New York Trolleys in San Diego!
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During World War II, San Diego was desperate for trolley rolling stock to keep up with wartime passenger loads. The Office of Defense Transportation decreed that city transit systems should rely on rail to the maximum extent possible to save petroleum and rubber for the war effort so many bus routes were discontinued for the duration.

In Philadelphia, for example, Philadelphia Transportation Co. [PTC] was forced to reinstate the single track and passing sidings on the narrow Bridge Street shuttle, Route 73, between the Frankford Elevated Bridge Street terminal and Frankford Arsenal.

San Diego bought 20 ex-Third Avenue Railway System [TARS] box cars from the New York City operator, which had retired most of its secondhand 400 series before the war. They had been acquired in 1924 from New York Railways and were among the longest deck roof cars ever to run on the TARS system. All in the 401-528 series had 12 windows per side except 528 which had 13 windows. The 46'-11" box cars all were re-trucked by TARS on Brill 39E maximum traction trucks. Here is what they looked like in San Diego:

Here is a 400 series cars on TARS property:

NJ Custom Brass imported the TARS 400 series in 1/87 HO brass: Many brass imports imported in natural brass never were painted or custom finished by their owners and now are showing up on the resale market, notably on eBay, most recently April 7 and June 2 when they sold for $199.99 and $165.50, respectively.

Model traction supplier Custom Traxx formerly produced a set of decals for TARS cars: New York City, TARS / Steinway Lines, (Premier Set) - $16.95 [CN-629] This premier HO scale finishing set was requested by many professional model painters and included all required numbers, lettering, striping and heralds New York City Third Avenue Railway System (TARS) streetcars. Included were silver, black and yellow striping, silver and red numbers, over 100 different destination signs in three different sizes and 48 signs with red or maroon backgrounds. Heralds for the Third Avenue Railway System, Third Avenue Transit System and Queensborough Bridge Railway were also included. Below is a photograph of Custom Brass TARS 400 series car lettered with this decal set. This set is currently out of stock. There are no plans to re-run at this time!

Some Possible Issues with Bowser HO Scale Streetcars!
(And Some Solutions!!)
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The Times has been advised about two issues that may affect a very small group of Bowser HO scale trolley users. One is electrical conductivity of some of the trolley poles and the other is the turning radius. The trolley poles issue may be present on all the New Orleans cars and their clones (SKU 12810 through and including 12831) and the PCC cars just released in October (SKU 12691 through and including 12704). The other is a problem affecting the turning radius of the latest group of PCC cars just released.

By the time of the latest release of PCC streetcars, Bowser had released three separate runs of the San Francisco ex-Philadelphia PCC cars and three runs of the original PCC cars. These models, with over 5000 units delivered, had trolley poles using the basic Miniatures by Eric (Eric Courtney) HT-P2 design. The Southern California Traction Club (SCTC) and Custom Traxx would merely take the trolley pole out of the wrapping, clean the shoe and the pin base with a Dremel wire brush, put it on the car and away they would go, DC or DCC.

All of this changed with the New Orleans cars. A couple of the trolley poles just would not give good operation on DCC. Some of those that would not work on DCC seemed to work on DC. We did not really pursue the issue at first and just exchanged the original poles with some Miniatures by Eric HT-P2 poles on the cars and they worked fine. Then last month, the latest batch of PCC cars arrived at the club test facility and one or two of those trolley poles exhibited similar performance issues. Custom Traxx and the SCTC checked everything relevant including the relocated ANT-TRK switch, the trolley pole pin base and the pin base receptor. The cars would work fine running two-rail but very erratic on overhead wire using the provided trolley poles.

During an intense testing session conducted on October 8-9, 2014 in two separate locations, it was concluded that the trolley pole base was the source of the problem. They soaked the bases first in Lacquer Thinner and then in Acetone. There was some improvement in the pole's performance after the soaking in Lacquer Thinner and Acetone. However, the performance was still not what they would have expected. But they were now convinced that the problem was in the pole base.

