Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, Washington, PA, has acquired a 25 ton GE diesel. This loco will be converted to 62.5" gauge for use as a shop switcher, rescue loco, and snowplow on PTM's trolley line.

We are seeking photos of the loco in its former lives. It was built new in 5/53 for Landis Tool Co. of Waynesboro, PA and later worked at Isaac (sp?) Scrap at Definace, OH and for Agway at Pier 122 in Philly. If you have shots of it at any of those locations, especially the first two, PTM would like to obtain copies or scan files for our records. You can contact me through this forum.

Thanks,
Dave Hamley,
PTM Mobile Equipment Manager.

Sorry, I have no pics only questions - how popular was 62.5" gauge and was it only a local gauge to your area?

Pennsylvania Broad Gauge was popular for trolleys, with exceptions, in Pittsburgh and the SouthEast of Pennsylvania, also in parts of Southern Ohio and Salt Lake City, Utah. Philadelphia, Pa. was 62.25 inches, Altoona and Hollidaysburg, Pa., were 63 inches, Baltimore, Md. was 64 inches. Some scattered trolley lines used the Confederate railroad gauge of 60 inches.

New Orleans was mostly 62.5" gauge. The St. Charles streetcar line was, and since some of the cars have been moved over to the restored Canal line after Katrina wiped out the new cars, assume it has been relaid to its old gauge of 62.5".

I took some photos around Landis about 1980 or so. Would this locomotive have been there at that time? If so I will see what I can find. I really only remember their locomotive cranes moving around by then.

John Bohon

In response to several questions about Pennsylvania Trolley Museum and broad gauge I'll offer a few facts.

Sometimes known as "Pennsylvania Broad Gauge" because it was most common in the Keystone State, the actual gauge varies from 5'2" to Baltimore's extreme of 5'4.5". Trolley lines in and around Pittsburgh were all 5' 2.5". In Philly the city system was 5' 2.25" while the Red Arrow suburban lines were 5' 2.5". Altoona was 5'3" and in Ohio both Columbus and Cincinnati were broad gauge as was far off New Orleans.

The origins of the gauge are steeped in legend, with claims that the PRR was behind a state law requiring trolley lines to be other than standard gauge. There is no such law on the books. But in Pittsburgh for example a city ordnance authorizing the first horsecar lines in the 1850s set the gauge as one common to horse drawn wagons, so they could ride on the rails too.

Pennsylvania Trolley Museum at Washington, PA is the only broad gauge museum in North America. This is because we pretty much restrict our collection to cars from various PA systems (plus a few from nearby OH and WV and a New Orleans car). This has kept our collection under control and enabled us to provide indoor storage for all cars. But it does occasionally require us to convert standard gauge cars to broad in order to be usable on our demonstration line. One such car, Rio de Janeiro 1758, is presently undergoing such a change, with the truck rework contracted to Lyons Industries of Ebensburg, PA.

Not all PA trolley lines were broad gauge. Actually there were more std. ga. companies than broad, but because of the major cities being predominently broad gauge, there was far more broad gauge trolley mileage than standard. Johnstown and Erie were std. ga. PTM will eventually rework Johnstown car 350 to broad gauge as well.

GE 25 tonners built after WWII have a frame just wide enough to accommodate wheel sets to broad gauge and the Pittsburgh Railways Co. standard to which we configure all our cars. Thus it's a natural that GE 31789, as PTM 89, will become our broad gauge shop switcher, rescue loco, and once fitted, snowplow. It is expected to arrive at the museum in May.

Dave Hamley
PTM Mobile Equipment Manager

Ummm, this (indirect) representative of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum--5' 4.5"--begs to differ.

As I am to understand it, the "Baltimore gauge" stemmed from a legislated incompatibility with standard gauge, which I think was mandated by city government to prevent the multiple streetcar companies from using their tracks as freight delivery tracks as well. I don't know if that was local paranoia or railroad companies exerting such pressure, and I'm 40 miles from my books right now--maybe Dave Crow can chime in? Basically, "Philly" gauge is 6" over standard; "Baltimore gauge" is 8" above standard.

As it turns out, the BSM now has several Philadelphia cars on our property, and the BSM is in the process of gauge conversion to several of them by adding 1" shims to each wheel.

Origin of "broad-gauge" was intended to prevent companies holding a "trolley charter" from utilizing their trackage to move standard gauge railroad cars (freight) to customers. Some trolley companies held "steam charter" rights and did connect with freight railroads, the famed Lehigh Valley Transit being one of them, though they operated a "Trolley Freight" service comprised of freight motors delivering LCL to on-line stations instead of moving freight cars over their tracks.

As far as the only "broad gauge" museum being PTM, that's probably correct for PA broad gauge. Baltimore operated differently, as does Toronto. The Halton County Radial museum operates at Toronto's 4 foot 10-7/8 inch gauge, if my memory serves me correctly.

