[PRCo] Re: Maintenance

[Fred Schneider]

An operator would request a car change.   [Then the mechanic would  
find nothing wrong and send the car back out with another  
motorman.... etc., etc., etc.]

Seriously, if a motorman could get to a phone and if his (her) car  
would move, a fresh car would be waiting when he (she) passed the  
barn or a pull in / pull out point.

On Dec 1, 2005, at 1:46 PM, Boris Cefer wrote:

> Was it possible to see a PCC with a carhouse crew waiting in a loop  
> to make
> a repair (to fix doors etc.) on an another, regularly scheduled  
> one? There
> are some sorts of repairs that can be easily done within a couple of
> minutes. Or did they simply exchange the cars? What was the  
> procedure of
> fixing / replacing defective cars that could continue with certain  
> service
> limitations, say propulsion not involved?
>
> B
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 10:01 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Maintenance
>
>
>> Good point.    The only one I remember was a GE 1100 that failed on
>> Perrysville Avenue and a supervisor's truck was being used to push it
>> into the wye at Charles Street so the next outbound could push it
>> back to Keating.   That was 1958.     My memories of PRC were limited
>> when I was old enough to remember what was happening, i.e. after I
>> became a teenager.   At that time we went back to Pittsburgh for one
>> week every Easter during which I roamed all over the city.   My last
>> year of that was 1958; then I had one week in town on leave from the
>> army in 1959.   There were also a few isolated periods ... funerals
>> and the like in 1952 and 1953.   And like Jim points out, I too never
>> saw car failures.   Paint work was fair but even the yellow cars were
>> not too bad because there was a rash of painting in the late 1940s.
>> The real paint collapse came in the early 1960s ... why fix anything
>> when the politicians are talking about taking your empire away  
>> from you?
>>
>> I think it also deserves to be pointed out that when the steel mills
>> belch out sulfur dioxide in smoke, that turns to dilute sulfuric acid
>> in rain.   The environment was not exactly conducive to keeping
>> things looking nice.
>
>