What is a drill motor?

Here is a picture of one at the 207th Street Yard.

http://nycsubway.org/perl/show?94803

A little locomotive of some kind? What exactly is a drill motor?

Here is what I found on the NYC subway site. This was the IND's drill motor at 207th St. Shops for years. It is shown here in preservation status with restored R1-9 cars. This motor moved bad order cars into the shops for years!

The pic i found shows it with other cars.

Moving cars around, some railroads call it "switching" others call it "drilling".

The motorized device used to do it is referred to a drill motor.

The "Drill" refers to the act of doing something over and over again, like a military drill or a fire drill.

jtunnel wrote:Moving cars around, some railroads call it "switching" others call it "drilling".

The motorized device used to do it is referred to a drill motor.

The "Drill" refers to the act of doing something over and over again, like a military drill or a fire drill.

Thanks.

BobLI wrote:Here is what I found on the NYC subway site. This was the IND's drill motor at 207th St. Shops for years. It is shown here in preservation status with restored R1-9 cars. This motor moved bad order cars into the shops for years!

The pic i found shows it with other cars.

Link?

Drill Motor is a term more commonly associated with the BMT and IRT than with the IND. Both systems had wooden elevated cars whose 'gravity' type 3rd rail shoes could not reach the covered 3rd rail used on the subway lines. When a cut of these cars had to be moved over a subway route to a shop (Coney Island for example) a drill motor would be used to make the move. These locomotives had 'compromise' third rail shoes, which could reach either style of third rail. Such shoes were also used on el cars which also operated on elevated portions of the subway lines. In general, el cars were not allowed to operate underground under power and were towed through the tunnels by a drill motor.

http://www.nycsubway.org/

I found it on this web site but dont remember exactly where. Its a huge amount of info on it.

BobLI wrote:http://www.nycsubway.org/

I found it on this web site but dont remember exactly where. Its a huge amount of info on it.

Thanks.

Look what I found.

http://images.nycsubway.org/cars/sheet1 ... _41_42.jpg

Thats a fantastic find. Guess that solves the question!

The "drill motor" also looks like it could be use for maintenance of way as the undercutting of the cab on each side would permit a few lengths or rail to be transported to a repair site.

#41 still survives, it is at Coney Island and owned by the Railway Preservation Corp. It previously was owned by the Trolley Museum of New York from 1978 to 2008, but it never left NYC during that time.