What was the HP on the motors of the Brussels trucks? I've had a pair of the controllers in my warehouse and they are HUGE. Ed Landrum had one of the trucks for decades before it was sold recently and it also seemed disproportionately large.

If you are unwilling to put a replica controller on a streetcar, why would you be willing to use a truck of the wrong style or size?

Our Museum used one of the Brussels-Brill 21-E trucks when we restored our 1893 Duluth single trucker No. 78 back in the early 1990s. I was told that the motors in these trucks were 75-hp each. Why so large? As the story went, these Brussels cars were designed to haul 1-2 trailers and the routes they were to operate on involved some hilly terrain.

Our No. 78 is certainly a peppy car with those big motors, even when we have the K-10 controllers pegged so that it can't get out of the series notches.

Thanks!

Already did, Andy - Charlotte Trolley car 85,back in the mid 1980s. We never had exact specs for the original equipment, and got what we thought would be correct specs from photos and headscratching. None were available, so on the advice of John Landrum, we bought a set of Melbourne hardware from Paul and got the job done. That car started the process that has since turned into a modern light rail system that is now working on building its second suburban line and its first streetcar subsidiary....not bad for a car with the technically but not stylistically wrong but nonetheless useful hardware making it work.

Now the new operation is working on acquiring a locally historic double truck Birney car skeleton for - well, probably more cloning than restoration, but then so was 85 30 years ago. If those controllers could work for that and are available, let's talk next spring.

dave

Dave said:

This is not a question that can be easily answered, of course, so I suspect it was more rhetorical. It also goes beyond the limited scope of my discussion, which was a relatively common truck on many cars that now we have several examples available at a cost that to me, is not exorbitant. I do not know your specific case or how it would be answered, maybe somebody else does. Presuming you need a set of Standard 050 trucks for the Connecticut body at Charlotte, I see that there are 6 cars in PNAERC that need these and a couple other cars with other "0" prefix trucks.

The drawings for these are available from the Pullman Library at IRM. Trucks were manufactured by the museum in Edmonton, and also for new production for New Orleans, so it is feasible, if not cheap or fast. Assuming you have already beat the bushes at every larger trolley museum for trucks in the truck pile, and at worldwide locations where similar trucks may have been used in streetcar service, then I know no other option, except to make dummy truck sideframes with PCC structures underneath, such as at the late Portland Vintage Trolley. If you go with some reproduction route, you may have at least a few partners to work with.


I do not know the conditions of the cars under the tarps, and perhaps it would be a shame if they are good to go. However if a person would rather have a local historic car with a 21E, and have no use for a heritage car from overseas, then perhaps they can sell the Brussels body on Ebay for some other use and it will not feel so bad to one's preservation soul.

Probably as rhetorical as your post that engendered it. Preservation as a pure academic ethic runs up against reality almost every time a project is being considered......like the laws of physics, reality ultimately carries the day. You do what you can, the best way you can, given the circumstances in which you are working.

Based on my last meetings with them, please make any offer to Charlotte Trolley for the Osgood Bradley car. They would be thrilled to see it go back to its home territory or anybody who wants to have it in their collection. The body is in decent shape and it would make a fairly easy project for anybody who could use it in their programming. It is in far better condition that the one we're working on, but doesn't fit into our needs.

Moving on.....replication - if you can afford to, total replication of all components as original is a great way to go. To my knowledge, the recent replicas were essentially frames recycling motor / wheelsets from other trucks with different frames which were then probably scrapped. So, without a source for correct style motor / wheelsets........what use is the ability to create new frames? So, I'm trying to find a way to do something better than hanging a fake frame over a PCC truck while exploiting what motor resources are available currently, which seem to be PCC or elevator for DC. I haven't tried to deal with used mine tram stuff yet, reliable sourcing has not become evident. Pleased to share with others with the same needs to find workable solutions. We're all in this together........

Creating possibility is what I'm working on, without becoming obsessive about rivet counting, but while working to get as close to correct as is practically possible under real circumstances. I think that this kind of work can be of benefit to many of us - who doesn't have chicken coops and nothing to put them on? Who doesn't want to do the best possible job of recreation within the bounds of the reality in which we work? I don't equate considered compromise with any compromise.....navigating the middle ground is of course subjective, but necessary given the alternative is doing nothing because you can't do it 100%. Even the best restorations aren't 100% since we don't grow and harvest centuries old timber any longer, insulate wire with asbestos or make paint with lead in it. That doesn't make them any less meaningful in the real world.

dave