[PRCo] Re: Making sense of the PRC assignments....

[Fred Schneider]

Those not interested may delete now.  

In which order do I tackle this Dwight?

1)   I have no data here that shows when the last 3750s came off Sewickly.   I have two pictures of low-floors on Sewickly.  The only truly significant picture I have of one of them in service happens to be a Dengler picture of 3756 taken in 1944 (nineteen forty-four) on Grant Street at Liberty running route 23.   I have a note on the back side of the print which reads "This is the only West End line out of Tunnel Barn, thus the reason for this car on Grant Street."   I have no indication whether Charlie wrote that on the negative envelope but it does make sense and does tend to indicate that as far back as World War II, the low 3700s were running route 23 and were based at South Hills.

There seemed to be a basic rule about Pittsburgh pictures ... it was a rather dirty place and the locals left down on vacations and the people from out of town certainly didn't go there.  The city was discovered by fans in the 1950s when everything else was gone and suddenly here was this city with more than 70 routes.  Lancaster and northern New Jersey is where the NRHS was formed ... we had people walking around with cameras in the early 1930s, almost a decade before the hobby was organized in Pittsburgh.   It is very difficult to find good comprehensive photographic coverage in Pittsburgh prior to the 1950s except for (1) Charles Dengler's roster pictures and (2) some more public collections such as the Archives of an Industrial Society at Pitt and Pittsburgh Railways' own coverage at PTM.   You just don't find tons of those neat pictures of 3750s in action on route 23.   The only picture of a single-end yellow car in the entire west end in service that I have is 3754 in 1941 on Neville Island .... John Bromley found the negative somewhere.  

So the only thing I have to debate or support the assignment of cars to Tunnel earlier than 1952 is the Dengler picture showing that they were at Tunnel in World War II.

2)  The MU equipment was never removed.   Only the couplers.   That's a minor portion of the package.    

The fundamental difference between the MU cars and single cars is not the couplers which were removed but the control scheme which persisted.   Interestingly, that picture of 3756 shows Van Dorn Automatic couplers which you would find on 4700s, 4800s, 4900s, 5400s and 5500s and some converted former multiple unit cars.   The same car at PTM today has be retrofitted with the Westinghouse Automatic Couplers that it had when built as a multiple unit car.  

The basic theme behind an M. U. car was that a platform controller on the lead car must be used to notch up remote motoring controllers on all cars because it would impractical to pass the required motor currents trough a single platform controller.  The greatest number of motors I can think of that used one platform controller without remote motor controllers was on the Pittsburgh 4800-4939 group used with class C-trailers .... they had four motors on the lead car and two on the trailer, all wired to go through a single K-43 controller on the 4800 motor car.  

But 8 motors, or 12, or 16, or 20, or 24 is a little much amperage for more controller to handle so you use a low voltage controller (or with GE, a high voltage but very low amperage) platform controller to tell a remote motoring controller on each car what to do.   Pittsburgh Railways may have removed the couplers from some of the 3750s, 5000s and 5200s (I don't know about 5149) but the basic control scheme and wiring remained the same.   The only advantage to that Westinghouse coupler is that it was similar to Tomlinsons ... a botton box on the head and air connections on the side allowed the control and braking circuits to go through the coupler without having to use separate hoses and jumper cables.   

Why did they remove the couplers?   Dwight, I cannot give you an official reason.   But if you look at almost every picture of a Pittsburgh low-floor car, you will a diagonal crease developing in the first steel panel behind the front door.  On many of them you see on the left side a linear horizontal fold developing.  Why?   The platform was heavier than the light underframe could support.     The Osgood-Bradley builders photo of 5200 shows the crease starting at the factory in Massachusetts before the car was even loaded on a flatcar for shipment to Pittsburgh!   PTM has a policy that the hand brakes are not used on those cars in the carbarn ... chocks are used instead ... they don't want the hand brakes pulling the platforms down.     My unsubstantiated hunch is simply that it was earlier to replace those heavy MU couplers with lighter Van Dorns than it was to rebuild a structural deficiency in the car!   And why would you waste money fixing overhauling the cars if you might buy new PCCs?   The last trailers were gone with the 1100s.  That means by the 1200s and 1400s they were beginning to erode the yellow cars.   The war brought some low-speed 5100s back into service but only briefly.  The unconverted cars with Jones control in the 4250s and low 4300s were retired in the 1930s and never replaced ... a lot of those lines got single end cars and some like 78 Oakmont were abandoned.   So my hunch remains, cheaper to put free lighter couplers salvaged from trailers or scrapped cars on them than rebuild the floors on cars you know you are going scrap in a few years ... better to do that than to have them sag so much you cannot get the doors open.  (Remember the did scrap one car on Schoenville because the doors wouldn't open or close.)

Another possibility might have been for uniformity of couplers in the same part of town?  Well, I have multiple pictures of 5200s at Ingram, with both Westinghouse and Van Dorn couplers.   Tunnel also had a mix.   Someone forgot the adapter knuckle on your car and you need a tow, well then we need to call traffic and have them send us one.  I think the lack of uniformity proves that isn't the case.   

