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

[Dwight Long]

John

Yes, Chuck was the Office Engineer for the Signal and Communications Dept. 
of P&LE.  He was very much involved in the installation of CTC on that road 
and the corresponding reduction in their multi-track operation.  He was 
PERC/PRMA member #6 and served in many capacities, including President at 
least once, maybe more.  He was also an inveterate movie photog, using 
fairly decent equipment for the time (Bolex).  I think John Baxter had his 
movies after Chuck died;  wonder if they got to the Museum.  Some good 
stuff--not just Pittsburgh.

Dwight

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Swindler" <j_swindler at hotmail.com>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 12:00 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Making sense of the PRC assignments....


>
>
> Thank you for the PTM background, Dwight, and personal history.  Fred and 
> I have discussed on several occasions what the seven years difference in 
> our age means as far as memories.  You and Fred remember yellow cars, my 
> recollection is from the PCC era.  The two of you remember steam, I only 
> remember RS-3s on the Pittisburgh-Derry local stopping in Edgewood.  And 
> the list goes on .....
>
> Strange that you should mention Charlie England.  I think he worked for 
> P&LE.  John Baxter gave me an official guide from 1955 that was still in a 
> gray envelope addressed to C. E. England (without verifying the initials).
>
> Cheers
> John
>
>
>
>> From: dwightlong at verizon.net
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org
>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Making sense of the PRC assignments....
>> Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:09:28 -0500
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> Interesting comments and history.
>>
>> OK, so they did not take all the MU wiring off the cars. They took the 
>> essential equipment off so that the cars could not MU, as there was no 
>> longer a perceived need to do so. That was my point, not that there was 
>> or was not some vestige of it left on. Whether or not PRC regretted that 
>> decision during the press of WW II is, AFAIK, not recorded.
>>
>> The fundamental difference between MU cars and single cars is not the 
>> control system, it is whether or not the cars can MU. As you have pointed 
>> out, cars CAN MU with K-type controllers, although it's generally not 
>> advisable, especially in Pittsburgh conditions. And cars can be equipped 
>> with HL or HLF controllers (or their imitations) and not be MU cars.
>>
>> Ed L has the facts as to when the last Jones cars were used in scheduled 
>> service. The last revenue move in one was a charter on 9 September 1956, 
>> with 5432. Both Bill Volkmer and I were on it. Shortly after that great 
>> trip 5432 was converted into the PRC paint car.
>>
>> PERC was incorporated 19 December 1953. However, it existed as a 
>> voluntary, unincorporated association much earlier than that-perhaps even 
>> before WE II. Its first sponsored enthusiast charter was 23 June 1946, in 
>> the Queen Mary. PERC ran 16 different trips before becoming incorporated. 
>> In those days its primary activities were operating charter trips and 
>> holding monthly meetings where slides, movies, and the like were shown 
>> and current events in the tramway world discussed. The incorporation was 
>> primarily driven by the idea of forming an operating museum which would 
>> be open to the public, and the related concerns about all the assorted 
>> personal liability issues that would exist without a corporate shield. 
>> Both M-1 and WP 832 were purchased before PERC was incorporated, in 1949 
>> and 1952 respectively, and were owned by groups of individuals. In the 
>> case of M-1 it was Bartley, Brown, and Galbraith. I don't know all the 
>> folks' names who were WP 832 owners, but I am positiv!
>> e that Bob Scanlon was the last one to surrender his interest to what was 
>> then PRMA. 3756 MAY have been obtained by PERC, since its acquisition was 
>> post-incorporation. I don't have the facts on this.
>>
>> The first issue of Trolley Fare, styled as Bulletin No. 1, was issued in 
>> early 1950. There was a considerable hiatus before additional issues were 
>> forthcoming. Publication was at times sporadic, but had evolved into a 
>> monthly mimeographed bulletin by the mid 60s when Dave Hamley and I were 
>> co-editors. I think the change to bi-monthly came about in the 1970s, but 
>> am not sure and am missing about a year and a half of issues from that 
>> period-casualties of several HHG moves, I suppose.
>>
>> The show in the Ft. Pitt Hotel ( UNLESS THERE WERE MORE THAN ONE!!!! ) 
>> had to have been either in late 1952 or early 1953, as WP 832 had been 
>> purchased from WP by PERC members, but was then residing at Charleroi Car 
>> House. It was moved from there to Ingram on 10 May 1953, and then to 
>> Arden on 7 February 1954, both of which trips I was on (in fact I have 
>> ridden in it over all the trackage on PRC that 832 ever covered after its 
>> retirement from WP). I recall the show pretty well. It is where I picked 
>> up the flyer soliciting donations to preserve 832 (I bought a "Trolley 
>> Bond" out of my meagre newspaperboy earnings). I was most impressed, 
>> however, by the standard gauge model of a PRC 3800 which was controlled 
>> by a genuine rewired streetcar controller. I had already met the notables 
>> whom you mentioned, having been on PERC West Penn and PRC interurban 
>> trips in the summer of 1952, my first enthusiast tours.
>>
>> It is a shame that you and I did not know each other back then. We could 
>> have done a lot of things together. I owe much of my early exploits, such 
>> as the early PERC trips, to the good offices of the late C. E. "Chuck" 
>> England, whom I met through my paper route (he was a customer) and a 
>> listing of me as a new ERA member in 1952. Chuck would have been 
>> delighted to score another new recruit to our avocation! He was to me as 
>> John Baxter was to John Swindler, albeit a few years earlier in my case. 
>> I was very lucky.
>>
>> Thanks for the memories!
>>
>> Dwight
>>
>> From: Fred Schneider
>> Sent: Saturday, 18 February, 2012 17:55
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org
>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Making sense of the PRC assignments....
>> 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 mi!
>> ght 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 no!
>> t 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 donâ?Tt 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 
>> > hourl!
>> y !
>> > (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 operatorâ?Ts 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....
>> > _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
>> >
>> > 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.
>> > ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
>> >
>> > 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? !
>> !
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>