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William Butler, Conway’s chief rolling-stock engineer, was the person responsible for much of the cars’ design. Conway and Butler laid out the plan for a lightweight car, made of aluminum and steel, that would possess the rigidity necessary to sustain velocity over tangent track at a speed of eighty miles per hour—while maintaining suitable riding characteristics. Conway gave GE and WH the job of marrying a one hundred-horsepower motor to a twenty-eight-inch wheel. He handed CCCo the job of creating a low-level truck that could both withstand the stresses of high-speed operation and provide a comfortable ride. Above all, though, Conway wanted Butler to design cars that fit the topography of the area. Consider C&LE’s physical plant—long tangents, minimal grades, and limited street running on the Columbus and Toledo divisions. Conway believed that the C&LE was made for high-speed operation. He wanted a customized passenger car—one built for Ohio’s flat farmland and the C&LE’s steam-railroad type, cross-country rights-of-way.

Because Conway and Butler also wanted the C&LE interurbans to operate economically, CCCo had to design the cars for one-man operation. Also, since power consumption varied directly with weight and surface area, Conway and Butler opted for a very light, low-level car. In keeping with this objective, Butler installed full-length side panels of nine-gauge aluminum, and he eliminated the heavy center sills found in more traditional passenger interurban construction (see Fig. 24). The frame was held together at the floor by a fragile looking set of steel channel cross-sills and the car’s light body bolsters.9 Butler secured the bolsters to the horizontal flange of the angle side sills. He should have bolted them to the vertical flange as well. Yet, despite the seemingly insubstantial construction of the underframe, the car retained its necessary rigidity.

The side posts were Armco steel channel and the side sills three-by-five-inch steel angle. There was a six-foot inverted sill section riveted to each side sill to provide reinforcement just over the body bolster. Butler hoped these measures would prevent damage to the posts and other framing members from incessant truck pounding. Unfortunately, the inverted sill section proved inadequate, and the post footings over the bolster fractured from the stress. Car restoration specialist Ed Blossom found this condition on cars 110 and 117.10 Butler’s decision to rivet aluminum plate to a steel frame produced an electrolytic reaction that gave rise to corrosion in the side panels and the front and rear dashers. Just when this phenomenon became apparent to C&LE management is unknown. It is known that during the 1930s the C&LE began replacing the siding on some of its cars with steel. And the shop crews of the Lehigh Valley Transit Company (LVT) detected powdering at the skirt early on as they ran the cars through the wash track. The Lehigh Valley Transit and the Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Railway purchased nineteen of C&LE’s original twenty cars in the late 1930s.

Butler incorporated a number of interesting features in the front-end design: a tapered vestibule, frameless windows, and canted window posts. This layout gave excellent visibility and the car a unique look. The rakish design of the pilot became a trademark of the cars (see Figs. 23 and 25). Housed within the front-end dash-light shroud were five incandescent bulbs that illuminated the front end of the car, producing a dramatic effect at night. The cars’ classification lights were set in cylindrical housings at the top of the two front corner posts above the window level. The rear end of the high speeds (Fig. 26) shows innovations found commonly in motor bus design of the 1930s, and Butler adapted these features nicely for interurban car use. Of note are the wide canopy over the rear windows and the red stoplight (located below the trolley retriever) that activated when the motorman applied the air brakes. Also found on the back end was a steel anticlimber positioned just above a bus-type, chromium-plated, spring bumper. The rounded windows of the car provided excellent visibility. Under the canopy, opening into the parlor section of the 120s and baggage section of the 110s, were the horizontal louvers of a ventilator installed to provide fresh air to the rear compartment. The C&LE eventually had to close the louvers because at high speeds they sucked in snow and dust.

Figure 27 displays the interior of coach 110 looking forward. The dark green, double-bucket leather seats are number 900-Ds, Hale & Kilburn’s best. The same type of seat was used to fit out the coach section on Indiana Railroad’s high speeds. The toilet room on the left side was walnut stippled. Blossom advises that these interiors may have been the last of the modern cars to use natural varnish woodwork and artificial wood graining, both cherry and walnut. The CCCo fit out the rear section of the interior of the 120s with couches, lounge chairs, tables, and reading lamps. Seating in the forward section of the 120s was coach style and employed the same Hale & Kilburn seats found on the 110s. Figure 28 shows the front vestibule interior of a 110. Under the left window is the master controller, a GE C-129. The WH cars had HLF control. H stands for hand (rather than automatic) control. L stands for line, that is, the control system operates on power taken from the line—the overhead trolley wire. F stands for field. The car, at balancing speed, switched to short field operation. Both controllers employed safety features (deadman control). To the right of 110’s controller was the WH M-33 self-lapping brake valve, one of the most advanced interurban air-brake systems of its day. The ring below the valve handle, when pressed downward, lowered and activated the car’s magnetic track brakes. The motorman had the option of using both the air brake and the magnetic track brake simultaneously during an emergency. Next to the brake was the National Cash Register (NCR) fare register stand. Farther right was the Peacock staffless aluminum hand brake; and overhead, left of the mirror, was the MS-46 control switch, opened by an air-driven piston in emergencies, and to the right of the mirror was the car’s control and reset switch.

GE and WH took on the job of developing downsized, compact, air-cooled, 100-horsepower motors (four per car) geared to turn a 28-inch wheel. Small wheels occasioned a low-level car. A low-level design improved the aerodynamics of the interurban, which in turn reduced power utilization costs. But GE and WH had to deal with the problem that compact or small motors had less surface area and therefore gave up thermal capacity, or the ability to dissipate heat. Well-designed armature fans and materials that shed heat readily, for the most part, mitigated this problem. GE and WH produced similar motors: the WH 539A-1 and the GE 706A. Both motors were box-framed and self-ventilating, with a lightweight case containing a set of four field poles and four commutating poles. The companies employed a multiple fan mounted on the armature shaft to provide ventilation. The weight with pinion, gear case, axle collar, and axle gear of the WH motor was 2,677 pounds. The GE motors were heavier at 2,800 pounds, although subsequently GE fabricated a lighter model of the 706. GE wired its motors to operate at 600 volts and employed a gear ratio of 1.79, while WH operated at 300 volts with a gear ratio of 1.4.11

GE equipped its cars with PC-12 E-4 automatic motor controllers with field tapping secured to the underframe of the cars. The GE 110s ran as locals, making frequent stops and speed changes. An automatic controller held motor currents relatively constant, avoiding dangerous peak loads that damaged the motor. The PC-12, used on 4-motor equipment, employed an air-driven camshaft designed to open contactors that cut out resistance in the motor circuit. A current limit switch regulated the timed automatic control.12

Figure 29 shows CCCo’s ABC 74-D railway truck designed specifically for the C&LE. The truck had 28-inch wheels, the journal boxes were of wing-cup design, and the top chord of the arch bar was made of channel steel. The ABC 74-D proved to be an excellent truck, exhibiting good riding qualities and requiring nominal maintenance. The truck carried magnetic track brakes designed to hang just above the rail between the wheels. When activated, they added 30 percent additional braking capacity to the existing straight-air brake system. The magnetic track brakes were meant for emergency use only.13