OK, we've heard all about steam heaters. How about electric heating of cars using heritage heaters or technology?

I mean OTHER THAN the modern standard 480v 3phase HEP that every car uses nowadays.

I'm guessing the majority of these would be on streetcars and interurbans, but who knows.

I was involved with an excursion train business some years ago that was equipped with a poor man's 240-volt head end power system. One of our cars was a Lackawanna MU trailer with its original under-the-seat electric heaters. We were able to wire them up to work with the HEP. I'm not an electrician and don't know any of the details; only that it worked, and pretty well as I recall. I'm sure others have done the same.

Alan Maples

Ok, so what is the electric heat load on something like a CA&E interurban car at IRM? What's the wattage of the heaters? (And out of curiosity, could those heaters keep the car warm on a typical -10 degree day??)

When did commuter coaches switch from steam heat to electric? I bet all the answers can be found at IRM (oops, that stands for Illinois Railway Museum). Are the RI coaches steam heated? Are the C&NW bi-level cars heated with steam, electric or some kind of fancy HVAC machine?

From my work experience, I have seen that a modern 480 Volt, 3-phase commuter coach has a total electric load of something like 40 to 45 kW. So that's just a number to use for comparison with today's modern stuff.


Check:
S= 3VI
= 3 * 480/sqrt(3) * 50
= 41.55 kW
(Yep)

assuming you might need 40kw to light and heat an older car, that would be a LOT of power requiring thick cables at anything less then 480 3 phase. Didn't even the GG1 electrics come with a fuel oil fired boiler, to heat the train?

I think SN 1005, a typical 56 foot wooden interurban car, has about 6000 watts of electric heat. Interurbans were well known for voltage drop on the trolley, which would have reduced the heat output. I have seen several interurban cars that ran in very cold weather that also had coal fired heaters, some heated with circulating hot water. The electric heaters where known for starting car fires. Also there were some incidents where heaters energized the metal seat frames with trolley voltage.

In most cases, commuter trains in the Chicago area (not sure about others) went to electric heat with the arrival of bilevel cab cars. The C&NW (and CB&Q) bi-level coaches were originally steam heated. In both cases, when the cab cars arrived, they got HEP heat. As a general rule, the HEP heat came in whenever new equipment arrived in the 60s or 70s to replace the 1920s or 1930s equipment.

The CRIP 2500's at IRM are steam heated, as are the Lackawanna cars, and the majority of IRM's operating steam road passenger cars. Notable exceptions being Pacific Peak and Loch Sloy were given HEP conversions by Amtrak and X-5000 has a hot-water system, which is essentially a modern(ish) version of a Baker heater.

The Shoreline Trolley Museum has several cars from the early part of the 20th Century that still had their original coal stove heaters when they came out of service in the 1940"s.

South Shore #1 (60 foot steel interurban) has two strings of these underseat heaters viewtopic.php?f=1&t=37247
One run is 12 units, the other 11. Ohm's Law says 7700 and 8400 watts respectively, totaling 16,000 watts full car.

The car also has 4 runs of 2" pipe down both sides of the car, as a "radiator" for a fuel-fired heater. The heater was removed (but it's possible the park service did it) and I cannot find any fuel tanks or obvious "places they'd been". On car #36 these radiators were modernized so I suspect they were in use right up to the end in 1982.

A large proportion of the Minnesota street railways had coal fired heat, pre-PCC. This information is pretty easy to find: Electric Railways of Minnesota, Minnegazette, etc.

Thanks for taking time to answer my query, Bulby!

It is my understanding that the reason for coal fired heaters in electric cars wasn't because of the inadequacy of the electric heat (hey, they could always have added more heaters) but the fact that coal heat was cheaper than electric, especially since they were already paying the guy who had to fire it (usually the conductor).

Well that's no surprise, it certainly looks like the heaters on South Shore #1 were added later when they went to the "modern" (stamped/welded steel) walkover seating.