The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1900-01-18
HEATING OF STREET CARS
A Compile ATED NATTER WHICH
SCIENCE Is IMPROVING.
The Great DiMculty Of Keeping Even
Tempe ruture fmLThese Vehicles-
The Heat Units of n Crowded Car
Thorough study Of the Problem
Going on Constantly.


the morning and snuggles up. shivering,
close to the hot water heater in the corner.
he is likely to wonder whether there Is
science of car-heating. and TX there IS what
tn, railroad men know about it. He turns
IN his coat collar plunxes his hands deep
into his side pockets and frowns at the con-
ductor who comes in after his fare, leaving
the sliding doors wide open. He answers
the conductors "Cold night, sor. with an
expios ion. and il the mercury Is very low
and the home going man is In pugnaclous
frame of mind, he asks petulantly: Why
are these cars cold this time o day?
Company saving coal?" The conductor tells
him -The night air. sir. suppose, but
this doesn't satisfy the passenger, who. be-
ing In reflective mood. thinks Of the COM
Portable rides home he has had on other
nights lust as biting in the same cars.
Something must be wrong with the heater
the pipes frozen or something OF tat
kiad-the man decides, and he makes men,
tai memorandum 20 write to his newspaper
the next day telling the editor that some
thing ought to be done to compel the street
railway companies to heat their cars. He
pictures in his minds eye Senator Strikem
Introducing a bill at Albany. as result Of
the home going mans crusade, making it
mlSOemeaUOT, punlSndDlc ny uic VI I'LL
prisonment both. for street railway
company to operate car with tempera-
ture lower than Go degrees. F..
But as the car rumbles along uptown and
here saivering late-goers get on, the home
going man finds he is getting warm. and he
takes his hands out of his pockets. unbut
tons his coat and moves away from The cor
ner heater. The heating apparatus has
thawed out, he opines More belated trav-
eiers board the car and it becomes uncom-
fortably filled. All the time it grows warm
er. and the self-appOinted leader of the anti
cole; crusade is glad when new pas
senger crowds into the car and brings in a
breath of fresh cold air He may even get
out OH the back platform when nearing home
because he is uncomfortably warm in his
heavy coat. And. if he is not a stickler for
consistency, he tells the conductor that he
is making a Black Hole Of the car and he
Cight to open things up. The conductors
Cant please everybody all the time. sir"
doesn't smooth the ruined crusader He will
expose the company's antedluvian car
heating methods and have Senator Strikem
include in the Anti-Cold-Car Bill a clause
making it an equally punishable crime to
run cars heated above 80 degrees F. But
the next day the crusader of the night be-
fore rides down to his office in cars we'll
heated his mail engrosses his attention and
he forgets all about his discomfort of the
night before. Another popular crusade dies
In the chrysalis.
Now street railway men do study the
problem of keeping >theffeecars at an even
temperature in the winter and It is one of
the most perplexiny things they have to deal
with. The matter of heating a steam rail-
road coach, the doors of which are opened
only at stations far apart where there is
not the continuous getting on and getting
on OF passengers, is simple compared with
the everchangng requirements of street
car. Street railway men do not say thew
have mastered the heating problem and
they doubt if they ever will. But any New
Yorker needs only to recall that barba rian
relic, the hOrse-car stove of a few wears apo
TO recognize the fact that great progress in
car heating has been made very recently
anu that the discomforts of today are as
hothlng compared to those of short time
ago sometimes one hears it said that the
street railway companies don't bother much
about the comfort of their passengers
Nothing could be further from the truth
The companies are seeking bigger earnings
first of all. and nobody knows better than a
street railway man in this town how sensi-
tive earnings are to the whims of the pub
Ilc uncomfortable cars cut down earnings
Just as surely as comfortable cars build
them up. striking illustration of this is
found in one Of the old crosstown lines OF
the toWn-and one, too that seemingly does
very little business-where a recent setting
aside of the old horse cars for modern roll
ing stock operated by air motors has result
ed IN the increased activity of 1000 more
passengers carried every day.
The man who suffered first from tho lacL
he
or II IN the cable car, might have seen il
he had been wide awake, that every new
passenger was a car heater in himself, and
that 1t was animal heat that made the car
hrst comfortable and then uncomfortably
warm Were it not for the help of animal
heat the artificial heaters would not be
OF any great service in the bitterly cold
days of a New York winter One of the
railway experts has made a systematic in
vestigatlon OF this very thing, showing why
~ IS so much easier to keep cars warm dur
ing the rush hours than late at night He
hgures out that, in zero weather to keen a
short empty car heated to 65 degrees, it is
necessary to produce 20, 900 British thermal
units an hour-a "B. T. IT, by the way,
being the heat needed to raise the temper
allure of a pound OF water one degree.
When the temperature outdoors rises to 1917
; degrees above zero only 200 heat units
an hour are required to maintain the S.
degree standard. But load a car with pas
s'N"oStS' oNOiyoEc VI WHOM Is noaJor, ana
thousands Of b T. Us are at once sup
piled.
one passenger-an average human being
gives out enough heat to raise the tempera-
ture OF 251a pounds of water from the
freezing point to the boiling point in "a
hours: or. in an hour. one passenger gives
out 19l units of heat Fifty passengers.
therefore. would half heat a car in zero
weather. and carrying this figuring to the
12ls degree weather, $4,000 divided by 1911
Is about 6S, and so by crowding 63 passen-
gers into 20-foot carthey do it in college
towns after a football game-no artificial
heater would be required. Records kept of
Clark street car in Albany showed that,
with an outside temperature OF 3712 degrees,
heat was most needed in the early morning
hours when traffic was light, while in the
evening. when people were all homeward
bound. the animal heat was nearly enough
to maintain the 65-degree standard
There's a big difference between theory
and practice in matter like this. where
there are SO many slips and turns to spoil
fine reckoning, but even though we don t
know how many "B. T. US" an hour we
each produce when riding up and down
Broadway It's easy to see that every full
blooded passenger added to street cars
company raises the temperature of the car
just as a church, when the sexton opens the
doors, in comfortable place, but when a
big congregation has been in it for an hour
it's stihngly hot.
One needs to take ride alonk the river
front in a stove-heate horse car on a zero
weather day and then transfer to an cleo
trio car with it's unseen electric heating an