[PRCo] Re: 77-54 loses a wheel - whoops.

[Schneider Fred]

I suspect that newspapers are the same, Boris,

                                throughout most of the world.   They  
are there for a non technical audience.  It is expected that the  
public does not understand or if we tell them, we will be in trouble  
so let's not tell them.

You and I know enough about PCCs that the statement "wheel fell off"  
would probably cause either of us to think that a PCC axle is much  
smaller than a regular streetcar or railroad car axle.   It doesn't  
have to be a 2 inch or 3 inch or 4 inch axle to support weight.    
Rather it is a 1 inch (2 1/2 cm) axle because all the weight of the  
car (and the body is very light) is supported in a bearing right  
behind the wheel.  Unlike a conventional streetcar, the axle has to  
handle the torgue but doesn't have a 1500 to 2000 pound motor hanging  
on it.

But it doesn't say that there could not be a flaw in the steel of the  
axle that caused a crack just outward from the journal bearing.     I  
think I would be more likely to believe that would have been the  
cause than a fracture of one of the bolts that held the wheel  
together.   Remember this was a 1400 and they had super resilient  
wheels so there were six or eight bolts that held the wheel in  
compression.

Was it abnormal for a railroad car or street railway axle to fail?    
No.   There is a great picture taken by Charles Dengler, the  
Pittsburgh postal letter carrier who always carried a camera in his  
letter bag.   One day he stumbled upon a disabled low floor car on  
the North Side on Chestnut Street on the North Side.  We displayed it  
at PTM.   A car suffered a broken axle and a shop crew was actually  
rebuilding the truck on the street.   When I was going through the  
route cards I discovered in an entry showing cars diverted while a  
truck was rebuilt due to a broken axle somewhere in Pittsburgh ... it  
took about 90 minutes.   Most systems jacked the car onto dolly  
trucks and hauled them to a shop to fix them.

What point am I trying to make?   Perhaps that the PCC was going fast  
enough when it happened that it aimed for a building and that  
resulted in a newspaper reporter to be dispatched.   The actual event  
was more common than we might like on a system that ran close to  
150,000 car miles a day.

Fred Schneider

On Nov 11, 2009, at 12:48 PM, Boris Cefer wrote:

> Actually, I managed to read the article without help, but it does  
> not tell
> much of the story. The plot, from the technical point of view, is
> practically missing. But what can we expect from newspapers?!
>
> Boris
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Barry, Matthew R" <mrb190 at pitt.edu>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 5:39 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: 77-54 loses a wheel - whoops.
>
>
> I should have noted again, that on these old Pittsburgh Post Gazette
> articles, you can read the whole thing, by using your mouse to move  
> the
> article up and down on the screen, as opposed to the scroll bar on  
> the right
> hand side of your screen.   You should have either a symbol of a  
> hand, or a
> pointer on your screen, and you use your mouse to move that.
> But having said all that - I was able to piecemeal this article  
> together
> into a jpeg, and I have attached it.   The date of this Post  
> Gazette article
> is May 2, 1956.
>
> Matt
>
>