I know of at least 2 railroad museums in the west that do (did?) have operational rotary converters in their substations.
I mean ones that are actually in-service making DC power, contemporarily, not static displays which are typically separated from their context (switchgear, transformers, stern penalties for touching them etc.)

I know the Western Railway Museum operates theirs occasionally. Who else?

Orange Empire has a rotary converter that was once on the Sacramento Northern at Del Paso, CA. The machine is operated one weekend a month -- the balance of the time the usual power source is a solid state device. The rotary is also considered to be the back-up for the solid state device.

The solid state device -- as I understand -- was originally a mercury arc device that was changed over by the previous owner. Before coming to the Museum it was used by an underground cement mine that operated trolley dump trucks. Yes, electric powered dump trucks that used a two-wire overhead. This was a GE installation and Howard Fogg did an advertising illustration of it. A conveyor belt replaced the dump trucks.

Pennsylvania Trolley Museum has a fairly complete Westinghouse 500KW rotary converter substation, but it's stored in pieces at the moment. The equipment came from a former Pittsburgh Railways substation, plus additions from a Duquesne Light Co. commercial 600VDC sub that served downtown Pittsburgh buildings until c.2001. We also have a nearly identical (W) 500KW rotary from that commercial sub. Long term plan is to recreate an interurban style sub for the ex-PRCo machine and use the other as a static exhibit. A second rotary from the commercial sub went to Baltimore Streetcar Museum. PTM's normal DC supply is from a state-of-the-art rectifier sub.

IIRC, the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven (Branford), Connecticut originally used a rotary converter for their traction power. It was located in a special building attached to, or adjacent to and just behind, their Frank Sprague building. I'm not sure if they've converted to a solid state system or not.

Maybe someone from Shore Line can confirm.

Thanks!

Shoreline has a very large rotary converter. Last I knew it still worked. It is used for festivals and events that require a lot of power. Most of the time power is supplied by a home made solid state rectifier that is more efficient than the rotary and requires no regular maintenance.

I think Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, ME has a rotary converter substation that they use as a backup unit. Could someone verify that.

Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton, PA has a rotary converter substation, with switchgear, as a display. I do not think it has a supply transformer.

A rotary converter substation is very inefficient in a museum setting. Typically, trolley museums run one car at a time, with long gaps in operation. Thus, the electricity needed to keep the rotary converter turning is a substantial part of the total cost of operation.

We have a 500KW MG set from the Oshawa Ry. in our substation which along with the appropriate switchgear, was roughed in during the mid-'60's. The installation was never completed as solid state came into it's own around that time.

I also saw a smaller MG in service at Seashore Trolley Musuem in the late '90's. Exporail (Delson) also has a smaller MG in it's substation but has used solid state for many years.

Gord McOuat
OERHA, Halton County

The rotary at Rio Vista Jct is a portable. I understand the South Shore portable rotary at Boone IA was rewired to operate at half voltage for their power supply. I was never certain why, or if it still serves this purpose.

There is a TMER&L portable rotary at Union IL but it has not operated in eons. Parts to a large CA&E rotary are there as well but were never installed, the overhead at IRM has always been powered by a solid state converter, after a spell with a generator.

Fox River Trolley Museum has used the CA&E Batavia rotary, but I believe in recent years they have used a rectifier. Whether or not it still runs I don't know, but when we did start it up you went through a sequence and then exited the building so that in case it failed while starting, you were not in the room to experience it.

I recall a rotary in service at Worthington, OH, and on the Dayton trolleybus system, in the 1980s. I don't know the current status, so to spark.
O. Anderson

Where did the rotary from Tandy go?

Wesley

Tandy had two which I believe were ex-Shreveport Trolleybus, Ex-US Navy. North Texas Historic Transportation successfully bid on the pair when Tandy was auctioning off everything. They were in storage on a borrowed lot when the lease expired. They were scrapped in the last 6 months and probably headed to Taiwan or China to become low-cost consumer electronics.

You can't save them all.

The Fox River Trolley Museum in South Elgin did indeed have an operating rotary as Olin describes. Also as described, the standard operating procedure was indeed to start it and exit the building ASAP as a precaution.

On the next to last operating weekend of the 1998 season, the rotary let loose, basically just gave up after so many, many years of service. By very lucky circumstance, myself and fellow musem member John Sturtz had been working on the museum's only (at the time) diesel locomotive the week before, and had gotten it operable for the first time in recent memory. We actually had it fired up with the intent of running a couple runs up and down the line to "stretch it's legs" and test our repairs. (Simple repair actually, the locomotive had an air operated throttle, and the air line hose had rotted and broken)

The diesel (Warren & Saline River #73, a Whitcomb 70 tonner) was pressed into emergency service for both that day and the following weekend (important Pumpkin Trolley revenue dates), featurning push/pull service with a North Shore Line standard Cincinnati coach (#715).

The museum had been planning on putting in a solid state rectifier system for some years prior as a back-up, and had the majority of the planning complete and materials on-hand. The plan was to get through the winter, and install, test and be ready for the next year's opening day on Mother's Day, 1999. Like many museum best intentions, the deadline came and went.

Dummies that we were, my partner and I, pressed into service running the diesel/interurban combination (since there were almost no other diesel operators available, and those that were, basically weren't interested), thought we'd won the lottery... we're running the whole damn railroad !

Reality actually took a week or two to kick in, by the time the solid state system was up and running in early August, we'd run 99.9% of all the museum's trips that year, about 750 odd miles by rough guesstimate,,, a mile and a quarter at a time, back and forth !

May I suggest to the youngun's amongst us,, a mile and a quarter of right of way doesn't change that much in a couple months, it's DAMN boring !

The plan was to rebuild the rotary and have IT as the back-up, I don't beleive that has happened to date.

The rotary at Orange Empire has drawn attention from fans of "old school" electrical apparatus. It's housed in a "repurposed" service station building, with the resistor banks where the lube rack would have been. If visitors are lucky, they can be there when we "heat it up", because the starting sequence involves quite a lot of assorted zarks, buzzes, clanks and other noises that remind me of Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory ("Ygor! energize the converter!" "Yes, Master, coming hot!")

The East Troy Electric Railroad Museum in Wisconsin has an entire intact brick substation which is used as their station and for museum displays. the inactive rotary and control panel can be viewed inside the building behind a glass window.

Opened In 1909 as a 1200V DC with 4 rotaries paired in series, this structure was one of the first automated substations to be operated in the US. Long headways and low passenger loadings mitigated against keeping the rotaries in continuous operation.

Power is currently supplied by a solid state converter midway down the line.

http://web.presby.edu/~jtbell/transit/images/EastTroy/EastTroyStation2.jpg

It sounds like starting up these old rotaries is quite an event. Perhaps museums might want to announce the starting times when they're fired up as an added attraction. Especially in the case of OERM where the rotary is so visible.

Slightly off topic.

In the 1940's & 50s I lived just up the hill from the Brown & Sharpe Company's massive manufacturing factory complex on Promenade Street, Providence, RI. as a lad I used to bike down there and watch the rotaries working in their electric power house. Apparently many of their machine tools were DC operated. I vividly recall the ozone coming from the plant on a warm summer day and the humming of the equipment.

Maybe that's how I got hooked on electric traction? Ozone inhalation?

Thanks!