If one wanted to, one could exit the South Shore at Central Station and use the Roosevelt Road (Avenue? 12th Street?) streetcar to the North Shore's elevated station at that Avenue. If one wanted to avoid the one-block walk and connect with a train that did not originate at the South Side.
Downtown - Loop area they did not. 12th Street- Roosevelt did and some lines further south of courss.
I'm not sure that you would have needed Chicago Surface Lines as part of the transfer in Chicago. When North Shore ran to the South Side, a transfer at 63rd and Dorchester was possible. In the Loop, Randolph Street Station was only one block from the "L" at Randolph and Wabash. Besides, in the Loop area, most CSL routes did not extend east of Wabash.
Good work. Look forward to your question.
daveklepperQuestion: End points of greatest distance possible without gaps over streetcar and inteurban lines. Ferryboat crossings allowed.
Utica NY - Elkhart Lake WI. Around 900 rail miles. Transfer in Chicago required change from CSS&SB to CSL to CRT/CNS&M. 600 volt gap appeared in 1918 (bridged by 1500V CSS&SB) with first rail gaps appearing in 1922 (Cleveland and Erie), with many more appearing even before the depression.
Waterville Maine - Purcellville VA around 675 rail miles with two ferry crossings.
Ferries at Kittery ME-Portsmouth NH and New York City-Newark
Adding Waterville ME to Little Falls NY to the Utica to Elkhart Lake distance gets about 1300 rail miles, but 17 miles of New York Central or West Shore steam train was required to bridge the gap.
These were not trips for the faint of heart. I once figured a trip from Kennebunkport ME to City Hall in New York in 1911, and came up with around $8.50 in fares and 38 hours of "seat time".
View of 4573 in the shop:
Part of convertable 4573 from the website www.shorelinetrolley.org shows summer conditions, screen replacing window side panels.
Question: End points of greatest distance possible without gaps over streetcar and inteurban lines. Ferryboat crossings allowed.
Note that the NYO&W "streamlikner" cars were of wooden construction,
daveklepper New Yoek Ontario and Western "Mountanear"
New Yoek Ontario and Western "Mountanear"
The Mountaineer was styled by Otto Kuhler. No A/C, just some nice paint and a little sheet metal on the observation end, plus a running board panel and a couple of nameplates onthe lone 4-8-2 set up for the train. Updated in 1938, it ran through WWII, long enough that its last run was powered by an F3 or an FT set.
The convertable photos in question:
Your posts show up nicely on the "Classic Trains Questions" forum.
This railroad's dive into "streamlining" was as shallow as possible, with open platform parlor-observations and paint and a side skirt on a single locomotive, even if the treatment was designed by an industrial designer who also designed an entire fleet of streamliners. The train itself lasted long enough to get diesel power.
daveklepperDid the moderator remove the posting because the use of a St. Ann's Avenue car made it a religious post?
Probably not; it appears that we finally have a real moderator overseeing the Trains Magazine site, and presumably here as well. Isn't the St. Ann picture clearly visible over in the other 'quiz' thread? It is for me.
I still can't figure out why you wouldn't have an edit button for your prior posts, even on very restricted bandwidth. Did you change account details, or set up a different login? If so, you should contact Kalmbach customer service and have them reset your old account credentials so you can access the old posts correctly. (Where is the 'sticky' on the Trains.com Web site that covers matters like these?)
I thought I had posted a St. Ann's Avenue streetcar photo to illustrate a Third Avenue convertable. The "L" line wss the St. Ann's Avenue line because it used to be an L-shaped route with a southern continuation to the west to Willis Avenue on 133rd St. (Willis Avenue and 132nd was the locatoin of the southern end of the New York Westchester and Boston and at the same point of the New Haven's Harlem River shuttle from New Rochelle).
Did the moderator remove the posting because the use of a St. Ann's Avenue car made it a religous post? It is the best side-view of a Third Avenue convertable that I have processed so far.
Anyway, I note there are matters on previous postings of mine that require correction, typos, and I don't have an edit button - -but carry on without me.
From what I can find Philadelphia did a large-scale replacement of cars around 1923. The semi-convertibles were all wood, and there was a flourishing trade in second-hand motors and controls at the time, so in all probability most of them were just scrapped. Anyone who has wrestled with windows in a wooden carbody knows how hard it is to keep one straight, so I'm sure the crews didn't mind having them disappear.
I wonder if Philidelphia sold off its relatively new, at the time, semis to Baltimore when the nearsides and later Peter Witts arrived. My fist exploraton of Philly streetcars was in 1947, age 15, when the system was quite complete, before Natoinal Cities ownership, and there were no semiconvertables operating at that time that I saw. Can you find out what happened?
And ask the next question, please.
The Philly number comes from page 77 of the Brill corporate history. The last semis were delivered in 1913, just about the same time the first nearsides arrived. My suspicion is that they were looted for parts at a relatively young age. I, on the other hand, was unaware Baltimore had such a large fleet. Seashore's Baltimore Semi-Convertible 5748 is currently tarped somewhere in the back 40. It came to Seashore without trucks in 1957, but now has Brill 27G trucks obtained from Montreal to it can (eventually) operate on standard gauge track instead of Baltimore's 5' 4.5" gauge.
Seashore's Eastern Mass 4387 was built by Laconia in 1918 after Brill's patents expired. Seashore also has Brooklyn Rapid Transit 4547, a convertible, built by Jewett in 1906. 4387 is due to be released (again) to the operating fleet next spring. 4547 is in cosmetically good condition in a display barn. but has one or more motors with issues.
