The article about 4449 posted yesterday raises some questions. What ADA aspects apply/don't apply to historic equipment in operation? What about museum settings? More modern passenger equipment (say my museum was running ex-commuter rail cars which were handicapped accessible in service)?

Should we alter historic equipment to make it handicapped accessible? If so, what methods have been/could be used to make it so?

Discuss.

A question from the back of the class, over near the windows....

We started down the road of offering handicap accessibility on one or two of our cars. We own a manual wheelchair lift and have a back ofthe envelope plan for simple modication to our Toronto PCC. And then we started thinking, which got us into trouble.

Specifically, what do you do when the 600v dc power fails, or the equipment malfunctions, and grandma is out there on the car, 2500 feet away from the visitors center, with no lift and no accessible path back to the station? She cannot be easily transferred to the rescue car, and certainly can't take a leisurely walk back as sometime happens.

Wesley

There is no reason why you would want to limit your market by excluding the disabled. Us boomers are growing older my the minute.......the market segment is growing. There is also no requirement that historic artifacts be butchered to provide such access. A lot of operators have found ways to adapt existing equipment for the purpose either as-is or very reversably and unobtrusively. Much easier to do with a combine or RPO in your heavy rail consist than on your single truck 1908 Brill streetcar, however.

Back in the dark ages of starting what has become Charlotte Trolley, the demonstration trolley line paralelled a public transit bus line. Provided we did not charge more than the bus, we could avoid having to coming up with an accessable option. Given we had one working car and it wasn't adaptable, a good thing. Better would be to have had another car which could be adapted readily. Memphis seems to make good use of old streetcars with ramps and little manually controlled bridges, a great low tech and incredibly reliable approach. Cars with wide side doors and a bit of room inside like Melbourne Tramways W class cars work very well.

Manual wheelchair lifts are also very handy for lifting up to a baggage door or platform. Permanently installed or platform mounted electrical lifts must be interlocked into the trains control system such that while the lift is deployed, the brakes will not release. This provides a wonderful opportunity for Murphy to demonstrate his law.

Purpose built excursion cars, generally converted freight cars, can load and unload from ramps onto platforms which makes for great accessability and rapid passenger load turnover. Such ramps are generally a part of the car wall hinged to the sill. Platforms should be same height or just slightly lower than the car floor.

The path to the loading platform should also be considered - a rough gravel path can eat small wheelchair and rollator wheels and feet. If you don't want a hard-paved surface, there are now rubber waffle-like interconnecting mats which can be laid over packed dirt and then filled with pea gravel to provide a stable accessable surface.

Benefits of accesssability (apart from compliance) include increased market share, lesser potential liability for boarding injuries for everybody, and a more rapid passenger load turnover. Well worth doing if at all possible.

dave

Streamliner long-distance coaches with large bathrooms at each end are generally impassable to wheelchairs because of the sharp turns in the aisle. Heavyweight coaches with small bathrooms and straight aisles are sometimes wheelchair-accessible for narrower wheelchairs, but the bathrooms generally are not.

Niles Canyon Railway solved the wheeelchair-access issue as follows:
1. Three of the open-air cars (two built on flatcars, one on a baggage car converted by the Santa Fe to a wrecking crane boom tender) have side doors for loading/unloading from a wheelchair lift, and open space suitable for wheelcahir passengers to park.
2. A S.P. 66' "economy" baggage car (built by PC&F 1962) heavily reworked by the car dept. team to their brilliantly-designed plan: A gently-angled aisle was added to one end of the car. At the angled-aisle end, a fully-wheelchair-accessible bathroom, plus a regular restroom, (both with sink and flush toilet) was added at one end of the car. A 250-gal. fresh water tank and 250-gal. wastewater holding tank were added underneath the car for the bathrooms. The aisle continues on one side of the car past a sound-insulated compartment that houses a large diesel generator. Next the aisle passes a nice varnished bar (with sink) for snack and drink service. After the bar, the car is open full-width to the end door. The end door sills are about 6" higher than the car floor, so ramps were added to the floor to permit wheelchair access from both ends. The car also has a hidden full-size refrigerator (in a purpose-built closet, next to the end door ramp) and closet.
Normally the non-bathroom end of this car is coupled to the open/semi-covered/open car [former crane boom tender] "K.C.Bones", which gives wheelchair passengers a choice of seating, plus bathroom access.
- Doug Debs

Here's the ADA law:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/ ... 0_126.html


Here's the section on public transport provided by private entities.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/ ... -000-.html
(a), (b)(1), (b)(2) and (c) apply to you. (b)(3) through (b)(7) can be ignored.

On the "thinking too much and worrying about breakdowns and rescues" -- denying service to the disabled for lack of a rescue plan violates the law. The disabled person only means you are more likely to need outside help for a rescue. So, talk to your fire department, they have a lot of experience with the disabled. Do a rescue drill with them, put a mock disabled person on your drill and "see what happens" :)

Much museum equipment can be grandfathered in. The definition becomes that the 'service' is accessible, rather than every piece of equipment. So many operations have at least one accessible car. That makes combines, baggage cars, and RPO's rather valuable commodities. I've seen some beautiful installations out there. I've also seen some operations that have done such a good job that they have become the regional attraction of choice to nursing homes and children's hospitals. It starts with high platform loading, flip-up seats near the vestibules, etc.

If you're a museum, there's probably more general forgiveness in reality than an excursion railroad. If you're taking public money through grants, or even running on a public ROW, you want to be hypersensitive to the reality of the situation - you need to be accessible. It's not just policy, considering the market and demographics, its darn good business.

While you're gnashing your teeth on this, we've done several design projects both inside and outside the cars to make this work better. One of the better discoveries is that like an airline, you can use a transfer chair to get the passenger through the tight vestibule and bulkhead. But a restroom still needs to be accessible, the work-around there is a big enough door to put the turning circle in it, rather than inside. Very practical.

Even if the equipment can be grandfathered, you need to think about this. We just went through a BIG problem making the Savannah Melbourne W5 accessible with an under-the-deck pair of wheelchair lifts from Rincon. The city was willing to pay the price for conversion, and the end result looks pretty darn good with off-the-shelf components. We probably could have stonewalled the situation with an historic car, but that was NOT the way to go when it is a public transportation service on River St. There's some short videos of this system running on You Tube, just search for "Savannah Streetcar".

Of all the 'noble efforts' you can undertake to raise funds, doing it to improve accessibility is one of the highest and best callings. You can also get sponsorships - one of the very best I've seen is a for-profit nursing home chain in Cleveland sponsoring (and naming) a Budd combine for an on-board lift system. That got them enough PR they paid for it on the Cuyahoga Valley. Great stuff.

Pennsylvania Trolley Museum has one PCC car that is capable of accommodating up to 12 wheelchairs. We can also place smaller numbers of wheelchairs in several other cars, none of which had to be modified for this purpose. We load and unload mobility impared patrons using portable manually operated lifts. One such lift was recently acquired by means of a grant specifically solicited for that purpose. Should a trolley lose power or become disabled on the line, we have a diesel locomotive capable of towing any of our cars to a location where wheelchairs can be safely unloaded using the lifts. We frequently entertain groups of such visitors and take pleasure in seeing their reaction to a trolley ride.