The third possible excuse is the Westinghouse coupler was broken and needed a replacement.   We have a pile of used Van Dorn couplers off trailers, 4250s and 4300s we are scrapping.  Why not use them?   That could also be good reasoning.   

It's a shame I can't go back and ask Karl Hittle at Homewood.   He had it all in his brain but if he were living today, he would probably be around 110 to 120 years old.  He looked like a very old man when I knew him but then when you are 15, anyone over 40 looks ancient.   :<)   

The fundamental wearing parts were still on the cars.   The controller contact tips that wear out and have to be replaced were still there.   The solenoids are still there.   The control wiring was still intact.   I suspect they didn't spend money rewiring the cars even through they probably should have.    In fact, the lights that show that all the doors in the train are closed ... they were never removed from 3756.   Removing them costs money so why waste the money.  

3)  Yellow cars on Shannon?   I went out there in the spring of 1952 and found all those wondrous Differential Dump Cars there.  I went back to town and borrowed my grandfather's tape measure and went back to measure them.   On the final trip of the day back to town, I was on a yellow car.   I was 12 years old ... 6th grade .... I have no *%#@ idea if I was riding a 3700, a 5000, a 5400 or what.   It was orange.   It has rattan seats but I wasn't in them; I was standing behind the motorman.   This was back when I was still the lone wolf and never met all those other people.    One year later I rode to Washington and Charleroi a few months before the cutback to hourly service.   I photographed M212 at Walther when they were stringing wire over the new temporary wye that would later be replaced by Drake loop.  

I guess we would need the master schedules to even try to figure out how many yellow cars might be out in the rush on any given day.   I know there were still a lot of them out in December 1953 when I went over for my grandfather's funeral.  I took pictures of them in the rush on Perrysville.  (The same week as Grandpa's funeral the Pittsburgh Electric Railway Club held a show at the Fort Pitt Hotel.   I met Harry Bartley, Bob Brown and many of the others whose names I couldn't remember.  But I did keep up with Harry and Bob and I did visit with Bob occasionally until he died.)    Then that protracted labor dispute occurred the next spring (1954).  Art Ellis told me they sat there throughout the strike rewriting and rewriting and rewriting the schedules ... reducing the headways a little more each week of the strike and trying to guess how many cars they could write out of the schedule.   I know that a few yellow cars came back when the 1954 strike was settled but the did not last long ... a few weeks until they counted the people and changed the schedules a final time and eliminated them.  (Then the next strike wiped out a lot of the PCCs.)   

The last time I saw a live yellow car was in the spring of 1955 when the barn crews were moving the last 5500s out of Keating and running them down to Ingram for scrapping.   I should have begged to go along but I didn't.   But I did talk him out of a one of those porcelain signs ... those long verbose signs (like my writing) from the PUC telling you not to talk to the motorman.   Still have it. 

Now why am I railfan.   After seeing the movie Snow White downtown when I was about 4, Mom took me up to Grandmas.   The ride was on one of those resurrected low-speed yellow cars.   It war time and they were still running middays.   The gears were so badly worn that I found the howling noise actually painful to my ears.   I remember crying because of the noise.   Why do I still enjoy streetcars?   That should have been enough to turn me off!  

Who would have believed that today I can have fun running 4398 or 3756 or a hand brake open car in Baltimore?  








On Feb 18, 2012, at 3:39 PM, Dwight Long wrote:

