[PRCo] Re: [PRCo]

[Fred Schneider]

I know.   But there is a major structural difference between the  
4200-4249 group and the 4250-4399s.   SPTC will do anything in the  
lettering department.   My West Penn 700 even has a tailor-made sign  
advertising Arthur Godfrey's radio show on WMBS, the CBS Uniontown  
affiliate.

The history of low-floor, light weight, motor cars begins when P N  
Jones of Pittsburgh Railways went to his former employer in 1911 and  
ask Westinghouse if they could build a group of small or baby motors  
that would fit 24 inch wheels so he could motorize trailers.   The  
result was a compromise ... the wheels were two inches larger than  
the trailer wheels.  There were four motorized trailers, numbered  
A217, A242, A283 and A284 built in 1911 and 1913.  This request  
ultimately was the forerunner of all the Birneys (a term I really  
don't like because all the hardware was patented before Birney came  
along in 1916, but that's another story),  double truck safety cars,  
and so forth built after 1913.   While it would never be likely that  
SPTC would build a trailer model for me unless I want to underwrite  
the entire $250,000 for the production run, we can at least dream  
that Jim can twist their arm into doing the low 4200s which were  
built by St. Louis on an order dated May 1913 and delivered between  
April and November 1914.

Not only were there significant body differences, the low 4200s also  
sat lower.

The statement I made about Birney cars before needs elaboration.   In  
seems that a man named Bosenbury who worked for Illionis Traction  
Company or Illinois Power and Light (one was an arm of the other)  
created a one-man safety car as early as 1913.   The safety  
appliances for it, i.e. the deadman control features, appear to have  
been patented by or the patents held by a Westinghouse Traction Brake  
subsidiary back around 1913.  Unfortunately, the patent office does  
not make research easy; newer items are indexed on computer but older  
names like Charles Oliver Birney just fall through the cracks.   But  
I can tell you that I own a complete run of the Street Railway  
Journal - Electrical Railway Journal - Transit Journal and they  
didn't routinely call the car a Birney car.   They called it a safety  
car.   I do own a negative with a medalion on the door with Birney's  
name but that appears very uncommon.   More often than not I think  
the term Birney springs from railfan literature.

Charles Oliver Birney was simply a design engineer for Stone and  
Webster Utilities Company, an organization which owned many transit  
companies in small cities ... small at that time ... mostly in  
Washington, Texas and Florida.   Examples that come to find are  
Seattle, Ballard, Tacoma, Bellingham, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston,  
St. Petersburg, Tampa, Jacksonville.   Most of these were in the  
50,000 to 100,000 population range at the time.   So they needed a  
lot of single truck cars and Birney designed something that could be  
built and used in all of them.   Then he came up with a double truck  
version that worked in places like Fort Worth, Dallas and Tampa.    
Once American Car had tooled up to build them by the hundreds, it was  
easy to sell them by the thousands to other properties.   By the way,  
the combined size of all the Stone and Webster properties exceeded  
that of Chicago Surface Lines, which was the largest single street  
railway in the United States.

Fred Schneider

On Oct 4, 2007, at 11:07 PM, Phillip Clark Campbell wrote:

> Mr.Schneider  --  They will custom paint for you but the models are  
> not part of the numbered limited edition series are they.   
> According to their website some of the regular DE low cars were  
> painted in maroon and gold with black roof  --  this is certainly  
> not prototypical but it is representative of Prc.   Someone even  
> had the 1600 modified for interurban service.
>
> http://www.sptc.spb.ru/restwork.htm
>
> Phil
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Sent: Thursday, October 4, 2007 2:38:21 PM
> Subject: [PRCo]
>
> This, Senor Holland, is the car that I would like to see SPTC  
> make ... in red paint of course ... because it is the closest thing  
> to what started all the low floor, light weight cars we built in  
> the teens and twenties.   Actually the four converted trailers were  
> older but these were the first production motor cars.
>
> http://lists.dementia.org/files/pittsburgh-railways/
> thornburgh_stueben_noble_Jul1950.jpg
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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