Wizlish has the correct answer. The floating bridge on Rutland's Addison branch from Leicester Jct VT to Ticonderoga NY included a pile trestle with a floating bridge segment between Larabee's Point VT and Ticonderoga that crossed a narrow part of Lake Champlain. The bridge was patterned after an earlier one crossing Lake Champlain built by the Northern Railroad of New York from Rouses Point NY to Alburgh NH, which was replaced by a conventional "draw" (swing) bridge by successor Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain some time before the latter was acquired by the Rutland. The Ticonderoga span was never heavily used especially after the 1900-1901 extension of the Rutland to a Grand Trunk connection at Rouses Point. The bridge's tendency to dump cars in the lake led the USRA to condemn it. The Addison branch was cut back from Larabees's Point (Shoreham) VT to Whiting in 1951, and was abandoned with the Rutland in 1963 and did not become part of the Vermont Railway.
This bridge's actual construction was fascinating. I would never have imagined that kind of traffic over that kind of bridge if this question hadn't been asked.
I'm not going to be back on list for many hours, so if anyone has a good question in the meantime, ask.
It turns out that the bridge's tendency to dump cars resulted from the floating section's spring action after the locomotive had crossed, but a car was still on it.
Most wooden passenger cars built 'by choice' were made obsolete by changing requirements. But at least one was built new well after WWI. Who built it, and why?
From previous posts, the Central Vermont's only dining car.
Error, hardly well after WWI, more like just after WWI.
The D&RGW narrow-gauge open-sided sightseeing car for the Durango - Silverton run, built new but probably with recycled running gear.
No, I mean WELL after WWi -- and to my knowledge, no recycled parts whatsoever were used in the thing... except the marker lights.
As a hint: the design in this question was to contemporary passenger-car engineering what the de Havilland Mosquito was to contemporary two-engine aircraft.
Was this the Pacific Railway Equipment prototype Pendulum car made of Plywood?
You are, of course, correct. (I suspect the marker lights were a giveaway; so many sources have commented on them!)
"Next!"
Both of you, tell us more about that car. Thanks.
There are a couple of good Web pages about the Pendulum Cars and their history. The basic idea was that if the secondary suspension (from bolster to carbody) was made very tall and carried in 'towers', the point of suspension would be above the roll center, and the carbody would swing out rather than lean over in curves. A different version of the same idea is seen on some of the modern electric locomotives that have very long helical springs on the outside of the carbody at about the center of the truck sideframes.
The prototype development was done with private money, with the general shape of the carbody following 'streamliner' practice of the mid-Thirties (e.g. the UP motor trains, and Pullman's Stout Railplane). In order to get a lightweight structure without having to invest in sheet=metal fabrication tooling (and the duraluminum sections and sheet whose price was inflated by the aircraft industry) the structure was done in stressed-skin plywood -- this is not a throwback material, but a then industrial marvel, comparable to carbon fiber in the '80s and related to it as a composite material where alternate laminations run in different directions.
The great problem with the patented Pendulum Car suspension was that it lacked inherent damping (and the long travel with soft springs gave a long period, which didn't help either). As a result the car's riding suffered from a boatlike rocking that could make sensitive people queasy, and sharp lateral displacements could result in multiple cycles of carbody sway. The towers took up quite a bit of 'prime' space inside the car, too, and I suspect the design 'telegraphed' quite a bit of road noise right up into the passenger compartment.
Three (rather famous) full-size railroad cars were built ... you can read the history to find out why and to whom these were sold. It is also interesting to see where they wound up, and how they were modified following experience (one car had modern elliptical windows that were so disliked by passengers that they were replaced with more conventional ones).
The suspension principle of these cars is NOT to be confused with the Cripe TurboTrain, or the Talgo Pendular, Pendolino, or other tilting train with high-mounted pivot point. The geometrical principles are very different. They should not be confused with any of the negative-cant-deficiency tilting trains, like the APTs in England, either.
