[PRCo] Re: Articulateds

[Schneider Fred]

No brainer Ken.

For most of my working life, platform employe wages have represented  
more than half of the operating costs of delivering a customer to his  
destination.   The more passengers each vehicle carries, the lower  
the cost per passenger and the lower the cost per passenger mile.

Remember that we started out with 12 foot bodied horse cars in 1859  
with a driver and a conductor.

We progressed through 16 foot and 18 foot electric cars in the 1880s  
and 1890s.   I'm speaking body length exclusive of platforms.   The  
single-truck Brill semi-convertible was 20'-8".   But all of these  
had a motorman and a conductor.  But you notice the motive was always  
to lengthen the car.   a 20'-8" car can carry 70 percent more people  
with the same crew.

Then in the late 1890s and early 1900s we went to double truck  
cars.   A Brill 28' semi-convertible will haul more than twice the  
number of people with the same crew as that original horse car.

Remember that many of the early railway promoters were stupid enough  
to sign their names in blood on franchises for 99 years or 999 years  
saying in affect that we will charge a nickel fare forever.   Hey  
guys, didn't you ever hear of inflation.   Were you really that brain  
dead?

The problem was world wide.   While we went to double truck cars, the  
Germans went to Triebwagen (motor cars) and Beiwagen or Anhagern  
(trailers).   They had problems we did not have, cities built for  
pedestrians and horses but not for autos or trolleys until two wars  
blew many of them to smithereens.   Therefore the Germans stuck with  
two-axle motors and trailers, and at least the first car was the only  
one with a Fuhrer (driver), they all had Schnern (conductors).   The  
British adopted a different way to get more people into cars ... they  
went higher.   Double deck cars became almost universal in much of  
the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, South  
Africa).   But in the USA, we just kept making longer cars to reduce  
crew costs.

And after 1918 ... and I selected that date because inflation during  
the "War to End All Wars" exceeded 100% in many commedities ... many  
railways chose to go to one-man operation.   Pittsburgh was, as we've  
discussed before, one of the earliest major cities to adopt one-man  
cars on trunk routes, doing it in the middle and late 1920s and  
completing the program by 1937.  (See I can get it back to Pittsburgh  
if I have to.)

So why articulated cars in the 1980s?   I'm sure there were two  
reasons, some discussed and some not even mentioned.   I cannot  
remember and would need to do some research and ask some questions to  
get back to which consulting firm prepared the specifications for the  
Boeing-Vertol SLRV for Boston and San Francisco.   I know Klauder had  
originally prepared a specification for a San Francisco car and that  
there was a Boston car on the drawing boards and that UMTA had told  
the two to cooperate and go for one standard car.   I do not know if  
the original cars were artics.   The Siemens Duewag SD400 car was  
available off the shelf and was sold to Edmonton, Calgary, San Diego  
and Pittsburgh.     Our own car builders had shut down in the 1970s  
and we were asking car builders elsewhere to build streetcars.

Articulated cars were nothing strange to German car builders.   They  
had been building them for almost three decades!   It was funny that  
UMTA even tried to define an articulated car by saying it had to have  
a minimum of three trucks ... some of us laughed because they never  
looked at the Stuttgart cars that had two trucks.  The Germans had  
the experience.    I have nothing handy to permit me to research this  
but if memory serves, the first German Grossraumwagen (Large Room  
Car) was built for Hannover about 1953.   I remember seeing brand new  
articulated Düwag and Mann cars in cities like Mainz, Frankfurt,  
Stuttgart and München in 1959-1961.   There were a lot of other  
cities then with modern cars but I was just too shy to try traveling  
on my own where I didn't understand the language until it was almost  
time to come back to the states.   I missed a lot.

Did I answer it?

Fred Schneider




On Sep 2, 2008, at 2:55 PM, Ken and Tracie wrote:

> I have been wondering why there has been a trend towards  
> articulated surface
> street transit vehicles over the last thirty five years?
>
> Has this been discussed before?
>
> K.
>
>