[PRCo] Re: PCC book

[Fred Schneider]

Thanks Bob.

The PCC car was easy to memorialize in a book because so much of the design work
went back to square one.  The typical way of building a car in the oughts,
teens, twenties, thirties (if we built any) was simply to go to the parts room
and pull out so many seats, motors, gears, trucks, and so forth and put it
together into a utilitarian box on wheels.  The PCC was revolutionary and lead
itself to a book on its subject, far more, for example than a Birney, or a
Cincinnati Curved Side, or a Pittsburgh low-floor.  All the other designs were
evolutionary.

The thought of doing it actually went back to a suggestion from Bruce Bente in
1958.  It was revitalized when Interurbans received an a letter of interest from
Steve and I was asked to visit him and decide if it was practical.  We decided
to do it together.  There were things we could not get answered.  There were
some great satisfactions, such as finding Thomas Conways relatives through the
cemtery where he was buried ... Ron DeGraw put me on to the cemetery.

I once wanted to do a book on the "evolution" of the electric streetcar,
starting with design one or patent one and progressing forward, and showing how
each significant invention or design was key to everything afterward.   Of
course, like the evolution of species, there would also be many branches that go
absolutely no where.  A good example would be P. N. Jones' request to his former
colleagues at Westinghouse to build him a gaggle of medium speed (high speed in
those days) motors so he could build a low floor car.  That single action made
all of the liightweight steel cars from the Birney up to the PCC possible.  It
also resulted in a significant weight reduction per horsepower that pretty much
remained unchanged until we went to 300 volt motors in the late 1920s.  Such a
book would be further complicated by the international nature of building
vehicles ... the inventions tended to flow from here to Europe in the very early
years, and then afterwards they flowed toward the United States.  Russ Jackson
once stated that if he had to do a book on electric railway technology, the
first chapter would be what we did and all the other chapters would be what they
did.   Then I came to the conclusion that it would have to be read to have any
affect.  End of project.  It would be much easier to point the few people that
care toward a stack of Street Railway Journals than to write a book that would
not sell.

I also started down a long slow road toward a book just simply explaining
controllers ... the picture file was pretty much done before I lost interest.
Can you imagine carrying a white sheet to Perris on which to rest tyhpe M
contactors for a picture?

But to get back to the PCC book.  I think we produced a decent tome.  But if
there is anything we need to teach our kids, it is simply that no author is
perfect.  Just because it is in a book or a newspaper or a magazine does not
make it gospel.

It is also something I don't wish to do again.  When we finished the first book,
Steve remarked that he had put more into that book that he did into his doctoral
thesis at the University of Maryland.  And we still had another book to go.
Count the whole project as four Phds.   That also explains why I really have no
desire at age 65 to do another  treatise.on engineering history.  It's much
easier to poke at others!!!!!

fws

Bob Rathke wrote:

