[PRCo] Re: SE DE

[Fred Schneider]

The Dallas cars were primarily purchased, if my memory works, for  
short turns to Northeastern University on the Huntington Avenue  
line.   That crossover was just outside the subway portal on paved  
private right-of-way.   They had a handful of type 5s still in  
service in 1958 working out of Arborway Car House in that service and  
the eight PCCs were bought to replace them.  Eventually, MTA bought  
the other 17 Dallas PCCs but not necessarily because they needed  
double-end cars.

They only needed the initial 8 double-end PCC cars.   They went into  
service in 1958 and/or 1959 after rebuilding at Everett Shops.

Then on July 4, 1959, MTA opened the Riverside line and found  
themselves dreadfully short of equipment.  I was there that  
weekend.   Everything was fine on the 4th and 5th and then came  
Monday morning July 6th and people descended on Riverside in numbers  
that the MTA simply didn't expect.   They were pulling cars off  
schedule blocks on Cleveland Circle and Beacon Street and moving them  
over to Riverside to handle the crowds.   The yards were totally  
empty.   I was standing with Bruce Bente taking pictures at one of  
the stops east of Reservoir and there were hundreds of people on the  
platform ... maybe 300 or 400.   And that was just one station.

So they bought the other 17 Dallas cars, not necessarily to run as  
double-end cars but because they matched cars they already had in the  
fleet.   Remember that all Boston cars came from Pullman-Standard and  
the Dallas cars were no exception to that rule.  They fit in very  
nicely with the Boston mentality.   Furthermore, a Pullman car was  
easier to fix if you dented it ... you didn't need factory made  
panels like you did with St. Louis-made cars.

Eventually MTA inability to maintain their equipment resulted in the  
Watertown line being abandoned to provide enough cars for the other  
lines.   And then Arborway was also abandoned.   I think both of  
these were only "temporary" changes that because of inactivity became  
permanent with time.   The Dallas cars eventually wound up on  
Mattapan-Ashmont and then in museums.

On May 18, 2008, at 2:26 PM, John Swindler wrote:

> 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
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