Bob Wilhelm’s Q&A – Marshall Steam Museum (Friends of Auburn Heights)

Have an idea for Bob Wilhelm’s Q&A or want to share your insights? Email Bob at Questions@AuburnHeights.org.

PLEXI CAR

An alternate to silica-based glass is acrylic glass. Technically known as Poly-Methyl-MethAcrylate (PMMA), we commonly refer to the material generically as plexiglass. Developed by Rohn & Haas Company commercially in 1933, their Plexiglas product was trademarked in Germany as the world’s first clear acrylic material. Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. (ICI) registered the product in the UK at about the same time as “Perspex.” In the U.S., E.I. du Pont trademarked Lucite as their acrylic glass product offering. Other companies have trademarked names such as R-Cast, Optix, and Cyrolite.

In 1939, for the World’s Fair, the car below was featured having its exterior body panels fabricated from Rohm & Haas Plexiglas. It was advertised as the first “transparent car” in America. Who was the manufacturer of the automobile pictured, and which major automotive manufacturer showcased the vehicle during the fair?

Answer

Often called the PlexiPontiac, or the Pontiac Ghost Car, it is a 1939 Pontiac Deluxe Six. It was built as a collaboration between General Motors, Pontiac, and Rohm & Haas for the GM “Futurama” exhibit and was part of the “Highways & Horizons” display. Built on a 120-inch wheelbase, Pontiac four-door Touring Sedan framework and chassis, the metal structural components were copper plated while the car’s accent hardware was chrome plated. Black rubber moldings were changed to white rubber as were the tires, for contrast. The engine used was a 222.7-cubic-inch L-head six-cylinder that generated 85 brake horsepower for the three-speed manual transmission.

Costing $25,000 to build, the odometer displays only about 100 miles of driving! After being one of the must-see highlights at the World’s Fair, the car toured the U.S. before becoming a feature attraction at the Smithsonian Institute for a number of years. Upon leaving the Smithsonian in 1947, it was displayed in several Pennsylvania dealerships. It was purchased in the early 1970s by a private owner, who had it restored. Sold to another private owner in the late 1970s, it was again sold to a private owner in the 1980s. In July 2011, it was auctioned by RM Auctions for $308,000.

A second car was built after the Ghost Pontiac on the Pontiac Torpedo Eight chassis for the Golden Gate Exposition. It too toured the country, but its status is unknown.

July 15, 2019

RARE ITEM

The rare item pictured has been awarded a National Register of Historic Places listing. It is located on the border between Delaware and Maryland in Delmar but originally found use in northern Delaware as well as 25 miles away in Hurlock, Maryland. After serving some of its life in Cape Charles, Virginia, it has been returned to Delaware. What is the pictured item called, and how was it used?

Answer
The item pictured is a railroad Highball Signal dating from the earliest railroads that operated on the DelMarVa Peninsula. From the Delmar Highball Signal’s National Register Listing;

The term highball, meaning a fast train, or permission for a train to proceed at full speed, derives from this type of signal. A highball signal was a white sphere mounted on a pole next to the railroad tracks. If the track was clear ahead, the signal attendant would raise the ball to the top of the pole by means of a pulley. If the track was not clear, he would lower the ball so that it would not be visible to the engineer of an oncoming train; hence, the term highball came to be synonymous with a clear right-of-way. Positioned as shown in the image, at the midpoint of the pole, the signal indicated the engineer was to proceed ahead slowly with caution.

Highball signals were frequently mounted near stations or at section boundaries. The design of highball signals varied among the railroads; some were equipped with a black ball that would replace the white one when the track was not clear. Some signals, like the one at Delmar, were provided with a box into which the ball was lowered when the track was not clear. Some railroads constructed the ball with glass windows such that it included a kerosene font and burner and could be lit at night for better visibility. Other types of signal, notably the semaphore and the three-light electrical signal, eventually replaced the highball. The highball at Delmar is a steel sphere mounted on a wooden post, which is raised and lowered by of a chain hoist. It is no longer used to direct railroad traffic, but is maintained as a public exhibition in a park near the railroad.