Then they realized that after all this soaking, the black coating that we assumed was paint did not dissolve or show any signs of weakening. It was then that they hypothesized that the manufacturer might have been painted (or blackened) the poles using a procedure called Electrostatic Spray Painting (ESP). ESP makes a strong durable finish by electrostatically negatively charging the paint or chemical blackening and positively charging the object to be painted. It also saves paint and forms a very good bond. Items to be painted must be conductive or made conductive prior to painting for ESP to work. The resultant paint particles have the same charge, so they repel each other and this helps to distribute the paint particles evenly and get uniform coverage. Also every bit of surface area including areas not able to be seen get covered in a coat of paint or blackener. Paint and especially blackening agents are known for their insulating qualities. So whatever covering was used most likely had electrical resistance and insulation properties that would impair the ability of the trolley pole to carry the track voltage and especially the DCC signals from the computer.

It became more of an issue in September when a customer of the New Orleans cars sent a pole to Bowser for evaluation and the pole was sent to Custom Traxx. At first it was thought that there was paint in the trolley shoe but that proved not to be the entire problem with the pole. Both Custom Traxx and the SCTC began testing the pole but found that it acted the same as some of the other poles with which they had issues.

It was not until the Custom Traxx/SCTC team started to remove the springs and check out the entire pole base that they arrived at their rather simple remedy. There was a solid coating of paint under the place where that springs had been formally located. The springs were not soldered to the pole, just held in place by grooves and friction. It was obvious that very little or no power could be transferred via the springs or the pole base hinge. The paint or blackening agent was acting as an insulator and a pretty good one. So the team removed the springs, which were also totally painted/blackened, scraped the black from the spring end loops and the mounting surfaces on the pole base itself. This was not as easy as one would have thought. Whatever the material was, paint or blackening agent, it was bonded to the surface and difficult to remove. They used an Xacto knife and a Dremel wire brush to prepare the areas. Then the springs were replaced and soldered to the pole base. This was done first to the top of each spring and then the bottom. This assured two reliable circuits from the pole base to the trolley pole itself.

Within one week, the team had modified at least six Bowser poles in this manner and the results are identical....all good. As far as the Times knows, this problem only applies to some of the trolley poles supplied with the New Orleans cars that were released in June 2014 and the PCC cars released during September/October 2014. Bowser has assured us that this problem will be corrected prior to the next issue of any streetcars.

Issue Two - Turning Radius:

These issues may affect those who have purchased one of the latest release of Bowser PCC cars and wish to operate them on curves less than 9" radius.

Bowser Manufacturing introduced their Phase IV PCC cars in October with the arrival of the LATL "Fruit Salad" 3126 and 3137, Pittsburgh 1730 "Mod Desire", Toronto TTC 4317 and 4399, and SEPTA Phase II 2095 and 2730. These are the smoothest and quietest PCC cars running cars yet.

We have been made aware of three possible issues with these PCC cars. The first is the trolley pole issue reported in the first paragraph in this article. Since it's introduction in 2009, the Bowser Ready-To-Run PCC car has always been able to negotiate 9" radius curves but has been able to be modified to negotiate curves as small as 5.75" radius. While there was an effort to build this low-radius capability into the Phase Four models, a second issue still remains with these cars and a third has arisen.

The second issue is the thin brass guard over the power truck gear tower that should be carefully removed. This guard, installed as an oil splash shield has been placed on all model PCC cars manufactured to date, and can strike the window casting inside the car, and restrict the swivel of the power truck. According to Bowser Manufacturing, this guard will be removed in all future streetcar releases. But, unfortunately, you will must remove the shell to access this part. This was not an issue when using the ANT/TRK switch required the shell removal. The relocation of the ANT/TRK switch makes the removal of the shell unnecessary. The shield is a thin brass part that can be carefully removed. Avoid the thin enameled wires that power the headlights and dash lights when removing the shield.

