[PRCo] Re: Question about 69 Squirrel Hill Route

[Dwight Long]

Fred

To repeat here in direct response to your point about adding weight to B2 
trucks:  Boris has said they added friction dampers.  This may be being 
confused with adding weight.

Dwight


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2012 8:16 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Question about 69 Squirrel Hill Route


> Karl Hittle was in engineering.   But I think your point is well taken 
> from another perspective.   The writers probably gave credit to those Karl 
> because they provided a roster.  Karl was always very helpful in that 
> connection.  He ran tons of paper through the copier making reproductions 
> of drawings for me when I was a teenager.  He was wonderfully supportive 
> of the fans.   But crediting him does not say or even imply that Hittle or 
> his boss Howard Bierwith actually reviewed the text to see if any gremlins 
> snuck in.
>
> Remember the comment about reducing unsprung weight that Tom Parkinson 
> made.   There really isn't much on a PCC truck below the springs except 
> wheels, axles, axle housings, journal bearings, pinions, ring gears and 
> the portion of drive shaft weight carried on the axle housings.
>
> You would not want to increase the weight of the bolster because it hangs 
> on swing links.   Increasing that weight would cause more lurching on 
> curves.
>
> You cannot readily change the weight of the motors ... they are about 695 
> pounds a piece from the factory.   Westinghouse made those.   Not 
> Pittsburgh Railways.
>
> That leave only the brake beams, the frame tubes (filling them with lead?) 
> and the cross members, all of which came from the factory in one design.
>
> It really doesn't make sense.
>
> There is a tremendous amount of material that floated around the 
> Pittsburgh Electric Railway Club that didn't make sense .... a lot of 
> hearsay that Ed Lybarger has attempted to verify and has never been able 
> to.   Examples include the supposed line up of 830s stuck in a snow storm 
> in Greensburg on the Irwin line ... I remember Ed saying to me something 
> to the effect that, 'If that happened, would it not have been in the 
> newspaper?   He checked the Greensburg newspaper ... whose staffers could 
> have looked out their windows and seen them ... nothing mentioned.  That 
> is one of many examples.   I think a lot of the stories probably began 
> with motormen who just wanted to see how far some of the crap would spread 
> if they started it!  You know how that works ... these trolley jollies are 
> crazy ... let's see if we can put one over on them.   :<)
>
> I think, like a lot of the political things we see on the internet that 
> once started have a life of their own, this story about the extra weight 
> built into the trucks is probably another one of those stories that has, 
> over time, achieved a life all its own and even if disproved, it would 
> never go away.
>
> Brown was the president (for sometime at least) of the Pittsburgh Electric 
> Railway Club.  I think he had an EE degree.  He worked for Union Switch 
> and Signal and later for the Pennsylvania Railroad in signals and 
> communications; I think it was Penn Central when he retired.     When I 
> first met him, he lived at 341 Stanford Avenue in West View ... that was 
> when the club's members bought 832, M1, 3756 and moved them out to Arden. 
> Later, when he was with the railroad, he was living near Paoli.   He also 
> installed the first train phones on the Strasburg locomotives.   He now 
> resides on the Washington interurban right of way near Donaldson's 
> Crossroads, Washington County, in Forest Lawn Cemetery.
>
> Bartley lived in Ben Avon.  I only met him once as a 13-year-old.  Bought 
> some photos from him as late as my college years.   Have no clue what he 
> did.
>
> Dengler was a letter carrier obsessed with photographing every car that 
> Pittsburgh Railways ever owned ... up front, close and personal.    He 
> often would take a whole roll of one car if he thought he could sell them. 
> He died before Brownie.
>
> Edward S. Miller was a delightful chap who lived in Pittston, about midway 
> between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.  He left home upon graduation from high 
> school and worked for Con Ed in a power plant in Long Island until the 
> military drafted him.  He was in the transportation corps, U. S. Army, in 
> England in World War II.  His mom remarried and he got the heck out of 
> Pittston.  His old buddy Mike Lavelle was a motorman for Capital Transit 
> so he moved down there.   Step father died so he moved back home about 
> 1952 to take care of mother and worked for a variety of companies.   A 
