[PRCo] Re: The 4250 picture --question

[Schneider Fred]

By the way, Bob, I think all the 4200s, 4300s, 4700s, 4800s and 4900s  
had the bell on the roof as built and of course it was operated by a  
pull cord.   At some point in time, probably when the cars were  
converted to one-man, the going was moved under the front platform.    
I think all the 5000s started with underfloor gongs.

We do not have a comprehensive set of car record cards (someone at  
the club told the Pittsburgh Railways that we were not interested in  
all the car record cards so we only have one for each class and that  
doesn't really allow piecing together what happened).   But I  
suspect, in many instances, the conversion from one to two man and  
the conversion from Jones control to K-35 or K-43 or HL (actually a  
Westinghouse knock-off of GE type M) probably happened  
simultaneously.   In some cases, the speeding up of cars may have  
been simultaneous with the control and two-man to one-man  
conversions.   The last remaining true Jones cars were in the 4250s  
and low 4300s and they disappeared in the early 1940s and those that  
I could identify from Dengler pictures still had roof gongs.

I can think of two reasons for moving the going under the floor:

1)  If you are going to install safety car control, there is a need  
for the motorman to keep a hand on the controller (or a foot on a  
pedal) to keep the deadman from tripping.   He has one less hand to  
be yanking on a cord.

2)  Holes in roofs are hard to keep from leaking, especially if they  
have to be loose enough to allow a plunger or a rope to slide freely  
through them.   Even holes where power cables enter cars are not  
always easy to keep from leaking ... if you look carefully, you will  
notice that they always put a downward loop in the wire before in  
passed through the roof to draw the water away from the hole.


On Jan 4, 2009, at 12:38 PM, ROBERT R ROCKWELL wrote:

> Sorry , Fred,
> I zoomed that pix and what I thought I saw seems to be part of the  
> bell , up close.
>
> Anyway for modeling purposes, I would like to know the West Penn  
> colors.
>
> Robert Rockwell
> w3syt1 at msn.com<mailto:w3syt1 at msn.com>
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: Schneider Fred<mailto:fwschneider at comcast.net>
>   To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org<mailto:pittsburgh- 
> railways at dementia.org>
>   Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 11:35 AM
>   Subject: [PRCo] Re: The 4250 picture --question
>
>
>   Correct.   They are on West Penn 832 but not on 4250.       But look
>   at the picture of 4250 in the link at the bottom of this message.
>   They are not there.
>
>   It is a shame that you have no way of rescanning the picture and
>   drawing a circle around what you are seeing so I can identify it.
>
>
>