[PRCo] Re: books

[Schneider Fred]

I once wanted to do a book on electric railway patent history ...  
what I had in mind could be best explained by reminding you of a show  
series on the old Learning Channel (since renamed TLC after they  
discovered people had a distaste for learning) called Connections.    
The show started with a major invention and then traced what happened  
with that invention and how it lead into the next invention.   I  
didn't want to start with a Birney car because that might have only  
been a design patent ... all the working patents were already in the  
names of other people ... but I would have started, for example with  
the baby motor that P. N. Jones demanded to motorize the low-floor  
trailers in Pittsburgh and follow that through all the low-floor cars  
in the 1920s.   Or I would have attempted to trace all the different  
ways we sprung car bodies.

I also wanted to use it as sort of a control and motor and hardware  
primer for museum types so they newcomers to museums understood, for  
example what generic HL control is (a remote control scheme by  
Westinghouse that evolved out of the notching head control and used  
compressed air unit switches whereas G. E. used magnetic solenoid  
switches) that had Hand controlled progression using Line voltage  
through a dropping resistor for control voltage (instead of  
battery).    I had gotten to the point where I had hundreds of  
photographs and drawings for illustration but I never write the text.

There are a lot of good picture books out there.  Many feel good  
books about my hobby.   There will always be another Pacific Electric  
trolley book and another Santa Fe or Southern Pacific or Colorado  
narrow gauge book.

But sadly ... sadly from my perspective ... there are no good books  
out there that explain the railway technology.   There is nothing  
that takes the streetcar trucks from pedestal trucks on horse cars  
through air-suspension designs including some of the newer radial  
designs on light rail cars.   There is no book that show how railway  
control began with some unique and strange (to us today) ideas such  
as shunting motor fields to reduce torque on starting instead of  
resistance control, then progressing through resistance control,  
choppers, and the newer A. C. systems.    When Mark McGuire asked me  
how it worked, I had to draw something out for him at Eat 'n Park  
over lunch.  I couldn't say, "Mark, go get this book."   The result  
is that we confuse terms.   Even at PTM we mix things up.   We use  
terminology like straight air versus self-lapping air when both are  
straight air.   What we mean is straight air hand lapped and straight  
air-self lapping.   Because we have nothing in service with automatic  
air, no one teaches it and no one understands it.   (Actually I  
suspect if we studied the piping, we might find that West Penn 1  
might be automatic air ... if it isn't, then they had to drain the  
air out of a railroad car to move it.   And Mon West Penn 3000 has  
both ... it was the automatic air valve for trains and a straight air  
independent valve for the engine alone.)

There isn't a handy all encompassing "Physicians Desk Reference" that  
you can pick up that includes motors, controls, hand brakes, air  
brakes, what a 4 degree curve is, why guard rails are used, where  
guard rails are used, where you are supposed to use insulators in  
span wires, how many insulators you need for every 1,000 volts, what  
clearance you need per 100 volts between resistors, how to run a car  
with a B controller and why you do it that way.

But Dennis, we all come to this table with different ideas on what is  
important.

I've come to believe that the whole industry and how it functioned  
and how it will function in the futre was and is more important than  
a railfan history of East Podunk.   And anyone who wishes to disagree  
is free to do so.

On Dec 3, 2008, at 9:40 AM, Dennis F. Cramer wrote:

> Here is a summation of the responses so far.  Luckily for me, I  
> have the vast majority of these on my bookshelf.
> From Horsecars to Streamliners  Alan Lind
> J.G. Brill Company  Debra Brill (2)
> Pittsburgh Streamlined Trolleys
> your West Penn book,
> the popular orange West Penn Book
> The Time of the Trolley (2) Middleton
> The Interurban Era  (2) Middleton
> When the Steam Railroads Electrified
> Trolley Car Treasury Rowsome
> Not Only Freight CERA
> Hilton put out a useful reference on interurbans. (2)
> There was also a reprint of Moody's from around 1924.
> CERA did reprints of GE and Westinghouse phamplets.
> Interurbans did a two volume set on Trackless Trolleys
> CERA's West Penn book for the Pittsburgh region.
> PTM's pamplets on PRC.
> DeGraw's Red Arrow book
> Cox's books on Philadelphia
> PCC, The Car That Fought Back, Stephen Carlson and Fred Schneider  
> III (2)
> Electric Railway Handbook, Albert Richey (ARM reprint)
> Chicago Surface Lines, Alan Lind
> Electric Railways of Japan series (3 volumes), Demery, Forty,  
> DeGroote & Higgins
> The Cable Car history by George Hilton.
> They Moved the Masses
> McGraw Hill weekly magazine
> Street Railway Journal
> Electric Railway Journal,
> Transit Journal (1884-1944)
> Electric Railway Review
> Electric Railway Dictionary
> McGraw's Directory.
> Streetcar Suburbs  Sam Warner
> Empires of Light  Jill Jonnes
>
> Here are some that Ihave added:
>
> Breezers: The History of Open Cars 1993 Meyers Transportation Trails
> Century of Subways 2003 Cuhady Indiana University
> Fontaine Fox's Tonnerville Trolley 1972 Galewitz/Winslow Schribner
> From Bullets to Bart 1989 Middleton/Carlson CERA
> From Small Town to Downtown  History of Jewett Car Co 2004 Brough/ 
> Graebner Indiana Univ
> Metropolitan Railways 2003 Middleton Indiana University
> Not Only Passengers 1992 Benedict/McFarlane CERA
> Pittsburgh  How to See It 1916/2003 Fleming
> Subway Lives 1991 Dwyer Crown
> The "L"  Development of Chicago's Rapit Transit System 1995 Moffat  
> CERA
> The Federal Role in Urban Mass Transportation 1991 Smerk Indiana Univ
> The Last Interurban 2003 Middleton CERA
> Traction Classics Vol 2 1985 Middleton Golden West
> Traction Classics Vol I   1983 Middleton Golden West
> Trolley Wars-Streetcar Workers on the Line 1996 Molloy Smithsonian
> Urban Mass Transit 2007 Post Greenwood
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dennis F. Cramer
>       Trombone
>
>
>