[PRCo] Re: Johnstown 362 (Hiroshima's fleet)

Fri Jul 9 19:53:29 EDT 2010

That reminds me of Hiroshima. There are 24 different types of cars including 
single truckers and multi-section articulateds. These cars mingle together on 
the city lines, although largely free of auto traffic. There are seven routes 
and three locations that see 25 cars or more an hour on the overlapping route 
network. All but one line terminates at a JR train station. 

One major difference between Japan and trolley musems.  An accident causing 
personal injury is a criminal offence called Professional Negligence which cares 
5 years imprisonment.  I've heard of train crews being arrested for dragging 
passengers along platforms when they didn't watch the doors.

This Japanese language fleet listing is from Hiroden's own web site. 

http://www.hiroden.co.jp/train/sharyo/index.html

http://www.hiroden.co.jp/train/sharyo/rensetusha.htm

There's a somewhat dated English language article on the Japanese Railway 
Society web site.

http://www.japaneserailwaysociety.com/jrs/members/oliver/hiroden/hiroden.htm

Some Hiroden action on You Tube.

A couple of 700 series cars and a 350 series car.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUZGyUVj8Dc

A routine parade of growlers on Routes 1, 3, and 7.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hXHMrB2RIQ&NR=1

The 2000  series permanent 2-car train which currently aren't in service.  The 
video shows several common sights: operators wearing white gloves pointing and 
calling signals, conductors on Route 2 cars and people with colds or allergies 
wearing masks so they won't sneeze in public.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAnviYnxZ8Q

This is a section of street running track with reserved tram lanes on a four 
lane street with no sidewalks over which Routes 2 and 3 operate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h5-iPRN3Oo

Following cars stop a full car length back in the two cab videos below.  
Passengers board at centre or rear doors and pay there fare on leaving the car a 
hold over from distance based fares which have largely disappeared with the 
introduction of wireless fare cards. There have been recorded stop annoucements 
since the 1980s and possibily commercials mixed in.

A cab ride inside a 5100 series articulated car on another narrow four lane 
stretch on Route 1 following a 1957 vintage 1900 series car on Route 5.  This 
articuated car has a conductor and you can hear the bell and buzzer 
communication. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T409EEiTWDQ

Another cab ride in a 1900 series car on Route 7 following a 1900 on Route 3. 
The overhead is catenary and this video passes the Peace Dome. The 1900s are 
ex-Kyoto cars that operate in the livery of there original system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuPEyM0lzNg

Hiroden is a private company, although transportation economics are quite 
different in Japan. Generally there are no operating subsidies, although there 
may be capital subsidies depending on what the government wants done.

Bill

And Dave Hamley explained that the accident damage happened at the museum in 
Illinois.  

Museums have several problems that probably result in a much high accident ratio 
than the street railway industry as a whole had ... just my hunch with no  
statistics to back it up.    Museums really don't have good accident per mile 
stats to compare with the transit industry as a whole.  But we do know that a 
streetcar probably ran 30,000 miles a year in public service and an operator 
worked about 18,000 miles.  Interurban cars?  I suspect a car on the Indiana 
Railroad or the C&LE might have easily run up several hundred thousand miles in 
a year.  I remember Jim Shuman telling me of seeing a trainman in the morning 
about to leave Indianpolis for Louisville and then seeing the same man later 
that day getting on a car to pilot it on his second round trip of the day to 
Louisville.  That would be about 480 miles of running in one day!  In the 
depression he had to be glad just to have the job.  If you multiply that out to 
a full year, that is 149,760 miles of twirling a con!
troller if he was forced to work 6 days a week with no vacations and no 
holidays.  

1.  Most museum operators work a few hundred miles a year or fewer.  If you want 
to get good, you need to work 18,000 miles a year.

2.  Most museum operators suffer with all sorts of control and brake schemes.  
Even though I've never seen a drum controller that didn't wind up clockwise and 
wide off counterclockwise, you surely get confused when get something like an 
old K-8 at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum where the off position is at 4 o'clock 
instead of 1'oclock and the full parallel position is where your mind 
instinctively tells you the off position should be.    If you were working for 
Pittsburgh Railways, you would have had PCCs of one or two classes (and they 
behaved pretty much the same) and perhaps high speed yellow cars with the same 
controller and brake valve.  You couldn't get confused.  

Between the museums I work, I have K8, K35, K36, K63, PCM, PC, type M, HL which 
is really type M because that's what Pittsburgh wanted.  I've also run foot 
operated type PCM and hand VA and some other weird schemes like the Cineston on 
a Muni Bandit at Western.  Even PK at Branford.

Even worse are the variety of brake schemes in museums.  If you work at PTM you 
will be confronted with self-lapping straight air, manually lapped straight air 
(and with a variety of valves to the same thing but designed to confuse), and 
PCCs with air (1183) or all-electric.  But I also work in Baltimore, so add one 
more type of self-lapping straight air and cars with hand brakes.  I've also 
worked cars with dynamic braking drum controllers at National Capital (it might 
have been their Linz, Austria car) and a London double decker at Crich ... these 
are all similar to West Penn Railways had.  I also had two years on the payroll 
in engine service and almost eight more years as a brakeman at the Strasburg 
Rail Road so I do understand automatic air ... I've run steam engines, an MU car 
for 35 miles on the Pennsy mainline, a CA&E car at RTY and a PE Blimp at Orange 
Empire, all with automatic air.

3.    Today most of our museum operators come to us in their 40s, 50s, 60s.  
It's a lot easier to train a man or woman to run a vehicle when they are 16, 17, 
18 maybe even 25 than it is when they are 65.  They grasp concepts a lot more 
readily and retain them longer and better when they're young.

I'm really surprised that we don't have more accidents in our museums.  

On Jul 8, 2010, at 9:03 PM, John Swindler wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps getting some cars from Trolleyville that once operated in the Chicago 
>area had something to do with the storage space issue.
> 
> 
> 
> At one time car 362 was at RTY.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
>> Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 14:57:05 -0400
>> Subject: [PRCo] Johnstown 362
>> To: Pittsburgh-Railways at Dementia.Org
>> 
>> Scott Becker got his name in the Johnstown Tribune Democrat yesterday. Seems 
>>the guys out at the Fox River Trolley Museum (Illinois) did not have enough 
>>storage space for their former Johnstown car. Becker found a home for it back in 
>>Cambria County. The links below lead to the story in the local papers. 
>>
>> Thanks to Ed Havens of Tucson, Arizona who forwarded the links to Frank Pfuhler 
>>in Brooklyn who passed it my way. Ed is an old Philadelphia fan.
>> 
>>http://tribune-democrat.com/local/x279770942/84-year-old-streetcar-returns-to-Johnstown
>>n
>> 
>> http://tinyurl.com/2wz5kvg
>> 
>                         
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