As far as I know, Pacific Railway Equipment built only four passenger cars, the plywood prototype and one each (of aluminum?) for CB&Q, AT&SF and GN, all of them using them in short turn trains. The prototype was actually a two-unit articulated car, sort of a slant-sided coach with a teardrop observation car. The prototype was built in a Northrup Aviation hangar. The markers referred to are ordinary oil markers on brackets on the observation. All of the pendulum cars had oval split windows (think early VW) and may have been delivered in AT&SF's "Blue Goose" scheme, though Burlington and GN qickly repainted them silver (CB&Q's was of course "Silver Pendulum") and GN eventually squared off the windows. See http://streamlinermemories.info/?p=637 for more on the story.
A three-unit articulated set, part of a prewar streamliner, ended its life in commuter service. Name the railroad and the original train.
I'll say Southern Pacific, Coast Daylight; I can't prove that "AC Chair Car" actually means 'articulated', but there is a 'commuter' service (the one with those torpedo-tube early Geeps) that ran those (the regular commute services, of course, didn't).
I'm assuming you'd tell us if you meant the triple-articulated that was cut back to a double coach.
Back in the days when many non-air-conditioned coaches were still in service, railroads were quite proud to let it be known that the coaches on this train or that train were air-conditioned, so "AC" was in the description of the coaches regularly assigned to such trains.
I do not think that the general traveling public worried about articulation.
Johnny
Rob:
"Car Names, Numbers, and Consists" lists only three pendulum cars: CBQ 6000 "Silver Pendulum", GN 999, and ATSF 1100. Was the missing car a demonstrator?
Ed Burns
"I do not think that the general traveling public worried about articulation." Indeed, if the description were in the timetables, some of the traveling public may have wondered pronouncing words carefully had to do with passenger cars.
NP Eddie Rob: "Car Names, Numbers, and Consists" lists only three pendulum cars: CBQ 6000 "Silver Pendulum", GN 999, and ATSF 1100. Was the missing car a demonstrator? Ed Burns
NP EddieWas the missing car a demonstrator?
Mike will be able to provide the actual article, but here from Time Magazine, January 24th, 1938, was this: 'Transport: Jounceless'...
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,758983,00.html
"Sporty Cortlandt T. Hill, 31-year-old stockbroking grandson of the late great railroader James Jerome Hill, was skiing down hills at Sun Valley, Idaho last week with his host, railroader W. Averell Harriman. Between slides he tried to interest the Union Pacific's able board chairman not in some of his stocks but in his two new railroad cars. "Back in Inglewood, Calif. Cortlandt Hill had a pair of plywood passenger cars which resembled ordinary units of a streamlined duralumin train, but which were mounted on their running gear in a manner which he and several partners claimed was brand-new for railroad cars. Invented by William Van Dorn and Dr. F. C. Lindvall of California Institute of Technology, who have been working on the cars for the past two years in an abandoned Northrup Aviation hangar, the coaches are sprung on a "pendulum" principle by which four heavy vertical coil springs above each of the car's four axles fit into pockets in the body of the car. As the top of these is above the coach's low centre of gravity, the tendency of the body roll on curves is inward instead of outward as on an ordinary car. Airplane fashion, the car banks into the curve, vastly increasing both comfort and steadiness. Lateral and horizontal restraint of the body is achieved by rubberized links between the inside end of the trucks and the lower portion of the car's body. Result is a full-size passenger coach whose floor is 30 in. above the rails instead of 4¼ ft.; whose roof is 8 ft. instead of 14 ft. high. Weight, if made of duralumin, is 50,000 Ib.—40% less than present streamlined cars. "Most interested railroad in the experimental coaches is Santa Fe, which loaned ten miles of sidetrack and an engine for the trial runs. To show them to other U.S. roads the designers plan to install two Ford V-8 engines to enable the coaches to cruise about the country under their own power. Delighted with the steadiness of the coaches during tests at 50 m.p.h., sponsor Hill (—whose previous railroad experience consists of three weeks in the Great Northern shops at St. Paul during childhood) —pronounced his cars "jounce-less."
