I'll post one later tonight...
(Reply 5100!)
Alright...
While the only railroad to recieve the USRA Heavy Pacific was the Erie, two railroads later had similar locomotives built which differed from each other primarily by only one characteristic. Railroads and classes, please, with bonus points for the difference.
These locomotives were almost identical to the Heavy Pacific, but had the Light Pacific's 73'' drivers.
One was a Southeastern road, the other a Southwestern road.
C&EI and Southern had heavy pacifics similar to the Erie K5 but with 73" drivers. C&EI class K-3 by Lima (1923) mainly for handling Chicago-Florida trains. Southern's were the famous class Ps-4 from Alco-Schenectady and Alco-Richmond 1923 and 1924, with later batches from Alco-Richmond and Baldwin. Alabama and Vicksburg (Illinois Central) had some heavy Baldwin 4-6-2's with 73" drivers, but they were of a slightly different design, with Young valve gear instead of the Baker found on the others.
I was thinking of some of the MP Pacifics that were identical to the Ps-4s but for a Delta trailing truck, but the CE&I K-3s work as well. Your question!
Shortly after it was formed by consolidating a number of small systems in 1910, Pittsburgh Railways ordered over 200 streetcars from two builders. These cars were designed for economy of operation by using a feature more commonly associated with steam locomotives. What was the feature that made these cars unusual?
Possibly using electric resistive hearing to heat water and allowing hot water or even steam to heat cars in winter instead of direct resistor-bank radiation. The hot-water pipes can run the length of the car and do not require circulating fans to distribute the heat, and this indirect heat transfer is actually more efficient than direct radiation from resistors.
The 200 cars were, I believe, real pioneers other ways, the first lightweight double-truck cars, with smaller-than usual high-speed motors, four motors per car, and lower floors than were standard for cars of that era, about the same I hight as the just-invented 4-wheel safety cars. The were steel with wood-and-canvass roofs, like the many lightweight designs that followed. They may have been delivered with only center doors, and set-up for two-man operation, but later were converted to Peter Witt configuration, equipped with one-man safety equipment, and became one-man cars. I believe they lasted thru WWII until replaced by PCCs and by closing the shuttle runs that were their last use as double-end cars.
The Pittsburgh Railways cars were otherwise conventional cars except for one external feature especially noticeable when the cars were in motion.
OK MUST HAVE BEEN THINKING OF A LATER GROUP OF CARS
A BELL SIMILAR TO A LOCOMOTIVE BELL MOUNTED ON THE FRONT OF THE ROOF?
What the cars had might be viewed as a different response to Brill's contemporary Maximum Traction trucks, but with a twist to work with Pittsburgh's topography. Incidentally Brill did deliver 80 of the cars, while St. Louis Car, which designed them, delivered about 150.
Full disclosure dept.: Though Pittsburgh was incorporated with the "h", it was dropped between 1890 and 1911. Since only the monogram was used the cars did not need to be repainted immediately after delivery...
Little bitty 25" wheels for low floors?
How is that associated with steam locomotives? And that would take them out of the convenitonal car catagory, would it not? Most tlightweight fou-motored cars did have 22-26-inch wheels.
Could it be that these were the first cars to have some kind of record-keeping device to determine the amount of time power was applied to encourage coasting, drifting in steam locomotive parlance. Such devices were installed on steam locomotives to encourage economical operaton.
Pidttsburgh did have a vast fleet, approaching possibly one thousand, deck-roof lightweight small-wheel four-motored Petert-Witt-door-arrangement cars, in both single-end and double-end variety, eventually handling all routs exept the interurbans to Charleroi-Roscoe, and Washington. Even the Donorra shuttle. But then through 1949 they were gradually replaced by PCCs, with Pittsburgh having the largest fleet of bought-new PCCs in North America, approximately 660. After 1949, buses were the replacement. The last non-PCC line into downtown was Evergreen, which required double-end cars and went bus around 1954. The last single-end city line to be converted to PCC was Fineview, around 1949, around the same time as specially-equipped PCCs took over base interurban service. These special interurban 1700's had a space for luggage behind the operator, a locomitve-style small pilot, roof headlight, and a postwar-designed truck that I believe was later used on rapid-transit PCC cars.
All of the Pittsburgh designs you mentioned came later than these. In Pittsburgh-speak, these were high-floor cars, and not interurbans. The features I'm asking about needed some room to move below the car floor. The kind of rail vehicles other than steam locomotives that had them were industrial diesels.
I will guess that the cars in question had one motor per truck with the axles connected by siderods.
We have a winner! PRys got 150 four axle cars from St. Louis Car, and another 80 from J.G. Brill, equipped with one motor per truck and side rods. The cars were delivered over a period from 1905 to 1909. The cars remained in service quite a long time, in the case of the Brills until 1939. The trucks were noticeably less successful, as the cars were rewired and retrucked as four motor cars by the mid 1910s. As High Floor cars with end entrances, they were mainly assigned to secondary routes, with the low-floor double-ended Peter-Witt style cars taking the heavier ones before the PCCs cam in the 1930s and 1940s.