> Fred,
>
> If those are the "significant errors," I don't need to mark-up my copy of
> the book.
>
> It's a book to be read, re-read, and then referred to on an ongoing basis.
> Which is what I do.
>
> Thanks for your efforts in freezing a point in time.
>
> Bob 1/2/05
>
> -----------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fschnei at supernet.com>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 7:51 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: PCC book
>
> > Depends on what you consider significant.  On the fold out you can change
> the
> > compressors on all of the Pullman cars in Baltimore from PC to CP-27.
> > Baltimore Transit did not like the PC1s on the St. Louis cars; they
> rebuilt them
> > to PC2s but simply would not accept that design on any more cars.
> >
> > Another that I remember making was changing the name of West Carson Street
> to
> > West Ohio Street under a caption (page 169 in Coast to Coast). The mind
> plays
> > tricks.  Hell, I know the names of the streets.  I've driven them many
> times.  I
> > walked all of West Carson from McKees Rocks to the Point Bridge.  And I
> walked
> > all of the Nor-side too.   Both of these were my mistakes.
> >
> > Steve may be trying to forget a few of his.
> >
> > There were, of course, true errors and perceived errors, and I recall more
> of
> > the latter than the former.  One man complained openly that we had not
> included
> > all of Cincinnati Car Company's weight reduction efforts as significant to
> the
> > PCC, even though the CCC curved side cars reduced weight by reducing trim
> > (headlining, side panels inside) and the PCCs did it by reducing motor and
> truck
> > weight ... totally different themes.   This person was also not willing to
> > accept the fact that his home town builder was in bankruptcy and never
> paid
> > their subscription to the Electric Railway Presidents' Conference
> Committee.
> > Another man took us to task for saying that PCCs ran on Sundays on PTC
> route 57
> > (Coast to Coast, page 153) ... the statement was in a caption next to a
> picture
> > of a regular service car on route 57 on a Sunday.  (One does not question
> Ed
> > Miller, who took a notebook with him to record every picture after it was
> taken,
> > even the hour and minute of the day.)  Both were fabulous examples of I'll
> > believe what I want to believe and you cannot change my mind.
> >
> > One that I remember making was changing the name of West Carson Street to
> West
> > Ohio Street under a caption (page 169 in Coast to Coast). The mind plays
> tricks.
> >
> > Neither the CP27 mistake nor the street renaming were ever brought to my
> > attention by readers.
> >
> > I've also encountered a few people that told me that Mr. Schneider wrote
> thus
> > and so in his book.  "No, I do think so.  I don't remember reading it."  I
> know
> > he did ... I saw it there.  "No I never wrote that.  Oh, you're Mr.
> Schneider.
> > "Yes."   Well, I really didn't read the book ... just looked at the
> pictures.
> > And why should I be surprised?  When Howard White and I were co-editing
> > Headlights for the ERA, we put a flier in one issue asking what people
> liked
> > best in the past year, what they liked least, and why.  Why was almost
> never
> > filled in.  But we found out that people liked best articles about systems
> at
> > home, least about anything they had never seen, and their favorite issues
> were
> > those in which we increased the ratio of pictures to text.   Unfortunately
> we
> > were unable to simplify the discussion on trucks, patents, and so forth to
> the
> > degree that the average person would actually read it, and thus a lot of
> the
> > myths continue but now they continue with our stamp of approval.
> >
> > Significant errors ... the one that bothered me the most was the omission
> of the
> > gray benday around the pictures on several of the pages between 76 and 83
> ... it
> > resulted in "I'll see a page proofs of the second book, or else."
> >
> > Actually, Bob, I was told many times afterward by people in the industry
> that it
> > was "the definitive history."  I've had so real nit pickers (even some who
> pick
> > nits better than I do) tell me that the proof reading was above average.
> I've
> > picked up a copy 20 years later and found that it still reads well (You
> cannot
> > find the mistakes a day later; you need to forget what you were trying to
> say or
> > meant to say before you can find the glitches).   I think it was pretty
> clean.
> >
> > Bob Rathke wrote:
> >
> > > My copy is the First Edition, including the data foldout.  I'd be
> interested
> > > in knowing about any of the signifiant errors in this edition.
> > >
> > > As I mentioned in an e-mail to the list this Spring, I bought my copy of
> the
> > > PCC book at the Illinois Railway Museum in April - it was in a large box
> of
> > > books that I bought at $1/inch of book thickness.
> > > So, the PCC book cost me...75 cents???
> > >
> > > Bob 1/1/05
> > >
> > > -----------------------------
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Fred Schneider" <fschnei at supernet.com>
> > > To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> > > Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 2:05 PM
> > > Subject: [PRCo] Re: PCC book
> > >
> > > > The first printing had a data foldout in the back ... the second did
> not.
> > > > Make sure it is there if you bid or you might just as well look for a
> > > > second printing which had some of the other mistakes cleaned up.   fws
> > > >
> > > > Mark McGuire wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >   Believe me, the price won't stay that low for long. The last
> minute
> > > > > bidders will have a field day. The cheapest I ever saw one of these
> go
> > > > > for was $45.00, which is an absolute bargain.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> >
> >
> >