There are many photos, videos, and reports if you do a google search but PCC Cars have returned to SEPTA Route 15.

As much as I love museums, there is nothing like experiencing historic equipment "in the wild" doing what it was designed to do. Glad to see PCC Cars will back on the streets of Philadelphia - maybe next time I have a layover at 30th street I'll take a ride!

For once I have to agree with you, CZ. Thanks for posting this truly fantastic news !!!!

Here's a map og the trolleysystem:
https://schedules.septa.org/maps/line-map-trolley.pdf

Here's the Route 15 schedule:
https://schedules.septa.org/current/15.pdf

Here's the press release:
https://wwww.septa.org/news/septa-annou ... -route-15/

The cars were built in 1947-1948 and are the standard SLCC carbody. They are painted in the as-delivered green and cream eith red beltrail and silver roof with red striping.

The controls, motors and trucks are new and they are air-conditioned with ADA lifts.

The PCC cars don't operate in the trolley subway but if you take the Market-Frankford Line East to Girard, 15 route is downstairs.

Phil Mulligan

For those keeping score at home, PTC differentiated between one-man PCC's and one/two man or straight two-man cars by numbers.

One man cars were 2001-2318 and one/two man or two man 2501-2800. One man cars had safety equipment for a single operator (paid more than a "motorman"). One/two man cars also had the safety equipment as well as a conductor's booth. Again the operator when running as a single operator was paid more. Two man cars had the conductor's booth but not the extra safety equipment and needed a conductor to go out on the street. The two man cars were quickly modified as one/two man cars and eventually all the PCC's became one man.

Phil Mulligan

On the original 1-man cars, when and why did the Conductor need to go out on the street?

"Go out on the street" is merely slang for the car leaving the carbarn, literally running out into the public street, and going into revenue service to carry passengers. On a two-man car, per the union contract, both a motorman and a conductor were needed for the car in to be in revenue service.

In Philly, the carbarns were and still are called "depots", as in "Woodland Depot", "Callowhill Depot", "Luzerne Depot", etc.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.

Oh I see… here I was trying to think what the conductor was having to do out on the street during cold Pennsylvania winters! Haha

Maybe I'm just barking at the moon, but doesn't a crewman need to get down on the pavement to throw switches using a specially fitted steel bar, which is carried on board ??

That depends on how the switch is equipped. Regular service switches are powered and in those days, it was a 600 vDC solenoid under the street. There was a pan in the wire and a PCC had a toggle in front of the operator.

To go in the normal direction (usually straight) you coasted while the trolley wheel went through the pan. To turn you pushed the toggle and the solenoid threw the single point with a loud "clump."

Some switches did not have solenoids and the motorman climbed down with a switch iron, which looks like a giant screwdriver. He put the blade of the switch iron between the point and the stock rail, then levered the point to the other direction. You had to fight a spring to the neutral posttion but then it helped to complete the action. After both trucks had gone through the switch, the motorman or conductor would go back and return the switch to normal position.

Phil Mulligan

Note: Toronto used a different system

That's fascinating, I had no idea a system like that existed. What did the toggle at the operators desk do? Like how did it actually trigger the switch?

And then when the air bled out did the switch spring back?

Sorry if I understand that all wrong.

The procedure described by Phil is for a PCC (or later) car that is operated by foot controls. In a pre-PCC trolley car, the same system can be activated by pulling power on the hand controller as the trolley pole passes beneath the contactor on the overhead wire, often with a concurrent slight brake application. The toggle switch on the dash of the PCC car effectively does the same thing, creating a brief short circuit that draws enough power to activate the electric solenoid in the switch machine without requiring the motorman to dance a jig on the power and brake pedals. Incidentally, merely coasting through the overhead contactor without pulling power, also activates the track switch solenoid, restoring the point to its normal position. In Pittsburgh, drawing power set the switch for the diverging curve. Coasting through the contactor set the switch to the straight position. I believe Philly was similar.

No air involved. This system is all 600 volt DC circuitry.

The hiccup with this system (originally developed and patented by the Cheatham Electric Switching Device Company) is that the switch can be unintentionally activated anytime the trolley car is drawing sufficient power while passing beneath the overhead contactor. Suffice it to say that accidents have occurred. There is also no point detection or point locking system. The system relies on the trolley motorman being diligent, observant of the switch position and whether it is fully closed in the desired direction, and very conscious of where his trolley pole is relative to the overhead wire contactor. In Pittsburgh, a 5 mph speed limit applied at facing point switches so that the motorman had time to (1) observe the position of the switch, (2) take note of whether it was fully closed, and, (3) if it wasn't set to the desired routing, stop the car before passing over the switch. Other cities had a "stop" rule at switches for the same reasons.

In part because such diligence and situational awareness can be uncommon, contemporary light rail operations now employ different switch activation systems, usually of European design but manufactured in North America. Pittsburgh retired the Cheatham system decades ago. I believe SEPTA is now making the transition.

As Phil noted, Toronto has always employed a different technology, largely due to their operation of trolleys in two-car trains. If the original Cheatham system was employed there, the trolley pole on the second car might reactivate the switch machine, resulting in a split switch derailment. Perhaps one of our Canadian brothers can educate the class on how TTC's "necessary action" switch control system worked.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.
Director of Engineering
Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, Inc.

That’s really cool - I used to drive a trolley at a museum and learned how to “dance” on the power and brake through some areas that would routinely kick the pole off the wire so I can imagine how that would go.

I had no idea that an invention like this existed - extremely clever.

The St. Charles line in New Orleans uses "power on - power off" devices to throw switches at several locations, no solenoids required. I may have this reversed, but my recollection is that "power on" throws the switch to diverging while "power off" throws it to normal. There are switches like this at Lee Circle (or whatever it's called now) and at the far end of the line. There may also be switches like this at the switches to the car barn near the far end of the line although I'm not sure about this. Switches like this used to be very common on streetcar lines in the days before solenoids and or other modern electronics.

One of the downsides of this system, as noted in one of the other posts, is that trains with more than one pole raised couldn't be safely operated. The system wouldn't detect that the second pole was on the same train as the first pole. So, if the motorman coasted through the switch with the first car (setting to switch to "normal") and then took power as the second car was about to go over the switch, the switch would throw and the train would split the switch. For some strange reason, that was considered undesirable.

You could use the power pedal to operate a track switch. The catch is the pole goes through the pan with the car under power, then the car has to stop short of the switch point.

With a conventional car you pulled power while passing through the pan. A conventional car would let you brake while pulling power so speed was controlled. In Philadelphis, you pulled two poins of power with a two motor car, but needed one point with a four-motor car.

Phil Mulligan

Toronto's Necessity Action switches had the overhead contact beside the trolley wire and a corresponding contact on the side of the tip of the trolley's pole. The operator pressed a button to control the track switch. I'm not sure what happened if the trolley went past the contact without the button being pressed.