Antique electric railway maintenance equipment

[jtbell]

Last weekend at a coin/stamp show in Raleigh NC, I bought some postcards for my collection of streetcar-related cards. This one mystified me at first. I thought it might be some kind of home-built streetcar / tramcar.

The card has only "Wash." hand-written on the back. Today I scanned it and plugged it into Google's image search, which produced several hits to a scanned archive of the Electric Railway Review. Most of them are advertisements similar to this one:

Another link led to an article about how these cars were used:

Using Brazed and Welded Bonds
G. H. McKelway, Engineer of Distribution, Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company
Electric Railway Journal, Vol. 55 No. 16 (April 17, 1920)

[Aside: In an electric railway the running rails form half of the electric circuit that powers the cars or trains. The bonds in question are made of copper, and link the ends of adjacent sections of rail to complete the electrical circuit.]

...the passing of current at low voltage through the bond and the rail heats both of them to such an extent that the copper bond can be brazed to the steel rail.

...the low-voltage current is produced by an "inverted" rotary converter mounted on a car. This changes direct current at railway voltage into single-phase alternating current at a voltage which is reduced through a step-down transformer.

Two sizes of rotary converters are used, one of 18-kw. capacity and capable of welding bonds up to 350,000 circ.mil section and the other of 30-kw. capacity, which can be used with 500,000 circ.mil bonds or with bonds of even greater section. When it is desired to move the car from point to point the rotary can be used as a motor, a clutch and chain being provided for transmitting the power to the wheels. For covering long distances it is claimed that speeds of up to 30 m.p.h. can be obtained. With such speeds there is no reason why the line should be blocked or traffic delayed while the car is traveling to the point where it is working.

So this is a specialized track-maintenance vehicle.

 

[AlexB23]

Ahh, it makes me wish we had more trams in the States. That is a beautiful looking maintenance vehicle. Hopefully , we can get more streetcars on the rails again.