PRR LW sleeper Birch River at Altoona scrapped

jayrod · **Posted:** Sat Nov 12, 2022 11:46 pm

Randy Gustafson wrote:

Many years ago I was led down a lineup of assorted PS cars with stainless steel sides by an experience carman. He showed me one of the quickest, and saddest, tests I ever learned.

He went to the fluting, just above the sill, and banged on it HARD with his fist bottom.

Rust rained out between the side fluting and the sill side. Yikes.

He then showed me the side a a car with the fluting off. It was just toast, particularly around the connections. Moral of the story wasn't just PS vs. Budd, it was looking at the window condition and seals, because that's how the water got in to begin with.

So shiny, and so sad.

Bad window gaskets are admittedly the biggest potential leakers. If you open the weep holes in the sill and the muck is wet or water runs out, look at the windows first. However, we also chased leaks for years of water getting behind the fluting from the outside, too. Rain water brings in fine dirt and the wet dirt builds up between the fluting and steel down at the sill. It’s a double whammy with the steel being wet from both sides. That fluting as decorative cladding was a bad design.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Tue Nov 22, 2022 1:56 am

For anyone keeping track, the former PRR Z74e business car Duquesne was reduced to bite-sized pieces over the weekend:

https://www.facebook.com/altoonaworks/p ... fXnxoMLVul

"The condition of this car is evident as it only took a half hour to break apart."