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

[Phillip Clark Campbell]

Mr.Cefer;

This line in the article:

"Police said a wheel on the front truck of the trolley
came off, causing the rear end of the streetcar to
swing into the oncoming traffic lane."

...should possibly read thus:

"Police said a weel came off the front axle of the rear truck..."

Wouldn't this make more sense?  Anything is possible, but
why would the back end derail when a wheel goes missing
on the front truck?

The newspaper itself may be totally 'accurate' in relaying what
the police on the scene actually said;  thus the police are wrong
and not the paper aren't they.


 Phil



________________________________
From: Boris Cefer <westinghouse at iol.cz>
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Sent: Wed, November 11, 2009 12:41:16 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: 77-54 loses a wheel - whoops.

The wheels could also disintegrate (by the way,
how often did that happen to PCCs in the US???),
which has been more common with resilient wheels rather 
than a broken axle. By the way, the axle diameter is 
approximately 3.9" where the wheel hub is pressed on.
True, the 1400s came with superresilient wheels 
(presumably with rubber sandwiches of an earlier, thinner type)
from St. Louis but after the tires wore out many received 
"standard" resilient wheels or superresilient wheels of the
standard design. PRCO commonly used to swap the truck
in shop inspections.
I do not expect newspapers to provide deep details but
in this case the article does not seem saying what actually
happened, or it sounds chaotic.