The third problem which just has arisen involves the brass pickups, known as part 1388. This is the part that transmits electric power from the wheels to the circuit board. When the decision was made to install speakers in all cars, the tabs on this part were shortened by the manufacturer to clear the bottom of the speaker housing which is directly over the rear, unpowered truck. Below left is the part 1388 as used until recently. At right is the manufacturer redesigned part now used.

The manufacturer for some reason has chosen to solder the pick-up wires only to one side of their fabricated part, regardless which side the of the truck that the part is placed. Unfortunately, on one side of the car, this places the wire and the solder on the outside of the part which can reduce the swing of the truck. Up to this point this is confined to the operators (no doors) side of the car and involves only the black wire from the power truck.

After many possible remedies were evaluated, John McWhirter of the Southern California Traction Club developed the simplest solution. Just remove the original equipment part 1388, detach the wire, remove all solder from the one side, prepare and resolder the wire to the opposite side and replace the part. You can also reshape the top of the tabs to fold over the power truck gearbox before you resolder the wires to that area, ensuring that there would be no interference with the swivel of the power truck. This should be attempted only by serious modelers with good soldering skills and a steady hand. Both of these procedures can be done without disassembling the car. The club subsequently performed this procedure on five such cars after which they all worked satisfactorily and operation on tight radius curves resumed.

For the record, Phase I Bowser PCC cars are defined as the first ones released in 2009. They have flat faced nickel silver wheels and the older track brakes used on the Bowser traction mechanism since 1999. The Phase II cars came with windshield wipers, simulated super resilient wheels and B-2 "sideframes". Phase III cars eliminated the original brass bearings, part 1257 and replaced part 1256, the current pickup with part 1388, which performed the functions of both former parts 1257 and 1256. Phase IV cars have the ANT/TRK switch relocated to the bottom of the floor, thereby eliminating removal of the shell to activate. Process improvement has been continuous with these cars.

Notice: Trolleyville will not accept any level of responsibility for models damaged during the conduct of any of these procedures.

TCS supports the traction modeler....again!
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Back in 2009, when Bowser introduced the DCC-ready PCC car, there were no decoders ready for that task. TCS' John Forsythe jumped in and created the M4T which gave the modeler actual realistic PCC brake lights and an automatic passenger stop sequence and the decoder used the NMRA 8-pin plug to attach to the circuit board so no soldering was necessary.

Later, when they were developing their "Keep Alive"™ decoders, they selected Custom Traxx and the Southern California Traction Club (SCTC) to test the item. You can imagine how elected the test observers were when a trolley operating on overhead wire ran through almost 8 inches of fishing line which had been substituted for powered overhead wire.

Then John and company added the trolley features to all of their decoders. The traction modeler had only to set CV 8 = to 11 or 12 to activate those features. But at that time all of the TCS decoders were either hard wired or installed using the NMRA 8-pin plug.

The decision by Bowser to go to the European 21- pin plug caught a lot of us by surprise but the purpose was to introduce the DCC/Sound Ready vehicle. This would mean that a speaker would be installed in every vehicle, whether DC operated or DCC operated and to upgrade a model to DCC/Sound would entail just plugging in the sound decoder. Again no soldering would be needed to upgrade the car. The New Orleans 900 series were available with ESU Lok Sound decoders using the 21-pin plug.

We knew that ESU had a non-sound decoder that could be used with the New Orleans 900 and possibly a PCC car but since we were very comfortable with the management style and customer service continually displayed over the years by Train Control Systems (TCS), both SCTC and Custom Traxx approached John again. Recently, John in concert with Jordan McBride provided us with a the first EU621 decoder programmed the same as the M4T. It arrived at the Custom Traxx test facility on Saturday, October 11 and was installed in a DCC/Sound Ready Bowser LATL PCC freshly renumbered to 3156 already reserved for this task. It performed as we have become accustomed to from products by TCS.......excellently!

So modelers with DCC/Sound Ready (Phase IV) PCC cars not interested in sound may opt for the EU 621. Just set CV8 = 11 after you install the decoder and you are off and running.

We expect to test a Keep Alive™ decoder next.

Southern California Traction Club Opens a New Door!
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