With the GE PC-12 control the C&LE cars had some field control, and were expected to be able to do 80 MPH on rickety track. I suppose 90 was possible, but 97 seems to me to be fictional. The ride on the Cincinnati Arch Bar trucks must have been very exciting.
C&LE's schedules called for quite a bit of 60 MPH running on largely unsignalled single track. After a couple of spectacular wrecks and C&LE's resulting financial failure, the red devils were sold to CRANDIC and Lehigh Valley Transit.
Indiana RR's High Speed cars (by ACF) had Westinghouse HLF controls and were also good for 80 MPH.
rcdrye The ride on the Cincinnati Arch Bar trucks must have been very exciting.
Especially on interurban track...
Alco High Hood (HH) switchers were "backward" compared to other switchers, including later Alcos. In what ways?
Cab was the "F" end (front) so control stand was on the wrong side when operating long hood forward. The radiators were also next to the cab, unlike later ALCO (and other mfgs' ) later offerings.
Rob:
What was the reasoning for having the controls backward (compared to other models)?
This sounds like an SP cab-forward steam locomotive.
Also, which railroad(s) owned those locomotives?
Ed Burns
Don't know why they were set up "cab-forward" except maybe for visibility. I'm not even sure that all of them were.
Guys who know a lot more say 176 were built in 4 models (HH600 and HH900, then HH660 and HH1000.
Lots of different owners from B&M to SP. New Haven seems to have had the largest fleet (with the cab-in-front setup)
The backward arrangement actually referred to the location of the main generator at the opposite end of the prime mover from the cab. This resulted in an excessive amount of conduit for the control wiring and was corrected at the next model change (the S-series)
Paul and Rob, both of your answers are correct. I'll let you decide who gets the next one.
Take it , Paul. The radiators next to the cab was a by-product of the generator being at the "wrong" end.
It would like to comment on the arch-bar Cincinnati trucks under the C&LE lightweight interurban cars. I made at least five trips on these cars in LVT service, probably seven. I can tell you they rode smoothly, even on somewhat deteriorated track. And they were quiet and fast. The arch=bar trucks were not like typical freight-car archbars. I think the difference was some kind of stabilizer bar or bars between truck frames independent of the bolster itself. And next to being in the left front seat of an Electroliner on the North Shore, there was no better electric railfan experience than riding the Liberty Bell, either looking over the motorman's shoulder in one of the two front leather coach seats or sitting backward in a the parlor sofa looking out the back.
The ex-Indiana car 1030 on LVT had its General Steel drop-equalizer trucks replaced by the Cincinnati trucks to accommodate the third rail shoes for running through to 69th Street on the P&W.
daveklepper The ex-Indiana car 1030 on LVT had its General Steel drop-equalizer trucks replaced by the Cincinnati trucks to accommodate the third rail shoes for running through to 69th Street on the P&W.
Actually 1030 kept its Commonwealth trucks to the end of LVT service. When the car was acquired by Seashore from LVT's scrapper, the trucks had already been removed. The scrapper substituted the Cincinnati arch bars. The car is operational, but reserved to special service.
Since we're discussing Alco switchers, let's try this one on for size. Aside from having a 251 engine instead of a 539, name a feature of the Alco S5 and S6 that distinguished it from other Alco switchers?
Front radiator shutters. All other Alco switchers had side shutters (including the HH series, even if they were at the wrong end...). Some MLW switchers also had front shutters. Oliver Iron Mining also had two pairs of cow/calf S6s.
We have a winner here. Rcdrye gets to ask the next question.
I think you are not correct about LVT 1030 keeping its Commonwealth trucks. It may be that the trucks were swapped several times. In 1949, LVT stopped running through to 69th Street and had passengers change to P&W "Bullets" at Norristown. At that time, they may have swapped back to the original trucks, because they had far less wheel wear and there was no longer any need for the third rail shoes. The overhead wire did extend the full length of the Norristown single-track, single-platform station. I had been told about the original swap earlier.
what we need is a good side-view photo of 1030 taken before 1949.
It is also possible that they figured out a way of applying the shoes to the Commonwealth trucks without creating clearance problems earlier than 1949. We need a side-view photograph.
