[PRCo] Re: CTC--aka--DCT-__-1-of-2_--_BIG--Washington!~!~!

[Fred Schneider]

A month ago Dick Kotulak stopped in at my home.   He said he had  
dropped off the list when he went on vacation and never came back to it.

The ten 1050 series were built by St. Louis in 1935 and were equipped  
with General Electric PCM control ... no different from the Peter  
Witt at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum except that it was foot  
operated.   When you pushed the pedal down you could feel several  
detents for switching point, series point, and finally the floor at  
the parallel point.   Sadly 1053 at National Capital museum was one  
of the cars lost in their second fire.

The ten 1000 series cars in the third picture were built by Brill in  
1935 and were fitted with Westinghouse VA control with a relay  
interlock progression scheme.   Capital Transit later rebuilt them  
with a control drum to simply the progression through the points  
(series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc, then all the parallel points) and did away  
with all the relays).

Like the PCCs, they boasted extensive use of rubber in the trucks and  
wheels and sealed gearboxes.   They were just about as fast as a PCC.

If you read the Transit Journal magazines for that period, you will  
see that Thomas Conway, the head of the Electric Railway Presidents  
Conference Committee was suggesting that the industry not wait for  
the final PCC specifications but go ahead and continue to buy new  
cars using preliminary findings of the committee.   That suggestion  
resulted in at least the two Chicago streamliners (4001 and 7001) and  
the 20 Washington cars.   I would be hard pressed to include the  
Baltimore, Brooklyn and Indianapolis orders as resulting from  
Conway's persuasiveness because they were all earlier or, in the case  
of Indianapolis, begun earlier.

If memory serves (that is a common Schneider phrase), they were  
initially used in Rosslyn - Pennsylvania Avenue South East service.    
They eventually settled down to a long career on Wisconsin Avenue -  
Pennsylvania Avenue SE and were finally made surplus after the 10 and  
12 lines were abandoned ca. Dec. 1952 (the details are in the PCC  
books).   By 1953 they were all in storage but they survived in  
storage until after the Maryland lines were abandoned in 1958, which  
allowed 1053 to be pulled out of storage and run as a fantrip car in  
1959 and 1960.

Does that fill in the details you wanted Jim?

On Jan 17, 2007, at 2:01 AM, Jim Holland wrote:

> List Member Richard Kotulak can give us the details on these cars;   
> DCT
> is his HomeTown System.
> .
> Photos included here show the pre-PCC cars that DCT bought from both
> St.Louis Car and Brill.
> .
> .
> .
> Jim___Holland
>
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