Size Matters

The trolley museum will open soon. I've actually seen the first trolley car run over the rails powered from the overhead wire; but I'll save that exciting tale for another time. Instead, I'll just post a couple of pictures - since I haven't in a while. The first picture is of me installing a new line pole using the mobile crane. It's actually not as easy as I'm making it look in this photo. It's like trying to pick up a piece of spaghetti with a thread and then dropping it inside a straw ... only bigger. I used to think that this crane was a big piece of equipment, but now - after seeing what they use to build the bridges for the Inter-County Connector - I realize it's not big at all. It's amazing how your perspective changes over time.

The second image was taken inside the car shops of Pittsburgh's T System. That's an in-the-track wheel lathe; and it allows you to re-profile the wheels of light rail vehicles without removing them from the car. Must be nice! I wish I had one of these - or at least had access to one. Trolley cars have steel wheels, and those wheels wear over time. You wouldn't think that a steel wheel riding on a steel rail would wear, but it does. When you work on a PCC car's trucks, you will find a layer of steel dust all over the place. The problem isn't so much the wear - it's that the two wheels on opposite sides of the same solid axle don't wear the same way! You would think that - since both wheels are going to the same place at the same time at the same speed - they would wear the same; but nooooo, that would be way too easy. So eventually, you have to take the truck off the car, take the wheels off the axles, and put them on a really big lathe to cut them back into the proper shape; and then you have to put the whole thing back together again. That's a lot of work! If only I had a million dollar in-the-track wheel lathe, I could save all that time.


I asked one of the guys at Strasburg Railroad if he could turn our wheels on his wheel lathe, but - after mulling it over - he didn't think he could handle anything that small.