Our ACL RPO No. 13 had double pane windows, with one of the panes having a blue-green tint. The former workers on this car removed the broken glass and purchased new panes, but did not reconstruct the windows before quitting the job. They did not document this detail and I do not recall for sure whether the tinted panes should be on the exterior, or should the clear panes be on the exterior with the tinted on the interior. My thought is the latter is correct, but any help in confirming this would be appreciated.

ssyfrett@bellsouth.net

Traditional railroad practice was for the outer pane to be 1/4" green tint (Solex) plate glass with 1/4" clear laminated safety glass on the inside. Both of these types of glass are still readily available from most any glass supplier.

domeliner@hotmail.com

Railroads traditionally installed the sash with the removable quarter round (or triangle) to aid in the glass replacement. The inner sash will have the removable quarter round on the inside and the outer sash will have the quarter round on the outside. This way the sash does not have to be removed to replace a pane of glass.

BN

> Traditional railroad practice was for the
> outer pane to be 1/4" green tint
> (Solex) plate glass with 1/4" clear
> laminated safety glass on the inside. Both
> of these types of glass are still readily
> available from most any glass supplier.

This sounds like a thermo-pane window from a lightweight.

It also depends on how far back you go. Streetcars used double strength and 3/16 - 1/4" thick wire glass, interurban and elevated wood cars tended to use 3/16" "crystal", as did steam road cars. It also depends on the size of the window (and the owning railroad). Large parlor car windows were 1/4 plate.

The greenish tint comes from it's composition, "soda-lime glass". Safety glass didn't come into widespread use until after WWII.

Many streetcar companies set the glass in felt and held it in place with a removable wood "glass stop". Others used only the glass stop.

Whether the removable stop was on the inside or outside was determined by either the builder or the owning road.

The LSE Jewett steel cars used 1/4" crystal("crystal" glass does not have the green tint of soda-lime glass) plate glass that was held in a 13/16" wood frame. The glass was puttied in and secured with a shaped molding secured by a million teeny round head brass wood screws. On LSE167,8,9 the windows rode directly against the steel sheathing held there by the usual spring rollers. The window molding was shaped so that the bottom piece had a slight overhang to shed water while the top piece was flush with the frame and the side pieces tapered to fit. The storm windows slid into pockets fitted at the top of each window ... no idea how they were held in at the bottom. Must have been fun to take all the window guards off in the fall and install the storm windows then reverse the process in the spring for the steel fleet. With their narrow width and thin side wall, there was not enough room in the wall for the thicker double sash seen on RR passenger cars.


lamontdc@adelphia.net