[PRCo] Skybus piece from Post Gazette

Thu Apr 10 17:46:10 EDT 2014

Fred:  Do you mean my one line reply to this message which you sent to the group??  Perhaps the confusion is that there were two email strings - one thru group and one thru individual emails - with both originating with Skybus article.

Or Sacramento's line to Folsom, where auto drivers had better beware at intersections.  

> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 11:04:06 -0400
> To: pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
> Subject: Re: [PRCo] Skybus piece from Post Gazette
> 
> First of all, I do not remember if the car was a 3700 or a 5400.   It was obviously a high speed because there were no low speeds left by that time except double-end cars.    A 3700 had lower ratio gearing so it would achieve higher speeds but would take longer to get there.   A standard high speed low floor city car might be good for about 37 mph while a 3750 might do 45 or so. 

 - snip rest -

Subject: Re: [PRCo] Skybus piece from Post Gazette
From: fwschneider at comcast.net
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 17:04:43 -0400
To: pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org; dwightlong at verizon.net; j_swindler at hotmail.com

In answer to to your question about the high speed ride in the low floor car…  

I sent a personal note to John Swindler which he turned around and replied to by sending it to the discussion group instead of to me.   That is why you are confused.  

Why John posted it to the group, ask him.   We were chatting about the Skybus proposal versus today's ultra-slow light rail.  I explained that the fastest ride I ever had was up the valley in a low floor car.

I mentioned to him that I had ridden to Pittsburgh from Castle Shannon one day in 1952 or 1953 full-bore in a low floor car.   When was it?   Probably April 1952 during Easter vacation from 6th grade.   I do not remember whether it was a 5400 or a 3700 … just going on what might have been in Tunnel at that time.   Could have been a 5000 also.     And so I explained some of the speed characteristics of the two cars.   

I was also suggesting that the present service might be speeded up if PAT had the wisdom to install crossing gates (both lanes, both sides, so you cannot drive around them) all the way through Dormont and Beechview and Castle Shannon … the whole system where it is on private right-of-way.   Then take the freaking governors off the cars.   We went from low-speed 25 mph to PCCs.   Then we speeded up a flock of the low-floors so that they would be compatible with the PCCs.   And then we went back to low-speed with the LRVs …. I have been told because the nice people in Dormont do not want the risk of being hit by fast transit.   Fast autos are OK.  

And that is why I made the suggestion that some people need to look at Dallas where 60 mph LRVs are operated.   Of course it would be false to say that was the system standard … not everywhere … but where they can, they do.   My memory is that 45 is pretty much typical but on long straight stretches, they will rack the trains up to 60.   And last year their average weekday LRT riding was 94,950 fares (or about 47,500 individual riders).   That's a lot of people.   (If you want to compare it to Pittsburgh … Dallas city covers two counties and DART light rail handles about 3.8% of the daily trips to work there.   PAT light rail handles about 1.4% of the work trips in Allegheny County.  Rough SWAGS based on something less than half the population.)  

But then there's a difference in population numbers.   We already established that western Pennsylvania is losing population.  Difficult to want to invest in a declining market…..    Dallas-Fort Worth has grown to the forth largest metro area in the USA (behind New York, Los Angeles and Chicago) … it has grown from somewhere near a million people in 1950 to about 6 1/2 million today.  In that environment, you could never connect the dots with enough transit.   But that light rail actually connects Dallas with several cities almost as big as Pittsburgh.   The train in the picture is a cutback on the Plano line … today Plano is a city of about a quarter of a million people.   

And notice … not like Pittsburgh Railways to Charleroi … no pre-kinked rail.   (Was it John Swindler who came up with that term 40 years ago, that PRC bought Pre-kinked rail?)   

By the way guys, if you hate winter … this can be a great place in the summer.   When I took this picture a couple of years ago, it was 116 degrees.    (Two weeks ago … drove past the same spot and it was only 70.)  

On Apr 10, 2014, at 1:19 PM, Dwight Long wrote:

> 
> Fred
> 
> To what ride do you refer?
> 
> I can�t find anything relating to a ride in a Jones car in the antecedents.  Sounds like a story worth knowing about.  
> 
> At the end of Jones cars, or approaching the end, were not the ten DE cars that were retained all equipped with the rewound, �high speed� motors and controls?
> 
> Dwight
> 
> From: Fred Schneider 
> Sent: Thursday, 10 April, 2014 11:04
> To: Western PA Trolley discussion 
> Subject: Re: [PRCo] Skybus piece from Post Gazette
> First of all, I do not remember if the car was a 3700 or a 5400.   It was obviously a high speed because there were no low speeds left by that time except double-end cars.    A 3700 had lower ratio gearing so it would achieve higher speeds but would take longer to get there.   A standard high speed low floor city car might be good for about 37 mph while a 3750 might do 45 or so.   
> 
> The interurbans beyond Drake and Library were quite slow when I rode them in March 30 and 31, 1953.   One Charleroi motorman explained that once the company decided to give up, they also quit maintaining the tracks.    But even north of Drake and Library, I don't remember it as being good before the LRV era.  
> 
> Now go down to Dallas and ride DART.   They have some 60 mph operation.   It's hard to fathom a single light rail line that is 50 miles long but that is what the Red Line is from Plano to Dallas to DFW Airport.   It is their version of the Paoli local. 
> 
> 
> On Apr 10, 2014, at 10:06 AM, John Swindler wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> The recollection is a somewhat bumpy, slow ride.  But perceptions can be deceiving.  Speed might have been as fast as the PCC cars attempting to negotiate PAT's abysmal trackwork from that era.  
>> 
>> Which brings back a memory of last day of Drake around 1999 - PCC operator was running 'pedal to the metal' -  and kept thinking that this was amazing - something never experienced 25-30 years earlier from the Skybus era.      
>> 
>> 
>>> From: alto_trombone at hotmail.com
>>> To: pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
>>> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 06:01:38 -0400
>>> Subject: Re: [PRCo] Skybus piece from Post Gazette
>>> 
>>> I rode it. Who else?
>>> 
>>> Dennis F. Cramer 
>>> http://home.windstream.net/dfc1/
>>> 
>>>> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
>>>> Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 12:59:35 -0400
>>>> To: pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
>>>> Subject: [PRCo] Skybus piece from Post Gazette
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Found by one of Bombardier's (nee Westinghouse) employees and forwarded to me by Dave Hamley.   Thanks Dave.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
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