[PRCo] Re: Cleveland_--_Shaker

[Fred Schneider]

We've been through this many time on this list Boris.

A PCC will comfortably get up to traffic speed of about 25 mph or 30  
mph in a city block.   It will accelerate like a lightning blast out  
of the starting gate keeping traffic from dashing around it and  
blocking it when the traffic light turns green ... or it did when  
everyone had automobiles with low compression 4-cylinder engines with  
carburetors to supply the fuel-air mixture.   But the Model A Fords  
disappeared pretty fast.   Within just a few years after ending the  
production run of Model A Fords in 1931, Ford was making cars with V8  
engines.   The automobiles now could easily stop behind the center  
door of a PCC and dash ahead of it when the doors closed and before  
it could get through the intersection.

I've heard a lot of stories about PCCs running at 55 mph by people  
who clocked them ... people who probably had bad speedometers in  
their automobiles or had underinflated tires or who were actually  
catching up to the PCC or all of the above.   But it remains that if  
you put a seated load in your PCC and put 550 volts on it, it is  
going to get to about 25 mph by the end of the block and 42 miles per  
hour by the end of the mile, and going up through South Hills Tunnel  
its going to do about 23 miles per hour and lugging up Henderson St  
on Fineview it might do 12 by the top of the hill ... but then it  
probably never had a full seated load of 5000 to 6500 lbs on on  
Fineview.

On Feb 2, 2007, at 8:33 AM, Boris Cefer wrote:

> Fred 3 is correct!!!!!
> The distance is approximately 1 mile (or around 5,300 feet) with  
> 550 volts
> in line.
> I was under negative influence of the Westinghouse specification  
> containing
> incorrect speed-distance curves and I misinterpreted one of the  
> curves from
> TRC (and also PCC book) speed-distance chart.
> Big sorry!
>
> B
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 12:44 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Cleveland_--_Shaker
>
>
>> If you'll look at the time / distance chart in the PCC book, Boris.
>>
>> On Feb 2, 2007, at 12:53 AM, Boris Cefer wrote:
>>
>>> It takes a mile to get up to that speed? With an empty or full car?
>>> Our PCCs (empty) need ca 0.1 mile to get up to 32 to 35 mph. I
>>> don't think
>>> one mile is exact estimate for 43.5 mph.
>>>
>>> B
>
>