> Fred
> 
> By the time of the 1952 car assignment list that we all have, there were no 3750s used on Rt. 23.  I don’t know when that stopped, but it was well before then.  In fact, only a few months later there would be no Rt. 23 west of Graham Loop on Neville Island.  So would it not make sense to group all the remaining 3750s together?  Their only remaining normal use was as trippers on the interurban lines, and that use had only a short remaining life span by the beginning of 1952.  The downward slide in business had already caused the removal of the low 3700s and the 3800s, all of which were scrapped a few months longer.  About the only time 3750s were really needed by 1952, that I can think of, was for Allegheny County Fair service in the summer. Non-rush hour Rt. 37 service, for which one could argue they were suited, was a thing of the past, and even when it had operated, it tended to be run by PCCs, not 3750s. After the interurban headways were cut from half hourly to hourly !
> (in early 1953) there was no need at all for the 3750s.
> 
> Now as to their use on Rt. 23, when they were so used, use of Tunnel Car House actually would result in much less stem time than Ingram would have for afternoon runs, and for morning runs the difference was not great and the operating conditions were superior coming from Tunnel.  This assumes they were operated out of Tunnel when used on Rt. 23.  
> 
> By 1952 the MU equipment had long ago been removed from these cars.  I do take your point, however, about the remote control remnants of it being different from a K controller. That does make sense both from a parts and an operator’s point of view. 
> 
> Dwight
> 
> From: Fred Schneider 
> Sent: Friday, 17 February, 2012 19:41
> To: Pittsburgh Railways 
> Subject: [PRCo] Making sense of the PRC assignments....
> 
> By the way, for those who want to make sense of the PRC car assignments, one thing that always bewildered me was the assignment of the 3750 series to Tunnel.   You will see that on that 1952 list that has been cited on the list a little while ago.
> 
> The high 3750s were fitted with left front doors for use on Sewickley.   The logical barn would have been Ingram.   The crews worked out of Ingram.   The low 3750s were used as extra cars on the interurbans.   Once in a while one would run all the way through to the far end of one of the interurban lines.   Bill Vigrass accidentally was tortured by one on his grand loop on the West Penn and Pittsburgh Railways when he found one waiting for him at Roscoe to take him back to Pittsburgh in the late 1940s.   
> 
> OK, I can understand keeping MU cars together because the controls are identical and non MU cars together.  Makes a lot of sense. But why keep all the 3750s together just because they were 3750s?    Was it done simply to keep them in a barn with MU cars?  
> 
> No.   Ingram was filled with 4200s (HL control), 4344 on Schoenville (Don't know what it had and it probably doesn't matter), 26 cars from the 5000s, the lone remaining 5100, and 6 5200s ... all MU.  So why did the 3700s have to be in Tunnel when their operators worked out of Ingram?   And why were there a mixture of 5500s at Ingram too?   
> 
> Tunnel had all the 3750s and a mix of 4800s (K), 4900s (same), 5000s (HL), 5200s (HL), and 5400s (HL).   
> 
> Was there an every so slight difference in the window sash perhaps that made the company say we want to keep them all together?   Or a minuscule difference in seat cushions?   There may have been a logical reason for keeping them all together.   Or perhaps there wasn't....
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> Must behavior always be rational?   I may have cited this before and if so, I apologize.   Back in the 1970s, Howard White, who edited Headlights magazine with me for many wonderful years, called one morning to ask "What portion of management decisions are valid or good?"  He had been reading some study which showed that about 58 or 59 percent of the corporate decisions in a well managed, top flight company were good and 41 to 42 percent were flawed.   The corollary was that in a bad company ... one heading for bankruptcy ... 47 or 48 or 49 percent of the decisions were bad and only 53, 52 or 51 percent were good.   There was plenty of room for mistakes in any company, good or bad, and abundant room to question, why the hell are we doing this.
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> One of my favorite examples of things we do that are wrong came out when I was working on the PCC books.   I was looking at pictures of the Los Angeles PCC truck and I failed to see a whole lot of difference between the trucks on the P, P1 and P2 class (air) cars and the trucks on the P3 class (all-electrics) except that they no longer needed the the mounting hardware for brake shoes and they had to add a place to mount the drum brake solenoids.   I was discussing this issue with Dave Garcia, the air brake guru at Orange Empire.    Dave explained that for years the parts department at South Park Shops in Los Angeles kept the truck parts for the P3 cars segregated from the parts for the air cars.   Then he showed me a letter from the head of LATL engineering or shops  essentially saying, "hey guys ... the trucks are identical ... why are we wasting time keeping separate accounts for parts and separate bins?  It's costing us money."   
> 
> Is there any reason to believe they were alone?
> _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
> 
> Now lets go back to Pittsburgh.   They had a very rational system of keep cars separated as much as realistically possible by barns in order to minimize to a reasonable degree having different parts scattered all of the system.   You don't want windows for all class of cars in every barn if you avoid it because windows are often broken.   You don't want multiple control types in a variety of barns if you can avoid it.   If the controls behave differently, perhaps you don't want two different designs in the same barn confusing operators because that can lead to more accidents and more claims and more lost money.   But even in the best system, yes, we can have unexplained differences.   
> 
> But some of this is simply railfan (rail fanatic) material.   The sun will still come up tomorrow whether or not we know about which 4300s were at Keating on June 12, 1951 or why there there might have been Westinghouse PCCs on Fineview.
> Sometimes you can put this using deductive reasoning applied to the car assignment sheets.   Sometimes you can't.  And looking back, probably doesn't matter.
> 
> There were many stories about the two schemes, both negative and positive.   Westinghouse was easy to fix.  In order to work on the GE commutator controller, you had to remove it from the car.   Pittsburgh, I was told, designed a portable lathe that could be used to true the controller commutator segments on the car without having to remove it ... maybe that resulted in them liking it more than some other people ... but you still end up with dirt down your neck while working on it.    Ed Allen, who worked for Shaker Heights, was very positive.   He told me if he had a problem with a car, he would call GE and they would a man in Cleveland the next day.  He thought those people in Erie were great.    A SEPTA shop foreman told me he liked the GE cars far better than the Westinghouse cars ... then I counted the cars in his shop and found the ratio of GE cars in his shop was twice as high as the Westinghouse cars on the roster ... perhaps he liked them because of job security?   !
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