Re: [CBQ] Pressed Steel coach

[Bob Webber <cz17@comcast.net>]

Rupert,
    That is very early for a steel passenger car, and even
earlier for a steel passenger car on a western railroad.  Pressed
Steel made few cars for Western Railroads, AC&F (St. Charles),
Pullman and Standard Steel made far more.  I know Pullman sent some
cars to the Paris Exposition, though they were Pullman owned cars, not
built for a given railroad.   

     1900 is in the middle of a very unsettled period
for passenger equipment.  The Post Office hadn't yet made their
requirements for steel cars, the Hudson River tunnels hadn't yet been
made (which required steel cars and electric lights).  This was the
period of SUV & SUF more than the entire car.  Even then,
Pullman was making steel cars made to look like wood for another 18 years
due to railroad's and passenger's comments about steel not being strong
enough or safe enough.  Of course, railroads & railroaders were
always (and continue to be) ultra-conservative.  I believe some of
the cars built in 1901 had SUF, but were not completely built of
steel.  

     The issue of obtaining singular steel cars (as
opposed to "fleets" was that in a wreck, telescoping was much
more of a problem - this was a problem too with the intermingling of
steel heavyweights and stainless lightweights (until changes wrought by
the Naperville wreck).  Even if the other cars had SUF or SUV, the
issue of intermingling an all steel car was a safety concern. 

    

At 01:18 AM 1/21/2012, Rupert & Maureen wrote:



John

Thanks for the information about Pressed Steel.  Unfortunately, I hadn't discovered a new coach. Going back over the photos of the coach interiors, I realised that they related to an article about car lighting systems earlier in the magazine, even though they were in the middle of the article about the Paris Exposition. Can't win them all!
 
Regards
 
Rupert
 
 
----- Original Message -----

From: John D. Mitchell, Jr.

To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 2:01 PM

Subject: Re: [CBQ] Pressed Steel coach

Rupert

 

What I can tell you about the Pressed Steel Car Co. is that their home office was in Pittsburgh, Pa and they had plants in Chicago and Pittsburgh. In about 1950, they bought the Mt Vernon Car Co. in Mt Vernon, Illinois, closed their plants in Chicago and Pittsburgh and moved their main office to Chicago. Then in about 1954, they went bankrupt and went out of business. Some of the building at the Mt Vernon plant are being used today by National Railway Equipment Co as a locomotive rebuilding shop. This is the former Precision Engineering (later Precision National) plant. Mt Vernon Car Co is best known along with Warren Tank Car Co. for building the extra long flat cars used on circus trains.

John

From: Rupert & Maureen <gamlenz@ihug.co.nz>

To: CBQ List <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>

Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 2:24 PM

Subject: [CBQ] Pressed Steel coach

 

I've found a photo showing the interior of a CB&Q coach in a 1900 Railway & Engineering Review article about exhibits at the Paris Exposition of that year, together with interior photos of three more cars of other roads.  Whilst it did not specify Pressed Steel Car Co. as the manufacturer, that was the only likely company mentioned in the article and referred to five passenger cars that it was displaying.

Has anyone heard of this company supplying coaches to the Burlington?

Rupert Gamlen

Auckland NZ

Bob Webber

__._,_.___

Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___