I know there was a company making new walkover seats but they apparently stopped, I can't recall the name at the moment but I checked with them about a year ago and their portfolio had shifted. I would prefer something without an armrest. Thanks in advance.

Streetcar or railroad sized and how many do you need?

Streetcar, and I need 16 seats.

Check with Kelly Anderson at the Strasburg Rail Road. I believe we still produce replicas of the Hale & Kilbourn walk-over seats in standard or narrow gauge size that may fit your needs.

Ted Krumreich

Ted, thank you.

I'm also looking for a lighter style of walkover seat, such as you would find in a New Orleans Perley Thomas car or a Birney. I've tried working with a Chinese manufacturer, they didn't know how to quote - must be a cultural thing. If there's interest, i could work with a friend in robotic manufacturing on setting up a modern means of producing them in bulk using whatever technoloogy is best today for each component.

Here is the Strausburg H&K seat:



I probably need something closer to a more modern style. I can try Gomaco or Brookville but I don't think they manufacture the bases, just recondition them.

Perhaps the easiest way to get those modern walkovers is to buy a CTA 4000 and salvage the parts. At least one scrapish car is on the market these days, and I can think of several others around.

What happened to the seats from the Red Arrow Brilliner that ECTM scrapped a few years ago? If they exist, it would be much easier to modify them than to start from scratch. You would already have the hard items to replicate, the end assemblies with the walkover mechanism.

Art, that was the plan but we went to look for them and they are gone. They may have been traded for other parts needed more immediately at the time, or they may have been destroyed in the same flood that took our original seats for the 505. They were not in much water, and were rescued right away, but the horse hair inside of them smoldered and caught fire from the moisture. There is a full set in Brilliner #9 but while rough she is a pretty complete car and fits the excursion model so it’s worth restoring her at some point.

The museum did recently get a cache of H&K seats, but most are already earmarked for other cars that they would be appropriate for. I would hate to cut up a CTA car just for the seats, but we would certainly consider purchasing seats from one that was being scrapped.

Of course, CTA 4000s don't have all that many actual walkover seats. Many of the seats are fixed or bench seating against the walls. CTA trains are subway cars without motormen in every car, and so had to endure every kind of goon, wiseguy, ragamuffin, musclehead, vagrant and urchin the naked city could throw at it.

Ok, today was seat day.

What we have is SOME seats out of the Queensboro Bridge car (we have all or nearly all of the frames used on the car but they used less walkovers than the Scranton cars), SOME seats out of the #7 Brilliner, and SOME seats from a CTA 4000 series car. We do not have enough for a complete set of any of these, and obviously the choice is to use as many of the HWs out of the Queensboro car as possible.

The base of the Heywood seats is 35 inches wide while the Brilliner seats are 37", does anyone have a measurement of the CTA seat frames? If we can find enough parts to complete all of our Queensboro seats (some are really rough) then we may decide to use longer benches and less walkovers as they did. Not really our favorite option but we do have the bases to use as a pattern for the benches if that is the way we decide to go.

We are starting metal work this month, as soon as we have some decent photos to share I will post a write up on the car and what we have going on. I will also probably delete the wanted post in the classifieds and post a new one looking for HW parts with photos and measurements.

Thanks

For the record, a typical 4000 has 18 walkover seats.
http://www.chicago-l.org/trains/gallery/images/4000/cta4272-Linden100th04.jpg
http://www.chicago-l.org/trains/gallery/4000s20.html

They are a bit wider than those typically used by streetcars, with a dog-leg feature on the aisle-side seat back bracket. As such the cushions are wider than the backs. This part is not as complicated as the track in runs in, so it could be replicated by fabrication, for a straight bracket as you see on the window side. Or get more parts to replace them.

The great thing about salvaging a 4000 is that it provides a good set of equipment which could be used in an interurban carbody restoration. This particular car might even be restorable, but with so many complete cars out there, I am not sure it is worth the effort.
http://www.ozarkmountainrailcar.com/detail.asp?id=661&n=Chicago-Transit-Authority-4449-REDUCED

Several other 4000 cars, including work cars, live in a languishing state at the former trolley museum near Indianapolis. It's too bad you lost so much of the original material in the hard life this Scranton car has had in preservation. A great project - good luck!

I have seen step over seats for sale at www.discoverlivesteam.com In their fullscale railroad items.

There is more left to her than one would think. Don’t forget, she was stripped to the bare shell while at Magee and the parts were put in storage for safe keeping. We have all of the windows as well as many of the interior parts aside from the seats. We were able to save the side sheets as well as the letter boards and she will ride on the same trucks and motors that she retired with in 1954. The rest is just woodwork which most times has to be replaced anyway. I honestly don’t see the car as needing more work that 90% of the other trolleys that have been restored, she just looked worse on arrival. We have a lot of news to report in the next few weeks, stay tuned!