Classic Railroad Quiz (at least 50 years old).

[daveklepper]

Hint:  Opening the light rail to Riverside involved buses, trolleybuses, and PCCs.   Only one of the three was purchased.

[daveklepper]

Was not the situation even more complex?   This NYC-B&A trolleycar met steam trains at both ends, the Highland Branch at Riverside, and the main line at Newton Lower Falls.  When steam took over, was not this the regular route of a loop service, where tank engines ran out on the main line and return via the Highland Branch and the revese?   Also, the track connection at Riverside did stay in place for a while and was used by the contractor for the bare-bones rebuilding of the Highland for PCC-car operation, including the required connecting tunnel near Kenmore Station.  It was removed when the yard at Riverside was expanded with a maintenance shop installed.

And the term "Light Rail" was used by some in connection with the project.  Check an issue of Roll Sign of the period.

My question:  The Highland Branch conversion, and the addition of Riverside service to the Central Subway, was done without buying any new rail rolling stock.  What was bought instead, and how was this accomplished?  What equipment shifts were necessary?

[Overmod]

Why, what do you know, a Massachusetts counterpart to the PJ&B!

To get a handle on how interesting this was, consider the following overhead (taken from the reference page provided)

Then consider aspects of the topography that made it possible for the railroad to continue this specific service as long as it did ... and without using an RDC or gas-electric instead of an RS-1 and coach in the 'dieselized' years.

I admit from the discussion to somewhat uncomfortable mirth over how this was 'the trolley that met all the trains' ...

 

[rcdrye]

Close enough.  B&A's Newton Lower Falls branch was served by the "Ping-Pong", a combine (numbered 01!) equipped with trolley poles, for the 1.1 mile run from Riverside station in Newton Center to Newton Lower Falls between 1900 and 1930.  After the Middlesex & Boston Street Railway quit, depriving B&A of its 600 Volt source, B&A reduced service to two trains a day in each direction, initially with B&A tank engines, later with RS1s.  Passenger service was discontinued about the time the Riverside Branch was sold to the MTA.  Freight service lasted until the Conrail era.

http://urbanvista-boston.blogspot.com/2014/10/newton-lower-falls-branch-route-of-ping.html

[daveklepper]

or was it Newton Highlands to Newton Center?

[daveklepper]

Well then, the Highland Branch became a branch of what is now the Green Line subway system and had a branch to Neeham Center.  Possibly the Central had an experimental electrification of this branch with power from a nearby short-lived Bay State (later Eastern Mass) trolley line?

[rcdrye]

daveklepper

I assume the new electrification is for a city's light rail system.

It was, but they didn't call it "light rail" then.  The line sale was long enough ago that it, too still fits the Quiz time frame.

[daveklepper]

Was it i n Cleveland?  Part of the track now used by the Green and Blue lines to reach the waterfront?

I assume the new electrification is for a city's light rail system.

[rcdrye]

daveklepper

Was not there a West Shore electrification using one or more interurban cars, underrruning third rail?

 

That was between Utica and Syracuse - a bit longer.  The line I'm looking for branched off a line was sold and electrified some years after the last passenger service on this line - almost 20 years after the electrification was shut down.

[daveklepper]

Was not there a West Shore electrification using one or more interurban cars, underrruning third rail?

[daveklepper]

The South Brooklyn did not own any tracks of its own.  It still is the freight-only s subssidiary of the New York City Transit Authority, originally the freight-only of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit, then the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit, and then, after June 1940 unification, the NYCTA.  Go to the Trains Transit Forum and get a clearer picture, along with pictures.  The "main line" of the South Brooklyn could be considered from the 39th Street yard and pier and connection with Bush Terminal through the lower level of the Ninth Avenue station, then the surface tracks under the Culver elevated structure, including the interchange with the Bay Ridge branch of the LIRR, to the Coney island Yard complex and the commercial tank farm there,  About five or six miles.  Electrifcation replaced with diesel, not steam.

Was Niagra Junction a NYCentral subsidiay ry?  But was the electrification replaced by steam of by diesel?  But you said passenger service was involved.

There was one electrication of steam-road trackage even shorter than anything di discussed so far:   The DL&W's Brooklyn Freight Terminal, connected by car float to Hoboken.  It was 600 volts with a direct power line to the BMT's nearby DC 600 volt generting station, and had only one electric locomotive.  It was replaced by a steam switcher when the BMT switched to purchased power and closed the generating station.  It was located on the East River near the Williamsburg Bridge.  I believe there was at one time a track connection with the BMT (B&QT) Graham and Crossown streetcar lines, but curves and clearances prevented South Brooklyln interchange freight service.  I think a diesel eventually arrived before the freight house was closed.

[SD70Dude]

I like Milwaukee's version better:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5c/08/25/5c0825180da1c0ba5f954efb80394beb.jpg

I wonder how many times both examples ran over their extension cord...

[Overmod]

[quote user="rcdrye"]South Brooklyn was BMT/MTA, Getty Square was ... System./quote]

Awww, go ahead and say NYC.  I'm aware of this; the point is that South Brooklyn is pretty darn short.  You are getting into tethered-truck shop-switching territory if you want to go much shorter...

[rcdrye]

South Brooklyn was BMT/MTA, Getty Square was ... System.

[Overmod]

Considering how short the South Brooklyn was, this has to be short indeed...

[rcdrye]

You have arrived at the correct system, but the wrong electrification.  This one lasted just over three decades.