The highball signal at Delmar is one of the last survivors of a type of traffic control that was in use before the advent of modern semaphore signals. The origin of the highball is unknown, but it probably was invented during the railroad expansion period of the 1840’s. As a signal, it is quite primitive, since it can convey only one piece of information: whether the track is clear or not. Modern signaling devices can transmit a variety of data to the engineer of an oncoming train. The last highball signal on a class 1 railroad in America was in operation at the interchange point between the Pennsylvania and Reading railroads near Wilmington Delaware, a few years ago; the highball was used at that point because the electronic control systems of the two railroads ended short of the interchange track and manual signaling was necessary.

The Delmar highball signal was originally in service at New Castle, Delaware, and then at Hurlock, Maryland. It was displayed for a time at Cape Charles, Virginia, and then was moved to Delmar, Delaware for display during the town’s centennial in 1959. It is maintained as a permanent exhibit by the town of Delmar, Delaware.

May 31, 2019

THE FIRST TRAIN ROBBERY

As the “rail road” was developing in the mid-1800s, it was inevitable an accident would occur. The Providence and Worcester Rail Road has the unfortunate distinction of recording the nation’s first head-on train accident near Pawtucket, Rhode Island. There were no engineer-operated braking systems on the cars, with only brakemen to manually turn a large wheel to apply brakes to each individual car. Electricity remained a novel laboratory experiment and use of kerosene lanterns to illuminate colored glass signals had not been thought of. Rails worked loose to derail trains, and the violent bouncing of wooden coaches heated by coal- or wood-fired potbelly stoves within often burst into flames. In severe accidents, cars might “telescope” where they folded into each other, similar to the spy glasses of the era. Chances of surviving a railroad accident were indeed minimal in America until the 1900s.

While a railroad accident was perhaps the top fear for passengers, the threat of a train being held up and the passengers robbed grew as more people used rail travel and the railroads transported goods and materials of greater value in their cars. In what year was the first railroad robbery committed?

ANSWER

The books of the late 1800s and the movies of the mid-1900s have tended to embellish the typical train robbery of the the late 1800s. Riding alongside a moving train and jumping aboard was a dangerous proposition. It was far easier for robbers to buy a ticket and board as a paying passenger to gain access to a train to be robbed. A few robbers could take over a train and bring it to a stop at a prearranged location where other gang members could board and not only relieve passengers of their gold jewelry and other valuables but dynamite safes in baggage or box cars.

The first train robbery in America most often cited to have taken place occurred on October 6, 1866. An Ohio & Mississippi Railroad train headed eastbound near Seymour, Indiana, was robbed by a gang of thieves led by the Reno brothers. Donning masks and displaying guns, they took control of the Adams Express Company car. After taking the keys to the local valuables safe and emptying it, they tossed the “thru passage” safes off the car for later opening. They signaled the engineer to stop the train, got off, and escaped into the night.

According to records with the Smithsonian Institution, the first railroad robbery occurred in January 1866. An unattended Adams Express car with safes containing over a half-million dollars of assorted valuables were emptied of their contents as the train traveled from New York City to Boston. The first movie to depict a train robbery was a 12-minute short silent film produced by the Edison Studios called The Great Train Robbery, written, produced, and directed by Edwin S. Porter. The original film has been preserved by the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as a “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” piece of American cultural history.

Waukee, Iowa, has erected a monument to “the first train robbery in the west.” The Jesse James Gang robbed a Rock Island Railroad train on July 21, 1873, by pulling up the spikes holding the rails to the ties. When the engine lost its footing on the loose rail, it flipped on its side, killing the engineer and injuring the fireman. As their first attempt at a train robbery, it netted the gang $2,000 cash in the safe and passenger valuables and currency.

May 6, 2019

NATURAL ICE HARVESTING

This past summer, as part of the Eastern Invitational Steam Car Tour, tour participants had the opportunity to visit the Antique Ice Tool Museum in West Chester, PA. The old barn, now converted into a museum, is full of artifacts of the 1800s, when natural ice was harvested from local creeks and ponds and stored over the summer months for consumption and for keeping food cold. Ice harvesting of America’s ponds and lakes became one of the nation’s biggest export incomes during the late 1800s, when more than two million tons of ice were harvested annually. When ammonia refrigeration plants began making year-round ice at the very end of the 19th century, more than 20 million tons of natural-formed ice were being harvested or produced commercially.