The late Ben Minnich was involved in acquiring 1030, among many other cars now at Seashore Trolley Museum.
From http://www.trolleymuseum.org/collection/browse.php?id=01030IPA
"When the Museum bought Car 1030, the junkman had already sold its trucks. By coincidence, those provided as replacements were from the very Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railway car that took part in the famous airplane race of 1930."
New question:
This minority diesel builder's entire passenger-equipped locomotive output went to the New York Central.
Lima. LRS 1200, or a stretched LS1200 for commuter or terminal switching duties.
That is interesting about the Lima passenger terminal switchers. Where were they assigned?
I don't see anything specific about 1030 having Commonwealth trucks in LVT operation. The scrapper could have simply scrapped the Cincinnati arch bars and substituted the others. But maybe I did not look at the right place. In any case, i think my explanation does make sense.
The Lima switchers were mostly assigned to terminal operations in cities like Chicago and Buffalo, though at least one operated for a time on the Adirondack Division. Most of them were re-engined with EMD 567s well before the PC merger, and at least a couple of them lasted until Conrail.
The width of the Commonwealth trucks isn't much different from the arch bars. P&W had similar trucks on some of its equipment, as did other third rail lines. The 1030 was the lone LVT Liberty Bell car with HLF control, and even today has Westinghouse motors (All of the Cincinnati's had GE PC-12 with GE 706A1 motors, like CRANDIC 113). The big value to the scrapper was that the Commonwealth trucks weighed a lot more than the arch bars. A photo of 1030 in Allentown during an NRHS excursion isn't conclusive, but the third rail gear is different from the C&LE cars, and the journal covers match the ones in photos of the car as IRR 55.
http://ceramembersblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/scan01.jpg
An interesting footnote is that as Indiana RR' 55 the car had been outfitted with parlor seating for use as Receiver Bowman Elder's business car. LVT left the parlor seats in the car for a while at no extra fare, later put more conventional seating in to raise capacity, but kept the parlor seats stored, so some of them came to the museum with the car, along with some from the parlor sections of scrapped Cincinnati cars.
NorthWest - your question!
Santa Fe received this builder's entire steam boiler equipped switcher production.
Did the Lima switchers have steam boilers? If not, I assume that the moves were made quickly and depot steam lines were coupled to the passenger cars.
NYC's Lima LRS1200s had boilers. They were used where steam lines weren't available, or for transfer runs around Chicago like the coast-to-coast sleepers that had to be transferred from LaSalle to Dearborn or Union (or even C&NW). They were tried on a variety of local services, but RS3s or boiler GP7s got most of that work. The re-engining started after some were assigned to Cleveland after CUT's electrics were shut down. Collinswood shops on the east side of Cleveland redid these, and also some Baldwins and Erie-Built FMs
To answer NorthWest's question AT&SF got FM's three H-12-44TS units which were H-12-44 switchers with a short hood and a boiler. Used in Chicago at Dearborn Station and Archer Avenue coach yards, they were out of a job in May 1971. AT&SF's other Dearborn switchers were Alco RS1s.
A couple of added comments and corrections. Only two of NYC's LRS1200's were re-powered with 567 engines. They lasted into the Penn Central era and carried PC numbers 8062-8063.
The ATSF H12-44TS's were leased by Amtrak for a while after May 1, 1971 and were in terminal service at Chicago Union Station. They were retired in 1973 (?) and were cut up at Industrial Maintenance Service in Hammond IN.
Rob gets it. Fortunately, one has survived.
The initial substitution that was told me may have been just to get the car into service to replace the wrecked CL&E car, with the original trucks restored when the right third rail equipment was available and installed. The trucks and motors were interchangeable, as a C&LE car was tested with Commonwealth trucks on IR before the High-Speeds were purchased.
If memory is correct, when 1030 was reseated, it became all-coach. But most of the coach-parlors on LVT stayed that way until the end. I think Crandic got mostly coach-baggage without parlor seats.
1030 did get coach seats. Some of the parlor seats on it now are originals recovered from storage, some ex-C&LE.
rcdrye, it's your question.
In the early 1960s, this railroad replaced a former international train with a combine on through freight trains.
Rutland? to and from Montreal?
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