When the H&M/PRR joint service between Park Place, Newark and Journal Square operated, was a separate platform used at Manhattan Transfer? If not, did trains have to cross the "main line" at grade or did fly-overs exist?
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BaltOhio wrote:ExCon is correct; the PRR never had any combination AC-DC electrics. The New Haven did, of course, but I don't think that any of theirs worked as described. In fact, I can't imagine how a setup like that would work.Cosmopolitan (M2) EMU sets do this today every day all day long. I also recall several photos of the NH dual mode units. Connecicut banned 3rd rails, so their original power system was that triangular overhead cat layout, the units would lower pants once switched over to 3rd rail into NY.
While the DD-1s were originally the mainstay of the Penn Station electrification, many were sent on to the LIRR and replaced by 12 L5-class 1-B-B-1 (or 2-4-4-2 in steam terms) boxcab electrics that, like the DD-1s, used a jackshaft drive. Unlike the DD-1s, however, they had a rigid frame so in fact were a 2-8-2 with duplex drive.
The AC electrification out of Penn Station was completed some time in the early 1930s, as I remember, and was opened all the way to Washington in 1935. By that time the electric-steam changeover had ceased, but, as noted, Manhattan Transfer continued in operation until 1937 strictly as the H&M transfer point, since the H&M's facilities at the new Newark station weren't completed until then.
ExCon90 wrote:The engine change there was always 3rd rail to steam and vice versaOne possible exception: the PA&W didn't have catenary for a year or two after catenary reached NY Penn. So for all we know a train from NY to Bay Head in 1933-34 that changed engines at Manh Tfr might have left NY behind an AC electric.