[PRCo] Re: 4393 Versus 4366

[Fred Schneider]

After 1953 ten cars were retained for a year or so for emergencies that never happened.   Buses were easier.   They were the 4390s.   That's why the museum got 4398.  So after the end of 1953 I think we can assume that 4393 was scrapped pretty fast.

The person to ask would be Dave Hamley.


On Feb 15, 2012, at 9:18 PM, Herb Brannon wrote:

> That's all well and good, however, should fall under the subject of Control
> Systems.
> I want to know where 4393 and 4366 were assigned during their tenure at
> PRCo. I know where they were on January 1, 1952. Where were they after that?
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 18:03, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>wrote:
> 
>> Funny thing, Herb.
>> Normally cars were segregated to barns in Pittsburgh by equipment.   We
>> all knew which barns had GE PCCs and which had Westinghouse PCCs.
>> 
>> The yellow cars had a similar scheme.   There were barns that had cars
>> with K-35 or K-43 controls.   Then there were other barns that had cars
>> with HL control.   Same as with the PCCs, the idea was to minimize parts
>> inventory.   And, just like the PCC assignments, Homewood was totally mixed
>> because it was right next door to the central parts room so it didn't
>> matter.
>> 
>> What is HL?   For those unfamiliar, HL was a Westinghouse remote control
>> system, meaning the motorman's controller did not physically handle the 600
>> volt motoring circuits, it instead told a separate controller, usually
>> mounted in a case under the car, what to do.   Westinghouse used low
>> voltage lines between the platform controller and the motoring controllers.
>> In HL or AL, the L stood for Line voltage passed through a dropping
>> resistor to get a low voltage control circuit.  In AB or HB, a battery was
>> used for the control circuit.   The H stood for hand notching, a A for
>> automatic progression.   Got it?   OK, now most Westinghouse schemes used
>> pneumatic switches to control the actual 600 volt (or 1200 volt) circuits,
>> and they we be mounted so that if you lost air, they would naturally open
>> by gravity.
>> 
>> General Electric favored solenoid (magnetic) switches instead of air
>> (pneumatic switches). Almost all of the Westinghouse HL installations in
>> Pittsburgh were really knock-offs of GE type M control ... they were low
>> voltage (instead high voltage with GE favored) but they used solenoid
>> switches instead of pneumatics.  The only possible exception (and I have
>> never been able to prove this one way or the other), those 6000 series late
>> 1920s experimental cars might have been pneumatic.
>> 
>> OK, which barns ... Keating was supposedly a drum control barn.   All of
>> the single-end cars there in my memory were 4700s or 5500s in later years.
>>   I made a stupid assumption that 4366 was therefore a K35 car.  Ooops.
>> I found a picture of it at 12 Evergreen and guess what?   I can see very
>> clearly, the HL contactor box under the far end of the car.    What the
>> blanket-blank caused them to mix cars at Keating unless it was the only car
>> they had available to put there?  In the period up until 1951-52 when route
>> 9 also worked out of Keating, it used a 4200 and all those low 4200s that
>> were still active very late were HL cars also.  Roster pdf file attached.
>> This roster also confirms that 4366 was a HL car; 4393 was a K-35 car.
>> 
>> Might be when we got to the very bitter end, it didn't matter.   If it
>> worked, put it there.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- Attached file removed by Ecartis and put at URL below --
>> -- Type: application/pdf
>> -- Size: 184k (188994 bytes)
>> -- URL : http://lists.dementix.org/files/pittsburgh-railways/roster.pdf
>> 
>> 
>> -- Attached file removed by Ecartis and put at URL below --
>> -- Type: text/plain
>> -- Size: 2k (2269 bytes)
>> -- URL : http://lists.dementix.org/files/pittsburgh-railways/ecartIFqFm8
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Herb Brannon
> In Cuyahoga Valley National Park
> 
> 
>