I know several trolley museums have the 1920s-era South Shore cars.

Does anyone have experience operating the South Shore cars on 600VDC directly? (without rewiring the traction circuits) How well do they run? Do they get up and move in series? Who might know?

check with the IRM guys they had theirs out last summer on 600v

most of the 1200 volts just runs at half speed, but where they can, they will swap it with a 600 vdc device.

The cars will run on the 600 volts but they wont be running them at 80mph...

things like car lighting they will convert.

As mentioned previously, in the last incarnation of this thread, IRM's South Shore Line car 34 has had only one modification made for 600V operation, a 600V compressor armature has been installed.

There is no need to alter the lighting or traction circuits, the lighting runs off of battery voltage, and the traction circuits are quite happy (just a bit slower) on 600V.

Jeff

Einstein's definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.

They will feel a little slow accelerating on 600v if limited to full series, but will run fine in Museum service if allowed to go to full parallel.

At full series, half the line voltage is across each motor, so on a 1200v line, any car in full series will see 600v directy across each motor. At full parallel, the full line voltage is across each motor. So if the line is at 600v, in full parallel the motors will see 600v. This is the same as voltage as they will see in full series at 1200v. (The South Shore is actually 1500v nominal, not 1200v, but thats not a big deal.)

Many musuems limit operation by rule to full series. If they allow 1200v cars to be notched up to full parallel they will get the same performance as an equivalent 600v car at full series, but the motorman will have to notch up much faster. Since South Shore cars are geared for relatively high speeds and musuem's usually limit speeds to 40 mph or less, they should " get up and move" as well as a equivalent car designed for 600v limited to full series in Museum operation as long as the motorman notches them up quickly and they are permitted to get into parallel.

IRM does not operate South Shore cars often and normally operates them at a slow speed because the trolley wire is not fully set up for pantograph operation. I know East Troy converted their South Shore car trolley poles. I assume it can easily get up to 30-40 mph. Can anyone confirm this?

The East Troy SS cars are capable of higher speeds, but are restricted to a maximum speed of 25 mph.

I'm trying to figure out if a South Shore car would run OK on 300 volts on the traction power side. With "OK" being defined as "able to trundle along at 10 mph at a railway museum with barely Class I track, climbing worst-case 2% grades."

Therefore, I'm interested in how South Shore cars perform in series on 600VDC.

My line of thinking is that parallel on 300VDC may actually work better than series in 600VDC, A South Shore car given 600VDC will balance in series at ~15 mph I'm guessing? That's what I want to get confirmation of. ~25 mph in full parallel? ~30 mph in field-shunt? Not ideal for a 10mph museum.

Now rethink the deal with a 300V "trolley" voltage. Whatever 600V is at full series, that's what 300V will be in full parallel, and perhaps, it will be reasonable for a 10mph museum. Then (assuming that you don't cruise in resistance points), you will have a lower speed available (full series) and a higher one available too (field shunts).

Of course all this is theorycrafting at this point. Can anyone shed some light?

We have been running London and Port Stanley #8 (a 1500V interurban combine) on 600V since 1972. It has GE MK control and all the control circuits and most lighting were fed from the dynamotor (combined MG and blower) which produced 600V. Most interior lighting was 5 in series, each contactor has it's own dropping resistor. It was simply a matter of connecting the output leads of the generator to the line. The CP-29 compressor was sluggish on 600V but we ran for many years before our friends in Edmonton located a CP-28, 600V armature for us.

32V battery circuits were disconnected to reduce maintenance since mu cpability was no longer required. Battery fed headlights were replaced with a resistor panel off line voltage and so on.

The car weighs in at just under 47 tons, plain bearings, 4 x 125 hp motors so not quite as peppy as the South Shore cars. Top speed in full series is roughly 25mph but you really feel a 2% grade, full parllel would probably see about 50 mph with a good long (flat) run. Normally, there is no need to go into parallel for operation on our 20mph main line.

L&PS 8 is our only car with pantographs. We did have problems with them snagging the wire and getting damaged in the past but improvements in our overhead have all but solved this problem.

Gord McOuat
Halton County Radial Ry.
Milton, Canada