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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.railroad
Subject: Re: light rail (streetcar) systems
Message-ID: <3566@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 25-Jul-84 10:35:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.3566
Posted: Wed Jul 25 10:35:39 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 06:34:19 EDT
References: <20600016@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistics Research Lab
Lines: 48

Glad to see info on streetcars; I rode the St. Louis cars until they
foolishly replaced the last lines with busses. My school (Washington
University) was called a "streetcar college" for a long time, as most
of the students got to it on a line which ran on a private right-of-way
behind the fancy houses & private streets just north of Forest Park,
our large main city park. That right-of-way has since been turned into 
Forest Park Expressway.

Anyway, on to my main point: In reading about the streetcars constructed
by the old (long since defunct) St. Louis Car Company, which provided
cars to many systems all over the world, I have run across discussion
of "summer" and "winter" cars. The summer cars had no windows, and
were open-air; the winter cars closed up. It seems many systems had
a dual inventory of cars. Then, to avoid the costs of storing half
the rolling stock half the year, "convertible" cars were developed.
These had window assemblies which were either removable, and stored
during the summer, or thick sidewalls into which the upper portion
of the wall and windows lowered (a maintenance shop job, not just
user-operable openable windows), so were made open-air for the summer.

Anyhow, since it was obviously no legal or safety problem to have these
open-air cars, and currently some systems, like San Francisco's cable cars,
operate open-air coaches, why is this principle not applied to other
forms of mass transit, like busses? Those which have operable air 
conditioning should, of course, remain as they are, but those units on
which the air conditioning has broken and which are not trivially
repairable could easily have their windows removed and stored during
the summer months. Most of the vehicles I've seen have windows designed to
hinge outward in emergencies, usually by flipping a catch and shoving
at the bottom edge. These must hinge on pivot pins, which could simply be
removed, and the windows detached and stored, marked with the car number 
and location for easy re-installation.

Thus, instead of rolling greenhouses, at least there would be some
moving air through the vehicles. The common objection to this is
what to do in case of rain. That's why I led off with the discussion
of open-air cars in the past. The answer is that you just put up with
the rain. If people could do so for decades in open-air summer or
convertible cars, why can't they do so now on open-air busses? (And
there is the example of the open-air double-decker bus in a rainy
country like Britain, also.) I think rain is an invalid objection.

Does any mass-transit organization in the US have the sense to do
this with non-air-conditioned rolling stock? 

Will Martin

seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin   or  (ARPA/MILNET)  wmartin@almsa-1