I recently came across this image online here - it's an Electric Railway Journal cover from 1914, and the car it shows is, of all things, the 309! Obviously the existence of this image isn't exactly a secret, but neither my father nor I can recall having seen it. Come to think of it, maybe the bound volumes of ERJ's that tend to float around don't have these covers. Either way, it's an interesting image and there are plenty of odd little observations we can make about the car:
- Best guess is that the photo probably does date to around 1914. It can't be older than 1909 because the two cars behind the 309 are both Kuhlmans. The train in the distance has a flat roof line at the end, so it's probably either a Met train or a box motor.
- Obviously this was when the 309 still had its arched "streamer sash" but it's also early enough that the car still had its brass tube window guards.
- The car also still has coupling chains; these went away pretty early. The second-from-bottom bar on the pilot is still full-width; these weren't narrowed until about 1940. For some reason, the 303 seems to have been about the only car in the entire fleet not to have its pilot narrowed in this fashion, and its pilot remains complete in its original form.
- The car still doesn't have an anti-climber, of course. The Jewetts were delivered with anti-climbers, but all of the older cars (including the Kuhlmans) just had flat bumpers as shown here until anti-climbers homemade out of C-channel were installed around 1940.
- You'll note that the car has not yet acquired a windshield wiper.
- This is still the pre-retriever era, and the trolley rope is just tied off to a grab-iron. This image makes it look like there may have been some kind of rope guard that was only as wide as the train door. Also, the railroad didn't change from trolley wheels to trolley shoes until the late 1930s.
- That nifty pointed toilet vent later gave way to a more normal design.
- In the early years, as shown here, the headlight hanging hooks were screwed directly into the door rather into a metal plate. I think the metal plates came about somewhat early, maybe in the 1920s.
I'm not sure where this picture was taken, but it was somewhere alongside the CGW (judging from that boxcar in the left background) so my best guess is maybe Elmhurst or Berkeley.
Remember: Grip nuts make friends of high speed and safety!
11 comments:
I was thinking "grip nuts" was another name for a wild motorman, but I see it is some kind of advertisement. Two questions - when did the dash light and flip signs get installed below the motorman? Also, could this be at the IC interlocking at the Elmhurst/Villa Park border?
Olin
The dash lights and metal signs are thought to have been added to the fleet around 1914, give or take, based on the fact that the Jewetts (delivered in late 1913 and early 1914) were delivered from the car builder with them.
And yes, this could potentially be somewhere around the IC crossing, presumably just east of it.
Another question is that the cover implies that the 309 was equipped with grip nuts, but I’ve never seen such a thing anywhere. What sort of safety feature would these be applied to?
Grip nuts look to be some sort of self locking vibration proof fasteners. You can Google the term and find lots of varieties of such things today.
C Kronenwetter
It's true, of course, that there are lots of different types of locking nuts available, but I could not find anything online that looks like the ERJ cover ad, except that ad itself. It's an interesting design: it appears to fit onto a cylindrical object such as an axle or perhaps a bearing of some sort, but I can't imagine what the actual application would be. Also, you can't tell from the picture what the actual size of that grip nut might be.
Perhaps an alternate design for a track bolt nut that didn't use washers? The flat edges could keep the nut from spinning between the fillet and the base.
But the track bolts that I'm familiar with have an oval shoulder so they can't turn. I don't see how that would work.
I really think that these are just an early type of prevailing torque nut or "locknut," of which there must be a hundred or more designs by now. It would work by means of the domed portion being a little springy and thus keeping the bolt under tension. It would have to go onto a more-or-less flat surface so that only the outer flat parts of it were in contact. These could be made in any ordinary machine thread size.
R. W. Schauer
Just because the bolt can't turn, that doesn't mean the nut couldn't loosen. I agree with Richard about it being some sort of lock nut.
I can't find a way to edit my comment. So to add to my thought, perhaps track bolts didn't always have the lobe at the head and the design changed over time.
I don't know either, but in order to install and tighten the bolt something has to turn, and if this grip nut is against the web of the rail, it can't turn, so it has to be the bolt. Which means you're using an ordinary hex or square head bolt, I suppose. I'm no Dr. Track, but I would have thought the traditional track bolts dated back to 1914, at least. Maybe not.
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