[PRCo] Re: SE DE

[Ken & Tracie]

I can't speak for most cities, but I know a little bit about my hometown's 
traction system. And mentioning my hometown on this list registers as spam 
to at least one member, so I won't mention the city.

Since real estate was worth a premium in most large city downtowns and most 
major car lines funneled into the downtown area, some systems took advantage 
of all that close trackage to simply have cars loop around one city block to 
return outbound. The trackage and overhead was there, the potential dangers 
of changing ends in the middle of congested street were minimalized and cars 
behind  schedule could make up time more readily.

I believe a number of Chicago car lines looped around a city block in the 
downtown area.

But what do I know?

As for five or six cars lining up to change ends at the end of a line, this 
occurred in my hometown during WW II, during shift change times. Actually, 
the company had the cars lined up and ready to go just before the workers 
streamed out of the plants. They changed ends immediately after incoming 
shifts disembarked.

K.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Swindler" <j_swindler at hotmail.com>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 11:26 AM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: SE DE


> Chicago is the one that I was wondering about.  There was generally no 
> reversing anywhere near the loop, but there were some long, heavy 
> north-south routes.  Maybe I can find a old track map from 1920s to see 
> what sort of terminal facilities existed at some of these terminals.
>
> The Dallas PCC cars that went to Boston were to replace Type 5s used as 
> sort-turns near the subway portals.  This is a vague recollection that 
> needs verified.
>
> Maybe another question might be who was buying double end equipment for 
> trunk route service in the 1920s???  Brooklyn had several hundred, and the 
> Boston Type 5s came rather late in the game.  But I can not recall ever 
> seeing any pix of 5-6 cars waiting to reverse ends in a large city??
>
> John