE type M, and others had K-35
control.  I would not surprise me if at least one got a K43 out of a
4100 at some point.  Bells were on the roof, some were under the floor.
Some were scrapped as two man cars, some as one man cars.  Brake ratios
were changed on some cars.    What a wonderful chance to make a Jones
car on one side and a one-man K car on the other!

That out to stir up a little hate mail?