Learned someothing new. Did any other North American systems have side-rod streetcars?
Here is a contemporary technical reference showing the arrangement of the side-rod trucks (you can download a free copy of the whole year from Google Books in the United States).
Ther were a few systems that tried them, but nobody to the extent Pittsburgh did. Considering Pittsburgh had wide gauge track and some very tight curves I suspect that the running gear had wear and binding problems. The 100 HP interpole motor would have weighed around a ton, making track wear an issue as well. PRy's decision to begin trailer operation also seems to have had an influence on dropping the side-rod drive, as cars from both the St Louis and Brill series were set up to haul trailers. All of the photos I have seen of these cars with trailers show non-side-rod trucks. Both the side-rod trucks and the trailers seem to have come out of the fertile mind of PRys master mechanic P. N. Jones, who also designed double deck cars, both trailers and motors. PRy's experimental car from one of the St Louis series, used to determine the door arrangements on the low floor cars, seems to have been the last one to keep its original trucks. Cincinnati had six cars of a 1911 fifty car order from Cincinnati Car Co. equipped with side-rod trucks with a single 75 HP motor, compared to two 40 HP motors on the trucks of the remaining forty four. It seems likely that this experiment was short-lived as well.
Paul, you're up!
1910 was also the year that Penn. Sta. opened, with the successful start of operation of the DD-1 electrics, with their side-rods. Possibly the success of this type of locomotive was the influence that led to the streetcar truck side-rod experiment.
The side-rod truck was one of several ideas that appeared between 1905 and 1915 to allow the use of only two motors in a four axle car. Brill's Maximum Traction truck was probably the most successful commercially. Interest in lighter cars was helped by the development of smaller, lighter motors in the 1910s and 1920s and eventual development of the PCC.
CSSHegewisch (Paul) is up at this point.
I'll have to decline since I will be unavailable next week.
I'll toss out another one, then...
This interurban, formed out of a merger of lines going in different directions from its hub city, bought only four cars under its own name but rebuilt cars from predecessors into freight motors and even locomotives, at least one of which lasted in service into this century.
Sacramento Northen
Northern Electric built some locomotives and cars, but Sacramento Northern never rebuilt any. The central city on the line I'm looking for was one of the largest cities in its state, one not particularly known for interurbans. The locomotive that lasted into this century was on a common carrier that shut down in 2000.
Here is a list of SN survivors :
http://www.wplives.org/sn/roster.html
SN 405 was on the Quincy RR and was donated and moved to the Western Pacific Railroad Museum around 2005.
The hub city, Sacramento of course.
Rcdrye, are you thinking of the Texas Electric Railway, which operated out of Dallas?
One of their locomotives, which was rebuilt/manufactured out of an interurban car in 1929 was used on the Texas Transportation Company (as their No. 2) serving the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio until 2000 when the line shut down, today it is on display at the brewery site.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Texas Electric it is. TE also built some box motors from passenger equipment as well. Iowa Terminal also had a TE locomotive on the former Charles City Western, but it was retired before 2000. Texas Transportation was a common carrier that had one or two other customers besides Pearl Brewing.
Even though TE did have some carload customers in Dallas, it never had a freight bypass, with the M-K-T moving cars around Dallas between its Denison and Waco/Coricana divisions to avoid freight operation on city streets.
Welcome to the quiz! Your question, SD70M-2Dude!
I will stick with interurbans to keep the juice flowing!
This one-time large interurban bought three used steeplecab electrics relatively late in its interurban era, and used them for freight well after passenger service was abandoned. One was retired and scrapped and after electric freight ops ended another went to a museum and the third was bought by a transit agency and used into the 21st century before being preserved.
What interurban system was this (hint: it runs diesel freights today under a different name)? Bonus points if you can name all the owners those 3 steeplecabs had over the years and the numbers they wore, and the locations the two survivors are preserved at today.
British Columbia Electric actually bought 4 used GE steeplecabs from Oregon Electric, using three for operation and one for a parts supply. All four were built in 1912 and have consecutive serial numbers.
OERy BCERy BCH Edmonton Transit
21 961 961 2001
22 960 960
23 962
24 (parts)
961 went to the Edmonton Transit in 1980, retired in 1998 to the Edmonton Radial Railway Society, 960 to West Coast Railway Association (1976) in Squamish BC. 962 was retired in 1959 before BC Electric became BC Hydro. Line is currently operated as the Southern Railway of British Columbia (SRY).
Thanks to Joseph A. Strapac's exhaustive book "Interurban Electric Locomotives From General Electric" for all of the details.
That sounds like a great book and reference, I will have to look into finding a copy. I did not know BCER bought a 4th unit for parts, and I must have confused ETS 2001's number with its retirement date (duh). Their main use for it was hauling dirt away from the tunnels being dug underneath downtown Edmonton, and ETS has since aquired a GE 44-tonner (with side-rods!) for work trains.
Also 21/961/2001 is no longer with the ERRS, it was re-donated to the more recently formed Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society in Surrey, BC, arriving there in 2014. They operate an ex-BCER interurban car over SRY tracks during the summer.
Anyway back to you Rcdrye, your question:
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