[PRCo] Re: Car 1600

[Schneider Fred]

But there were always weird things that did survive.   How about  
Brooklyn and Queens 1010, the PCC which has a General Motors bus  
ventilation cowl above the destination sign.   It ran that way right  
up until the end of service in 1956.

Los Angeles had two experimental Peter Witt cars (2601 and 2602) that  
had Westinghouse VA and General Electric PCM control.   There were no  
other cars in L. A. like them.   I think they were built about 1929  
or 1930.   Surprisingly, they both lasted long enough that 2601 wound  
up at Orange Empire.   I've had a chance to run it.

But the general rule is the orphan isn't appreciated anywhere.

Look at the Pennsylvania Railroad.   Down at Wilmington Shops in the  
1956 I found all sorts of stange electric locomotives that were there  
because it was easier to have them sitting out of service than keep  
them running ... the O1 class, the single R-1.   The experimental  
E2b, E2c and E3b motors disappeared as soon as the E44 motors  
arrived.   The single R-1 ran for many years on the Broadway Limited  
because i only made a few stops and acceleration wasn't important ...  
I think after leaving New York it might have stopped at Newark,  
Philadelpia, Paoli and then Harrisburg.   But by the time I moved  
east in 1949 it was already considered an orphan.

The only oddball on the Pennsy that had any longevity was a single  
DD-1 electric locomotive that was still around until about 1967 or  
68.   It was needed to pull the wire trains through the Hudson River  
tunnels ... there were no ventilation fans and the bores have third  
rail for maintenance equipment.    Once the Penn Central was created,  
then a newer T motor came down from Harmon to replace the 1909-1910  
DD-1 at Sunnyside.

Like Los Angeles, Baltimore had two Peter Witt cars built in 1924.    
They didn't last very long.   If memory serves, the numbers were  
6991-6992.   Anyone who has the Baltimore semi-convertible book (the  
one with the green cover) can look them up.  The fare collection  
scheme served as a pattern for 150 cars in 1930 except that the 1930  
cars came at the wrong time ... it was the Depression and all the  
conductors were fired.

If we were to look at York Railways, they bought the Osgood Bradley  
Electromobile demonstrator in 1929.   It was, curiously, numbered  
1929 by the builder and it carried that same number in York.   In  
fact the Pennsylvania owner never repainted it.   It ran as a rush  
hour extra car on the Wrightsville line.   Well, come 1932 York  
Railways abandoned the York-York Haven and East York - Wrightsville  
services.   Now at that point there were a lot of surplus cars  ...  
probably six or seven.   The Electromobile became a hanger queen for  
the next seven years.   It appeared on the for sale list in 1939 when  
the final abandonment took place but no one bought it.

And how about the 1927 Brill Master Unit demonstrator?   Key System  
(East Bay Street Railway) bought it and it had just about as stirring  
a career as the York car.   I've never seen a railfan picture of it  
in revenue service because it didn't last long enough for the  
railfans to chase it.     Brill also built a single truck version and  
it had even a worse reception ... no one bought it ... it sat behind  
the Brill plant in Philadelphia and was eventually scrapped.

And to bring the thread back to Pittsburgh, how about those late  
1920s experimentals.   As soon as PRC had enough modern equipment to  
allow scrapping the trailers, they sure didn't need 6000, 6001 and  
6002 either.   It was probably either the 1000s or 1100s that  
replaced the very last trailers and high floor tow cars in 1937 (hard  
to tell which because tens and elevens were both being delivered that  
year and they were running trailers into 1937 on 13, 15, and out of  
Ingram on 27 or 25 (I would have to look at the route cards to be  
sure which).   The experimentals were scrapped in 1940 ... did the  
1200s replace them or were they just sitting idle?  Not knowing  
otherwise, I would bet the company kept them in reserve hoping for an  
upturn in business and then when the bought the 1200s simply said we  
can get rid of them now and also scrap some 4700s and 4300s and 4250s  
and mothball some low-speed 5100s too.


On Jul 12, 2009, at 10:36 PM, Ken and Tracie wrote:

> I understand the situation, Fred. Milwaukee did the opposite of PAT  
> during
> the last few years of trackless trolley operation. The last of  
> their newest
> Pullman-Standard Trolley coaches were Westinghouse equipped and the  
> majority
> of the postwar fleet were General Electric. So the Westinghouse P-S  
> coaches
> were put out to pasture about two years before the last lines were
> dieselized.
>
> 1600 was neither a 1700 nor a 1601 & up car. I'm sure PAT would have
> rejected it had it not been destroyed by fire. Heck, they rejected  
> 1630,
> which had lost its ventilation roof system and carried a pre-war  
> trolley
> pole base cowl.
>
> K.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Schneider Fred" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 7:24 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Car 1600
>
>
>> All sorts of places, Ken.  I had my St. Petersburg model painted for
>> 76 Hamilton which matches one of the pictures in the Westinghouse
>> advertising book.   I know it worked out of Homewood in the beginning
>> and it was there at the end ... or it was there for work at the
>> end.   Bromley has a picture of it on 22 CROSSTOWN ... that suggests
>> it was assigned either to Herron Hill or Manchester for a while.
>> I've seen pictures of it at Kennywood on route 68 ... guess it must
>> have been at Craft for a while.   And I've seen pictures of it
>> working on the Sousside.    Suspect it migrated around every time a
>> carbarn foreman got tired of it.
>>
>> Was it a bad car?  Not really.   Not any different from a Johnstown
>> car.   After they quit running the guts were incorporated into new
>> cars in Brussels and those were still around when I rode them in the
>> 1980s.   It is simply that every time you inflict a single oddball
>> vehicle on a repair shop or a motorman, most would rather see you
>> give it to some other shop or motorman.    Human nature.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 12, 2009, at 10:05 PM, Ken and Tracie wrote:
>>
>>> So where did one-of-a-kind all electric car 1600 see the most
>>> service? Was
>>> it being serviced or just mothballed when it was destroyed by fire?
>>>
>>> K.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>