> couple of years ago, Ed was getting ready for church and fell ... a 
> neighbor broke in and got him to the hospital.  Ed was one of those people 
> who would do anything for anybody ... loved people.  He was the Catholic 
> who attended mass every day they had one.    He celebrated his 90th 
> birthday in a nursing home but was never the same.   Ed was one of those 
> people best described as the salt of the earth.    !
> They didn't come any nicer.
>
>
> On May 6, 2012, at 6:18 PM, Herb Brannon wrote:
>
>> Too bad none of the contributors to that article weren't either 
>> Maintenance
>> Employees or PRCo Engineers (P.E. type).  Maybe then they would have
>> spelled out what they meant by, "....had some weight applied...".
>> On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Phillip Clark Campbell 
>> <pcc_sr at yahoo.com>wrote:
>>
>>> John Baxter wrote the "Electric Railroads" 1952 article about
>>> the Prc interurbans.  This is 12-letter-sized pages.  Contributing
>>> to the article were 3-reporters from the "Washington [Pa.]
>>> Reporter."
>>>
>>> Newton E. Tucker, Albert R. Dauk, William A. Keller, and
>>> Karl H. Hittle from Prc were contributors along with
>>> Kempton F. McNutt of the Philadelphia Co. and
>>> Herman P. Hewitt, retired Washington operator with
>>> 46-years of local and interurban service.
>>>
>>> Photo credits include Robert H. Brown, Charles J. Dengler,
>>> Edward S. Miller, and Harry C. Bartley.
>>>
>>>
>>> The following is page-6, top right above the map.  This reveals
>>> more than I remembered and is most interesting.  I am sure many
>>> here have this article don't they; please verify the "facts" as they
>>> are quoted below:
>>>
>>>
>>> "In January 1946, local PCC car 1613 from Craft Ave. car house,
>>> with some minor body changes (fender replaced by pilot, trolley
>>> retreiver lowered, rear window opened, fare box replaced by Ohmer
>>> register, etc.) had some weight applied to its trucks and became
>>> the first experimental PCC interurban car.  The next month special
>>> St.Louis-built trucks, which had earlier been applied to PCC car
>>> 1278 for use on Rt. 37-Shannon, were rebuilt and applied to 1613.
>>> Later 10 special trucks [sets] were bought and applied to various
>>> PCC cars (as indicated by the accompanying roster) for
>>> interurban service.  Placed on the Washington route, they served
>>> as guinea pigs for various components later ordered for the
>>> 1700--1724 series of PCCs delivered in 1949 expressly for
>>> interurban use."
>>>
>>> "All cars in service on interurban routes are provided with extra
>>> equipment as follows: extra trolley pole mounted on roof, fire
>>> extinguisher, flashlight, trolley wire pickup, glass covered took
>>> kit including axe, wrenches, sledge, etc."
>>>
>>> The above is what I have written previously on the topic
>>> relative to 1613 entering interurban service with B2 trucks.  New
>>> information indicates car 1613 first used the experimental B3
>>> trucks in revenue service Feb-1946 doesn't it.
>>>
>>> http://lists.dementix.org/mlist/pittsburgh-railways/2012-05/msg00048.html
>>>
>>>
>>> The complete interurban roster (mentioned above) is not included.
>>> Please refer to your copies of this article.
>>>
>>>
>>> Phil
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: TEP <tompark at telus.net>
>>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org
>>> Sent: Friday, May 4, 2012 6:29 PM
>>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Question about 69 Squirrel Hill Route
>>>
>>> Sounds odd to me as we are always trying to minimise the unsprung truck
>>> weight -- up to the point where the truck is unstable or has wheel-lift
>>> that
>>> could cause a derailment. Possibly this is why, a truck designed for 
>>> slower
>>> speeds on street track, needed better stability for higher speeds on "T"
>>> railtrack. Lighter trucks mean less wheel and rail wear and slightly 
>>> lower
>>> power consumption.
>>> Tom Parkinson P.Eng, Vancouver BC Canada 604-733-5430, fax 604-733-5437
>>>
>>> On 04/05/2012 12:52, Fred Schneider wrote: Or does heavier simply mean
>>> super
>>> resilient wheels instead of the regular design? There really isn't an 
>>> easy
>>> way to add weight to a B2 truck unless you were to weld weight to the
>>> bolsteror fill the frame tubes with something like concrete. I'm 
>>> skeptical.
>>> Istill want someone to tell me how it was done rather than simply tell 
>>> me
>>> thetrucks were heavier. Phillip, where did you get this information that
>>> weight was
>>> added to them? On May 4, 2012, at 3:37 PM, Derrick Brashear
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Herb Brannon
>> In Cuyahoga Valley National Park
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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