[PRCo] Re: Russian___PCCs

[Fred Schneider]

Probably no later than the dissolution of Transit Research  
Corporation.   It became part of the Institute for Rapid Transit,  
which was housed in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, in the late `50s  
or early 60s.   Then IRT merged with APTA to become today's American  
Transit Association.   It has become totally a membership based  
lobbying organization.

On Oct 26, 2005, at 11:23 AM, Boris Cefer wrote:

> Yes, originally there was a license agreement which required Tatra  
> (not
> actually Tatra or CKD; there was a KOVO corporation which played a  
> role of a
> "national umbrella" over this business) to pay license fee for each  
> set of
> trucks. Actually, the only money that TRC saw from the  
> Czechoslovakian party
> was $10,000 for a pile of drawings (and reportedly some sample  
> parts) handed
> in 1948. Absolutely no fees paid!
> There are some documents on that, but these are rather fragments of
> information and they make the question rather foggy than putting  
> light on
> it. We don't know when the licence agreement ended validity. No clue.
>
> B
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 1:15 AM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Russian___PCCs
>
>
>
>> Electric Railway Presidents' Conference Committee =  PCC.    The
>> design committee was succeeded by Transit Research Corporation, which
>> held the patents and issued licenses in exchange for royalties.   You
>> paid a royalty, you could buy a car.   Most foreign cars were also
>> licensed.   Windsor Davis, the TRC's patent attorney was given the
>> rights to the patents as his pension when the TRC was dissolved.   It
>> was thus up to Davis to collect from the foreign builders if he
>> wanted food on his table.   The U. S. S. R. probably got the PCC the
>> same way they got most anything else ... by copying it.    However,
>> there were Tatra cars in Russia and Tatra was licensed to build cars
>> (to the best of my knowledge).
>>
>
>
>