Street Car real min radius

My MTH PCCs are all PS2.  I have a number of them.  All have operated just fine on SuperStreets/E-Z Streets D21 curves.

My MTH PCC trolleys ran well out of the box on D-21 but are not real happy on D-16, but then neither are my Williams Peter Witt or Atlas trolley, either.  I can't remember if they ran on D-16 out of the box (my guess would be no), but it is easy usually to get any trolley with swiveling two axle trucks to tolerate D-16 byopening up the swivel angle - usually just requires a bit of work with a knife or a Dremel, etc., so they are bit happier with the rate of curvature, but all of them still struggle a bit in a curve just of power required to get around it: and the front, rear, and side stick out over the road edge is horrendous, and means, among other things, that if you have set up adjacent lanes with nested D-21 and D-16 curves, you can't run anything in the other lane that will pass the trolley in a curve.     

Mine will run on D-16 but slows some....but OK as it's kinda like the real ones I rode in Pittsburgh!!!!!

Testing the PCC on a layout.....

My MTH Septa trolley from a few years ago runs on the D-16 curves in Super Streets.

The trolley doesn't have the PS-1  or anything in it.

The reason the manual lists 027 track as the minimum is 027 is usually the smallest track that most companies will recommend using anything on, especially MTH.

Lee Fritz

From

http://www.railwaypreservation...ley/philadelphia.htm

"The (Philadelphia) system's aging infrastructure will present planners with some real challenges, including some of the sharpest curves of any of the world's streetcar systems at 35 feet (10.7 meters).

Assuming the quote means radius and not diameter this scales out to 8.75" So you should be able to use D16 Streets curves, albeit painfully and not representative of most of the US.

You, bet, Dave!  Growing up in Washington, D.C., I was a 'regular' on the Capital Transit PCC's....Especially the Union Station/Cabin John run.  (A streetcar ride that went from the iconic station by Capitol Hill, out through Georgetown where the underground power shoe was switched to the standard overhead wire, out through the woods along the Potomac River to Cabin John, MD, just after the next-to-last stop...Glen Echo and its to-die-for-if-you-were-a-kid-growing-up-in-D.C. amusement park, HUGE public swimming pool.) 

Traversing the sharp curves on the route was most fun if you rode on the back bench seat of the car.  The 'swing' of the rear as the car cranked its way through the curves was a great precursor to some of the rides at Glen Echo!!  Ah, memories!   What a blast!!

What's needed to make the PCC's on a D-21 or D-16 curve complete is a 'wheel-squeal' from the onboard sound as it goes through the curve.  On a DCC system you could button-activate such a sound feature.  On the TMCC or PS systems, I suppose you could adapt some sort of cam switch that would detect the sharpest rotation of the truck to trigger and hold the appropriate sound.

Good grief....am I about to get hooked to trying to incorporate a PCC into my layout?  I have NO idea how I'd do this!   Hmmmmmmm......

KD

Glen Echo Park still exists now as a city park. Some buildings are still around from the trolley park days like the Carousel. New buildings have been added like US Military experimental Yurts, like Mongolia, now used as artist studios. Interestingly a storm revealed an even older structure under the former roller coaster a 19 th century Chautauqua Ampitheater was hidden under it. It is great that anything was preserved and is still in use.

Other Pennsylvania cities have narrow streets beside Philadelphia, try either Reading, Scranton, or Wilkes Barre. And they had street cars or trolley's as well.

Lee Fritz

Harold Cox's book Early Electric Cars of Philadelphia 1885-1911 reproduces a photo from 1906 showing a turnaround loop within the width of Market Street at its foot near the river. When Philadelphia was laid out by Wm Penn he specified that High St (the name then) be 100 ft wide. So the loop is contained within no more than that width. One of the trolleys shown is a single truck car; the other may be a two truck example.

If a trolley line was laid out on a narrow street it is more likely that a broader curve would have been used at corners (having the track swing out before entering the curve proper) to avoid crushing pedestrians &c.

Cool, thanks guys.  Too bad SuperStreets aren't in SCARM, that'd help with my planning.  At least I know so I can now use my PCC going around the block with automated stops.