[daveklepper]

Peerhaps you are thinking of the NYCentral's Putnam Div. Gettys Square Branch.  But when the short electrification was removed, so was all service on that branch.  

[rcdrye]

Baltimore's Fells Point operation was actually about 2 miles total, where the one I'm looking for is about 1.1 mile.  Two electric switchers were used by B&O at Fells Point before the switch to rubber-tired tractors (well, technically steam was used, since the famous Dockside 0-4-0Ts showed up once in a while when the electrics were out of service...)

This was further north, and passenger-only.  Tank engines were involved here, too...

[daveklepper]

B&O on either the Philly or Balt. waterfront, with one small switcher locomotive and and a power line with meter attached to the nearest streetcar overhead.  Switched back to steam when the streetcar line was abandoned or bus substituted.

[rcdrye]

The one I'm looking for is much shorter than Muskingum and was actually replaced by steam.  Probably the only "electrification" shorter was the section of 600V overhead at Western Pacific's shops to service Sacramento Northern motors from 1957 to 1965.

[Overmod]

Muskingum is the spelling, isn't it?

I first realized I was getting old when I heard this was shutting down (due to exhaustion of the nearby coal mine, as I recall); I was already 'all grown up' enough to read Trains Magazine when they first announced this 'new' electrification was going to be built in the early Sixties...

Can't be this, though, as Hoosac is much shorter.  (And I think first GN was shorter still...)  And question implies that the electrical power source is the reason for abandoning electrification, not the advent of diesels or other 'better' motive power...

[daveklepper]

Muskegon (Sp) Electric in Ohio, some 60 miles south of Cleveland, with a big surface coal mine and a power plant?

[rcdrye]

This shortest of all steam railroad electrifications lasted for decades, until the power source was no longer available.  Name the railroad and the power source.

[daveklepper]

Whom do you identify as "the greatest living authority?"  I do not claim that title.  I did not design the sound-absorbing treatment for the Toronto Subway system.  I did have the opportunity to compare Montreal's brand-new rubber-tired system, then quiet, with Toronto's recent steel-wheel system, also quiet.  Some 50+ years ago.

rc reports Montreal's system is not quiet now.  Well, anything moving does require maintenance.   On this thead, we look forward to rc's next question.

I'll post some ideas in answer to your question sometime next week on the Transit Forum.  I am trying to develop one general efficient approach regarding the application of sound-absorption to subway tunnel interiors.

Thanks for the challange.

I think the B&W photos posted earlier show the original insallation with the concrete for the rubber tires to run on and the oriiginal rolling stock.

[Overmod]

daveklepper

if you wished to reduce energy and maintenance cost and were not tied to French technology, what big change would you make?

You would get rid of that approach to rubber tires.  In fact, you could retain the rubber-tire approach and use a better guidance system (like that on at least one Australian busway) instead of horizontal mystery-action wheels.

One thing not a big improvement would be to use Micheline-style unsinkable tread-centric wheels (even with modern run-flat block technology inside to control the situation if one tire in a bogie goes flat).  I think it still remains to be seen whether some form of augmented elastomer wheel (with the requisite amount of vertical compliance and lack of resonance to match a rubber tire, but with hard tread and self-centering profile maintaining concentricity with the axle center) could be provided ... it was 'coming' in the Sixties, and as far as I know is still as distant in 'coming' as then...

Meanwhile, isn't it convenient that we have one of the greatest living authorities on how to do detail design of that sound-attenuation system to make steel-wheel trains as quiet in stations as rubber-tired ones?  Please detail how you'd do it.  It will make compelling (and enlightening!) reading.

[Jones1945]

(EDITED): Hope you guys like the pics! I was a bit late to answer the question. Btw, the newest stock in 2018 is the first vehicle in Israel with an automatic turning off mechanism installed in the passenger carriage.  Have a nice day!

[daveklepper]

Montreal was not loud the one time I rode it shortly after opening.  But Toronto is quiet because of good maintenance and the application of sound-absorption on lower tunnel walls and even below platforms in stations.  But then TTC usually does everything right.

Anyway, you got the answer, and the new arrangement is steel wheel on steel rails, but without any sound-absorption.

[rcdrye]

daveklepper

So if you wished to reduce energy and maintenance cost and were not tied to French technology, what big change would you make?

Lose the tires.  Montreal's Metro is clean, and pleasant except for the tire dust that's everywhere.  It's also pretty loud.

[daveklepper]

The Carmelit is a an underground funicular, a subway funicular.  There are six symmetrically-speced stations, single-track with the passing siding in the center, beween stations three and four.   Originally two three-car trains, now two four-car trains, but continuous gangway between car, making each train look line one very long (slanted-stepped) car. 

In the 1950's what distinguieshed French subways from subways in other countries, and still largely does?  So if you wished to reduce energy and maintenance cost and were not tied to French technology, what big change would you make?   (One Canadian city does use French practice in its subway.)

[daveklepper]

OK.   Here is an easy stop-gap one.   Go to the Trains General Forum, look at my posting on my "Visit..." thread of Steve Sattler's photo of Chen Millsom (Director of the Israel Railway's Museum) and me at the top station of the Haifa Carmelit, and then Google to find a photo of the original construction in the 50s or failing just a description, one even just before the recent extensive renovation, and describe the obvious technological change.  Maybe you don't need to do any research   The original construction was French.  The recent rebuilding was Swiss-German-Austrian.

After rebuilding, maintenance should be a lot less, and energy costs (electricity for the single traction motor for the line's two trains) much less.   

But what problem might you expect?