Rob

I have the feeling that Dave Hamley meant the only "broad gauge museum in PA."

BSM in Baltimore has operated with Baltimore's odd broad gauge of 5' 4.5" since its founding in 1966. In fact, when the collection was first co-located with what became the beginning of National Capital Trolley Museum's collection (approx. 1962 or so), a third rail was laid outside the standard gauge track at Lake Roland on the northern edge of Baltimore - I've got my dad's photos to show how much "fun" it would have been to operate a 3-rail trolley museum.

IIRC, Baltimore's wide gauge was mandated for two reasons: first, to prevent the freight railroads from operating through the middle of town, and second, the track gauge was supposedly the gauge of the "standard Southern cotton wagon." As mentioned in other posts, farm wagons would have a smoother ride on the tram rail as compared to the Belgian blocks or cobblestone street pavers.

BSM is adding 1.125" (inch and an eighth) spacers within each PCC resilient wheel assembly to move the flange from Philly's 5' 2.25" out to Baltimore's 5" 4.5". The shop guys could now be called a racing "pit crew"; they have the change-over down to under 45 minutes per wheel...

Credit my misstatement to a Monday morning brain cramp.

Yes, there are no less than three broad gauge trolley museums in North America--each to a different gauge. Isn't variety wonderful?

PTM is the oldest such museum, founded in 1954 on a piece of former Pittsburgh Railways ROW. And, so far, the only one in Pennsylvania.

Thanks to those who so quickly spotted my omission.

There may have been actual legislation in other states requiring a gauge different than the freight railroads, but no evidence of this has been found after a search of old PA laws. Perhaps that explains why various cities in PA each developed their local variations in gauge.

BTW, Philadelphia has a broad gauge subway line as well as the street operations. The Market-Frankford line is 62.25" gauge. And just to keep things interesting, the other Philly subway, Broad Street, is standard gauge. And then there's BART at 66" gauge. Oh well, let's quit now.....

Dave

At the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis there is a collection of streetcars at the St. Louis gauge of 4 foot 10 inches. The operating cars are standard gauge, but three tracks of the five in the storage building are broad gauge.

The Louisville Railway Company ran an almost-exclusive network of 5' gauge lines in and around Louisville, eventually swallowing up the Louisville and Interurban, which maintained a "Radial Network" of about 4-5 interurban lines, each 5' as well. The only exception to this was the Prospect Line, which was originally built as a narrow gauge steam dummy line, and later was an L&N freight spur. Because freight service continued at night, the line remained standard gauge, which the Louisville Railway Company laying 3 rail track in downtown Louisville.

Of course, this three rail trackage was later used by interurbans of the Interstate Public Service Company and the Indiana Railroad to reach downtown Louisville after using the Big Four bridge over the Ohio.

There was also a broad-gauge line over the Kentucky and Indiana Terminal bridge to New Albany, Indiana. This line utilized Louisville street tracks, and then a gauntlet-like track over the K&I bridge.

Louisville's street railway system was 5' gauge more than likely because the Lexington and Ohio Railway, Kentucky's first railroad built a line down the middle of Main Street in the 1830s. This was built to 5' gauge. This line was later abandoned, and became the city's first horse car line.

A few other places that used "Pennsylvania broad gauge" are Wilmington, DE and Trenton, NJ, both of which connected indirectly with the Philadelphia system; as well as Wheeling, WV. I have seen references that imply that Norfolk, Va was broad gauge but have never been able to verify this.

There is some evidence that the Pennsylvania Railroad was behind the use of broad gauge in the ealiest years of street railways. Almost all of the broad gauge systems were in the southern part of the state, running in the vicinity of the PRR main line. Also, Johnstown was reported to be a broad gauge horsecar system, but was rebuilt as standard gauge after the famous flood.

Columbus Ohio had standard and 5'2" dual gauge as neatly documented in Alex Campbell's Columbus RR site:

http://www.columbusrailroads.com/track%20gauge.htm



Bob

Trenton, N.J. apparently had 4 trolley gauges, and 2 different combinations of dual gauge trackage, each pair used by a different company, but no direct connections or sharing of track between companies.
Trenton and Mercer County Traction Co. was 5' 2", including their suburban line to Princeton, N.J.
Public Service Rwys. was standard gauge for their Fast Line to Newark, N.J., and used the Southern railroad gauge of 5' for their line to Camden in South N.J. They had dual gauge in Trenton.
Pennsylvania-New Jersey Rwys. and many other names was 5' 2-1/4" or 5' 2-1/2" to various Pennsylvania destinations with connections and through running by and with other companies in Pennsylvania. They had a dual gauge 2 way single track in the middle of a 2 way street and were often under common ownership with Trenton-Princeton Traction Co. which was standard gauge. Before that, they had 2 separate 2 way single tracks on either side of the center of that street. While the standard gauge lines didn't directly connect, they both handled steam railroad cars interchanged with different railroads that did connect with each other.