This will probably give the whole thing away, but the three -unit set was always three units (unlike SP's cut-down triple-unit diner-lounge which became a twin-unit coach), and made up the core of the original train. The only real change from streamliner to commuter service was replacing a food-service section with seats. The cars remained in service until the owning railroad acquired a small fleet of modern commuter cars. They were retired before a considerable number of even older cars. All three sections were named and carried their names their entire careers.
SP's cut-down diner was not used in commuter service. The cars I'm looking for ran in mixed consists behind a considerable variety of motive power - far more variety than SP's GP9s, H24-66s and occasional SD7/9 or FP7 commuter power.
Well then, how about the Rock Island Rocket Budd triples, from 1937, that were running in commuter service in the 1960s?
400-306-300
401-307-301
Need the train names.
Originally Des Moines Rocket and Peoria Rocket, no?
If you want the car names, my source had them Joliet, Ottawa, and La Salle for the Peoria train, and Norman Judd, Grenville Dodge, and Henry Farnum for Des Moines.
Wizlish Originally Des Moines Rocket and Peoria Rocket, no? If you want the car names, my source had them Joliet, Ottawa, and La Salle for the Peoria train, and Norman Judd, Grenville Dodge, and Henry Farnum for Des Moines.
Well done! "Norman Judd" and "Joliet" were originally baggage-dinette cars, "Grenville Dodge" and "Ottawa" 60 seat chair cars, and "Henry Farnam" and "La Salle" were 76 seat chair cars. The Parlor Buffet Observation cars "L.M. Allen" and "Peoria" brought up the rear of the original TA-lead trains. RI operated them in commuter trains mixed with "Al Capone" coaches as well as the postwar center-entrance cars. The articulateds were lower than standard, but the diaphragms lined up OK. RI also operated the low prewar cars in other trains. RI's commuter power included RS3s, BL2s, H15-44s, E3s, E6s, the two AB6s off the Rocky Mountain Rocket as well as FP7s and E7s.
"AB6?" some may ask. The AB6 was a two of a kind that was built especially for this train; one each handled the Colorado Springs section of the train, running through Chicago-Limon (where the train was split)-Colorado Springs. The Denver section used the UP to reach its destination.
Rock Island added a second engine and motorized truck to each AB6 replacing the as-built baggage room in the early 1960s, changing the wheel arrangement from A1A-3 to A1A-A1A. The cabs, but not the cab side windows, were squared off for the AB6s to fit in behind the lead units on the Rocky Mountain Rocket. RI750 lasted in comuter service until the ex-UP E9s arrived in 1971 or 1972.
Deggesty"AB6?" some may ask.
rcdryeRI's commuter power included RS3s, BL2s, H15-44s, E3s, E6s, the two AB6s off the Rocky Mountain Rocket as well as FP7s and E7s.
What power did he leave off this list???
Extra points if you know the last name...
WizlishWhat power did he leave off this list??? Extra points if you know the last name...
Can't believe I left it off. Just shows what a menagerie RI had in the 60s and 70s.
RI 621, an EMD-re-engined DL109 (really a DL103b, but that may be splitting things a little too fine). Called "Christine" after Christine Jorgenson, an early version of Caitlin Jenner. It was built as an Alco-GE demonstrator.
The DL103b was about two feet longer than the DL109, and used electrical rather than belt-driven auxiliaries. EMD did a factory repowering around 1952 with 12-567B engines replacing the Alco 539s, resulting in a prominent hump on the roof. Like the AB6s, it was retired after the ex-UP E9s arrived. RI's other 3 DLs - all "real" DL109s - were retired in the early 1960s.
OK -- who had the first 'double deck' passenger cars on Long Island (New York)? (This includes things like gallery-car arrangements, but does involve a full roof - no open-air construction on the top deck like the Fifth Avenue sightseeing buses.)
I'm going to suggest LIRR, which had a number of MU cars with a center aisle and seats on either side in an up-down arrangement similar to duplex roomettes.
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