Brill Semis are right, but I did not even know that Philly had a large fleet of Semis. My impression is that they had nearsides, light-weight WWI "Navy Yard" double-end cars, and lots of Peter Witts. Are you sure it is Philly that you are writing about or are you memory slipping like I do and the real city is the one I remember, Baltimore. The number for Baltimore seems correct. Except for some single-truck Birneys and some odd-balls, the Semis made up to the total roster for Baltimore until the arrival of the Brill Peter Witts around 1930 and PCCs ten years later. Some of the Philly WWI double-end cars were sold to Red Arrow when PCCs arrived and were used until the St. Louse semi-PCCs, two now being converted by Brookville to real PCCS for San Francisco operation. arrived.
884 of Third Avenue, and 4573 of Brooklyn are surviving convertables at the Shore Line Trolley Museum. TARS' were 01-100, 201-300, 851-1051. Brooklyn's were 4100-4600.
The 1300s of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit, later BMT, were the last open platfomr elevated cars built for Brooklyn, and were convertables. They were all motor cars and generally ran with one 1200-series wood trailer between two of them. They were partly of steel construction, came on-line after the first IRT all-steel subway cars, 1905 or 1906, and ran elevated-system-wide but last on Myrtle Avenue until the ex-Qeens sliding-door BMT cars came from the 3rd Avenue Elevated in 1957. They had seen service in the Williamsburg Bridge - Rockaway Park service run jointly with LIRR.
Also, check and see Balatimore Trolley Museum has a semi. Seashore has one ex-Eastern Massachusetts. They had 200 in the 4200 and 4300 series.
Please check your facts on Philly and get back. And ask the next question. Thank you.
A large number of both TARS and BMT streetcars were convertibles, with removable side panels for summer operation. Unlike standard open cars, they had center aisles and screens or bars on the sides. The big problem was keeping track of and storing the side panels. The other most common design was the semi-convertible where the window either dropped into a pocket in the wall, or went into a pocket in the roof (I think that was a Brill patent). Philadelphia had 1756 of the Brill Semi-convertibles, though I don't know if that's the city you were looking for.. On the weird side, some of Lehigh Valley Transit's predecessors had "barrel cars" where the side panels including windows were curved to slide into the roof.
OK, I'll make it easy. One approach was almost exclusively ini New York, with over a thousand cars altogether betwen two operators and even including elevated railway cars. In fact, this approach was used on cars that at one point were in mu trains that traveled on Long Island Railroad tracks.
The other approach included around 500 cars, well more than half the total fleet, in a seabord citiy to the south of New York City. And some of these cars were also mu in trains on a largely PRoW. These cars were painted red, the others yellow. All built by one builder who had a patent on the conception.
In the earlyl 1900's, many USA streetcar systems had two fleets of cars, open cross-banch cars for summer service and closed conventional cars for other seasons.
Describe the two approaches, one peculiar to one specific car builder, that did in effect probide the andvantages of both times in one car, and was also a solution that permitted conversion to one-man operation. And which systems and cities had large fleets of either type. In two cities they were the dominant streetcar design for a long time, one in each of these two cities.
Go ahead Dave.
Or should I ask one?
We are still waiting
It Was the Texas Chief I rode, not the Texas Zephye, realized this right after posting, but could not get back to the computer internet connection until this moment. And it was the second time I rode the train, the first being Chicago - Wichitar.
The Parmelie transfer to La Salle and the New England States was from Dearborn, not frolm Union.
Degesty can have it if he has a question ready. Apologies for the error.
The Texas Chief's Dallas section (from Gainesville TX) was successful enough that the SLSF/MKT Texas Special saw a significant impact. While it's probably too much to say that it caused the Special's demise, the Dallas section's presence convinced both the ICC and the Texas Railroad Commission to allow the Special to be dropped by MKT. By the end, it was an MKT-only train from Kansas City.
You guys flip a coin.
It was the Texas Chief, which originally served Fort Worth but not Dallas on its way to Galveston.
In 1968, I had a ticket that read, in part, SFe KC to Dallas and then T&P to New Orleans. I did not know that the Dallas section had been discontinued, but I was allowed to go on to Fort Worth and then take the T&P to New Orleans.
Dave had the right routing, but the wrong train name.
Johnny
It wasn't a Zephyr at all... The Texas Zephyr ran point to point, and ran through Fort Worth to get to Dallas. It also went to Denver. Think which other systems had trains that went to Texas.
In 1966 sleepers, coaches, and a diner did originate in Houston. Absolutely positive about that, and presume that southbound they terminated too. And ran via Fort Worth. I think the joining of the section from Dallas took place at Dennon? or Denton? Was the Denver - Dallas train running in 1966? If not could the name have been transferred to the Sam Houston Zephyr?
If both trains were running then I must admit a memory error.
Can you check a 1966 timetable?
The Texas Zephyr was the C&S/FW&D Denver-Dallas train...
In 1966 I rode the Texas Zephyr (in a roomette, with much of my "luggage" in the adjacent coach), from Houston to Chicago. It was called the Texas Zephyr at the ticket office in Houston when I bought my ticket, using my rail travel credit card, regardless of what it may have been called elsewhere. Please check you OG and get back. Certain of this.
But I'm unfamiliar with other railroad's service in Texas (except for Houston - N. O. and Houston - L. A., and my St. Louis - Troop for Tyler trip) at the time and look forward to someone else answering the question.
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