If one researches outdoor temperatures in the late 1800s, you will find weeks of below-freezing temperatures occurred during winter months in our area. This was more than sufficient “cold” to freeze the Red Clay Creek to a sufficient thickness that it could be harvested for ice. In February 1887, the Delaware General Assembly authorized the formation of the Greenbank Ice Company of Marshallton, DE, for the harvesting of ice on the Red Clay Creek. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is documented by the Evening Journal as harvesting 12-inch thick pond ice held behind the Greenbank Mill’s dam on January 14, 1893. On January 8, 1900, the Evening Journal documented that 6- to 8-inch thick ice was being harvested from the large lake at Brandywine Springs Amusement Park. The Mitchell family harvested ice in winter months for storage in the ice house alongside the farmhouse and behind the creamery, which could be used for keeping milk cold. No doubt the Marshalls harvested ice for storage from the tranquil waters behind their mill dams before the age of refrigeration.

Does anyone still harvest ice naturally in the U.S., and if your answer is “yes,” where is it done?

Answer

Natural ice is routinely harvested in Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin as well as Ontario, Canada, at least in 2019. The 190-year-old Maine ice harvest is performed by the Thompson Ice House Harvesting Museum. Around 7 tons of ice is harvested in mid-February and stored until the July ice cream social, where the ice is used to make ice cream and for snow cones.

The best known and perhaps largest natural ice harvest for keeping foods cold occurs annually at Squam Lake near Holderness, New Hampshire. Once a commercial ice operation first operated in 1897, today the ice is harvested using more modern methods for use by the Rockywold-Deephaven Camps, a resort community open only during the summer months. Roughly 3,600 ice blocks weighing 120 to 150 pounds (roughly 16″ x 19″ by the ice’s thickness somewhere between 12″ and 15″) are harvested in mid-January to mid-March each year for storage in one of two ice houses. The ice is used during the summer months to fill the “ice boxes” located in each of the cottages on the resort property. For more information visit their website.

April 8, 2019

GEORGE KROMER’S “ANTI-SKID ATTACHMENT”

George Kromer, the railroad fireman who created the distinctive railroad cap design, and his wife, Ida, used their success with engineer caps to expand into other garments. At the time, washing machines didn’t have the ability to “spin dry,” and as electricity wasn’t available across the U.S., many washing machines, if one could afford them, used a hit-n-miss gasoline engine for power. These early electric or gasoline-powered machines washed the clothes, but to remove the water they had to be “wrung dry.” As this didn’t remove all the water, machines had a set of powered rolling pin-type wooden cylinders that clothes could be pushed through to further remove the water. These “wringer-manglers” were constantly breaking buttons. George Kromer patented (Patent 1,695,592) an alternative to the button: Kromer’s “Garmet Fastener” had a tab that slipped through a square buttonhole-type opening to secure two flaps of clothing to be held together. As the fastener was all made of soft materials, wringer type washers didn’t ruin the Kromer Fastener as it did the buttons of the day.

Kromer, in later years and still living in Wisconsin, became annoyed at his automobile sliding about during the winter months on Wisconsin’s snowy road surfaces. He invented an “Anti-Skid Attachment” for the automobile. How did it work?

ANSWER

Kromer recognized that using either just the foot brake or a combination of foot brake and hand brake would often send a vehicle sliding along the icy road surface in any direction without the ability to steer or stop the vehicle.

Kromer’s patented (Patent 2,608,274) invention attached a pivotable U-shaped steel frame to a car’s rear axle. At the end of the U-arms were mounted either steel cylinders or flat plates, both of which had spikes, studs, grooves, or similar ice-gripping means. In the case of the cylinders, a ring gear was attached to the brake drum so that it engaged a gear on the spiked steel cylinder such that the cylinder rotated in reverse of the wheel’s rotation. The hand-brake lever was reconfigured to activate the U-frame to lower it to the road surface instead of applying the parking brake.

When a snow- or ice-packed slippery road was encountered, the mechanism could be activated from the parking brake handle. Coming to a stop, the driver would use the parking brake handle to lower the mechanism into contact with the icy road surface. If the spiked shoe was used, the gripping of the spikes on the shoe would bring the vehicle to a stop and hold it stopped along with light application of the foot brake. For units installed with the steel cylinder, when engaged with the hand brake, the steel cylinder would rotate in reverse of the wheel as it contacted the road surface to “dig in” to help stop the vehicle.

March 10, 2019