Chapel car 5 Messenger of Peace just received six wonderful replica light fixtures. They represent the gasoline lamps installed circa 1912 to replace the original kerosene lamps. It was an interesting project, and another completed detail to check of the list for this National Register artifact!

http://www.trainmuseum.blogspot.com/2015/12/let-there-be-light.html

"Gas" is unlikely to be gasoline. According to "The American Railroad Passenger Car" by John H. White compressed natural gas, coal gas, or occasionally acetylene gas were used for car lighting. According to Mr. White one very rarely used system ran compressed air through gasoline soaked cotton in a tank under the car to create a gas that was burned in a conventional gas light.

That sounds like the Pintsch gas system, which was hardly rare.

http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/sdgas.Html

What are these replica lights intended to run on?

Pintsch gas was somewhat like the gas we used to use in Coleman lanterns for camping or fishing (now they use lights with LED bulbs in them).

T7

As indicated in the post, the Hydro Carbon Light Company reincorporated as the Coleman Light Company circa 1913. Their advertising claim was, "Gasoline lighting perfected." And yes, it is substantially the same system they used in the lanterns, which used an unleaded gasoline, which at the time was occasionally called white gas to differentiate it from gas that had additives such as tetra ethyl lead. (Today, white gas is naphtha, a somewhat different fuel.)

The only application of this lighting to railcars that I am aware of is in the chapel cars owned by the American Baptist Publication Society. The cars were typically spotted on a house or industrial track where they were used to conduct services for weeks or months on end. To refuel the lights, they would need a fuel option that was commonly available in a small town. That requirement was met by the Coleman gasoline lighting system, which was also used in banks, restaurants, and hotels.

Gasoline lighting appeared in the early 20th Century and peaked in the late teens or early 20s. Someone with more time than me would have to research all of the factors that led to its demise, but I am sure they included safety, relative cost, and the improving economics of electric lighting, particularly with the 1936 Rural Electrification Act.

The Coleman Lighting System is described in their catalog #34 that I am shamelessly linking from someone else's web page:

http://d3seu6qyu1a8jw.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/collections/DE/DE4AAEF9-06F8-45E3-888D-73085FF3DBEC.pdf

I know that the Pintsch gas system was used much longer and for more uses then just lighting...cooking for example. I know that the GTW had buffet cars with Pintsch Gas broilers in service into the late post-war era.

John Ringling's Wisconsin[i] had both Pintsch Gas and electric lights...both in the same fixture. [/i]

The Pintsch Gas lighting was used on coaches/combines of cars in local (stop and go) service and mixed train service long after the standard 32 VDC systems became standardized on the mainline. I think the availability of the big, round canisters of Pintsch Gas made them more popular then the Coleman gas which had to be poured into each individual light fixture...the pressurized Pintsch system had a single port where the canisters were connected then fuel lines carried the gas throughout. Does anyone agree with this theory?

Did the Coleman System require a vent or stack to carry the smoke or fumes out of the car through the roof? I do not see them in these pictures.

T7

The Coleman system did not require a chimney vent so in the chapel cars they covered over the old chimneys that has been used for the kerosene lighting. I suspect that by today's standards there may have been unacceptably high levels of carbon monoxide, but perhaps not if the mantle burner combusted the fuel really efficiently. The light was described as being very bright - 600 candle power for even the small Junior series lights.

For interior uses, Coleman lighting did not use individual reservoirs. As you can see in the link provided above, when you ordered a Coleman lamp, you needed to specify the distance from the Coleman fuel reservoir to the lamp so the correct length of "hollow wire" could be supplied. Incidentally, this type of lighting was also called hollow wire lighting. And it was liquid fuel - not gas - that was supplied to the light.

One thing I noticed in the photo above is that white fitting on the "stem" of the fixture looks designed to act as a diverter, to direct the hot air coming off the mantle outward away from the ceiling. When I was a kid we had a travel trailer that had a propane mantle type lamp permanently installed about nine or ten inches below the ceiling, which had a metal shield that served the same function. There was no vent directly above the lamp, but other vents in the trailer roof, which we kept open when we ran the gas lamp. In a railroad car, the deck sash could serve the same purpose.

The Coleman lamps were also used on the cars of the Catholic Church Extension Society. The fact that the Baptists used the Coleman system is not accidental. W. C. Coleman was a devout Baptist layman and most likely donated all of the lighting equipment and labor to install it on the ABPS cars. It is known that Coleman donated the first set of lamps used aboard ABPS Car No. 1 (Evangel) and installed the lamps himself with the assistance of two assistants from the factory.

It is really interesting that the Catholic cars use the gasoline lighting too. According to account from the 1904 World's Fair in St Louis it was visiting Catholic officials from Chicago that saw a Baptist chapel car for the first time. They declared if it was good enough for the Baptists, it was good enough for the Catholics. However, the Catholics later claimed that they had the first chapel car. Apparently they didn't recognize the Baptists as a 'real' religion! History is full of interesting stories!

Hopefully not too far off topic, but when I first visited the Giant Forest area of Sequoia National Park in the late 40's, the visitor facilities there didn't have electricity. The dining room had some large chandeliers of the Coleman type, although per my recollection they weren't as fancy as the ones shown in the catalog linked above. Being in 3rd or 4th grade at the time, I don't remember too many details, but the chandeliers were lowered to the floor to be lighted, and then raised up to the ceiling. Several arms extended out from the center, with a mantle, enclosed in what I remember as looking much like the chimney on a regular kerosene hurricane lamp. This gave off a very bright light, like a regular Coleman lantern; I was quite familiar with these from our camping trips. Lighting along the pathways between buildings was provided by regular Coleman lanterns hung on posts; in the cabins were kerosene lamps. The gas station had the old manual, pump the gasoline up into a calibrated glass cylinder type, with gravity flow back down into your car. Except for the gas station/store, now the Giant Forest Museum, all the buildings in that area have been torn down.

Coleman donated the lamps to both societies. The Chapel Car originated with the Russian Orthodox Church during the construction of the Trans Siberian Railroad and was first adapted to use in the United States by the Episcopal Church for service in the Dakota territories. The Baptist cars primarily served in the West while the Catholic cars primarily served the West and South. One of the Baptist cars did serve in the Virginias.

As for expositions, I'd have to look it up to determine which one it was, but at one of the international exhibitions, a Baptist and Catholic chapel car were placed on display on the same track, coupled platform to platform.