First all steel passenger car

Who built and when, was the first all steel passenger car? A co-worker of mine is claiming it was a NY city subway car.

Any help is appreciated.

I'm not ready to bet serious money on "first in the world": claims like that are often made without adequate footnoting! But the U.S., technologically backwards though it seems today in railroad matters, was at the leading edge at the beginning of the 20th C, so first in the U.S. might well have been the first in the world.

And first in the U.S. may well have been on a New York subway. Details on the relevant railroad, then a story about the cars.

The oldest part of the new York subway system is traditionally called the IRT, for the Interborough Rapid Transit company that built it. (Officially the nomenclature IRT/BMT/IND for the three components of the NY subway system has been dropped, but I'll bet most New Yorkers still use it. IRT lines are, for the most part, the ones with numbers on current subway maps-- BMT and IND lines have letter designations.) The first part of the IRT network to go into service opened in October 1904: the original line started in lower Manhattan, went up the East Side to 42nd Street, crossed to the West Side, then up to 145th Street: to ride the route today you'd need to ride three trains: East Side IRT (4, 5 or 6 train) from lower Manhattan to Grand Central, then the 42nd street Shuttle to Times Square, then the West Side (Broadway) IRT (number 1 local) up to Harlem. This route is (except for a viaduct crossing 125th Street in the "Harlem Valley") entirely underground, and safety and operational concerns motivated a search for new carbuilding technology.

The IRT published a book boasting about itself in 1904: "Interborough Rapid Transit: The New York Subway: its construction and equipment." This was reprinted some time around 1970 by Arno Press. (Weirdly, there doesn't seem to be a date in the reprint, but the Library of Congress Card Number is 71-90436, and the first two digits of LC numbers are APPROXIMATELY the year of publication-- typically off by one or two years, but I don't remember in which direction.)

According to this souvenir book, "At the time of placing the first contract for the rolling stock of the subway, the question of using an all-steel car was carefully considered by the management. Such a type of car, in many respects, presented desirable features for subway work as representing the ultimate of absolute incombustibility." Alas, this wasn't possible when the contract for the initial 500 cars was placed in 1902: "no cars of of this kind had ever been constructed." So the subway opened with cars of mixed (partly metal, but a fair bit of wood) construction.

Continuing, however, "The plan of an all-metal car... was not abandoned, and although none was in use in passenger service anywhere, steps were immediately taken to design a car of this type and conduct the necessary tests to determine whether it would be suitable for railway service. None of the car-building companies was willing to undertake the work, but the courteous coöperation of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was secured in placing its manufacturing facilities at Altoona at the disposal of the [IRT company]."

(Comment: More than courtesy was involved on the PRR's part, of course. They were working on their access to New York City, which involves a significant bit of tunnel trackage -- Amtrak's line from New Jersey to Penn Station in NYC and on to Long Island -- and so had an interest in all-steel, "incombustible," cars: I think that right from the inauguration of service to Penn Station in NYC only all-steelcars were allowed in the PRR's Hudson River tunnels.)

A prototype car was completed in December 1903... and was too heavy. So redesign work ("involving very original features") was undertaken, and when the 1904 book was written an order for 200 all-steel cars was under construction.

So your co-worker may be right!

(And, for all that New Yorkers now take it for granted, the IRT subway represented major innovation in railroad technology.)

(I may be able to find some more details-- check this string again in a day or two.)

Another book to look for: Gene Sansone, "Evolution of New York City Subways: an illustrated history of New York City's transit cars, 1867-1997", Johns Hopkins University Press (in association with the New YorkTransit Museum -- Sansone worked for the transit authority), 1997.

Quote: "Soon after construction of "The Subway" began in 1900, the IRT car engineers began to design suitable rolling stock capable of handling the heavy traffic they anticipated. The new car engineering work was finished in the Spring of 1902 and IRT management hoped to order an all-steel fleet because of the combustibility of wooden cars in the subway. The use of steel was a radical concept at the time, in fact, the only all-steel cars were experimental steam coaches built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in their own shops in Altoona." (P. 25)

(((Comment: It would be nice to know more about those "experimental steam coaches." I assume -- with nothing more than this to go on -- that they were self-propelled: steam predecessors of the later gas-electric and RDC. ... The stresses of carrying a power-plant would call for special design, so the IRT's cars would still, perhaps, have been the first all-steel "pure" passenger cars. (The IRT, in its early orders, got both powered cars, with motors on one truck, and unpowered trailers.) )))

On page 28 there is a photo of the prototype: "Steel car sample motor (3342). This car was built at Altoona Shops by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1903. It was designed by George Gibbs... and was tested on the Second Avenue El in 1904. Although deemed too heavy for passenger service, its testing paved the way for the Gibbs cars [the modified, production, steel cars that came after it] which followed. It was converted to a "pay" car at an early date and was scrapped in 1956."

(((Comment: 1956! I guess railroad museums were just getting started then, and the people founding them sometimes had little interest in anything other than steam, but it seems a pity that this one wasn't preserved!)))

Pp. 30ff has photos and brief descriptions of the production "Gibbs cars": "...designed by George Gibbs, Chief Engineer of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and manufactured by American Car and Foundry in 1904."

Diagrams and a bit of data on pages 86 and 88. The prototype had an empty weight of 89,960 pounds; the initial production version managed to shave this down to 85,780 (which got back over 89,000 after modifications). (Some later -- teens -- cars of generally similar dimensions and appearance got down below 80,000 pounds empty weight.)

Thank you for the help!

(((

Comment: It would be nice to know more about those "experimental steam coaches." I assume -- with nothing more than this to go on -- that they were self-propelled: steam predecessors of the later gas-electric and RDC. ... The stresses of carrying a power-plant would call for special design, so the IRT's cars would still, perhaps, have been the first all-steel "pure" passenger cars. (The IRT, in its early orders, got both powered cars, with motors on one truck, and unpowered trailers.) ))

)

The experimental steam coaches are nothing more than steel steam heated cars, NOT steam self propelled. Remember, wooden cars back then were heated by stoves and that would not be practical with steel cars going into New York Penn station tunnels. A new way had to be found to heat the new cars and it was steam heat.

BobLI--
Thanks for that! ... It sounds, then, as if the IRT's prototype wasn't the first all-steel passenger car built... but their 1904 "Gibbs cars" might have been the first series-produced and put into regular service. ... Given the PRR connection, Gibbs was probably involved with the Pennsy's experimental steam coaches too.
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The Stanley brothers, of "Stanley Steamer" fame, built their first steam automobile in 1897 (date courtesy of Wikipedia), and had sold a reasonable number by 1900. Given the expense of running separate locomotives for very short branch-line and local passenger trains, the PRR might well have been interested in investigating the possibilities of a self-propelled coach, so... The New Haven actually did acquire a self-propelled steam train, in the 1930s (the "Besler Steam Train"), so the idea of using a small steam motor on a passenger car to avoid a separate locomotive isn't absurd on the face of it. But I guessed wrong: thanks once more, BobLI, for the clarification.

According to Wikipedia: " ACF built the first all-steel passenger car in the world for Interborough Rapid Transit in 1904, and then built the first steel cars used on the London Underground in the following year"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_car_%28rail%29" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;