US134060A - Improvement in street-railway cars - Google Patents

Description

wju. T. HUGHES.

Street Railway Cars.

N0. 134,060,- Paten ted Dec. 17, 1872.

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

WILLIAM H. T. HUGHES, OF BROOKLYN, NEW YORK.

IMPROVEMENT IN STREET- -RAILWAY CARS.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 134,060, dated December 17, 1872.

.To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, WILLIAM H. T. HUGHES, of Brooklyn,in the county of Kings and State of New York, have invented a certain Improvement in Railway Cars, of which the following is a specification: Y

This invention is designed to provide a railway car capable of meeting the requirements or tastes both of those who, under any given circumstances, prefer an open, and of those who prefer a closed car. It consists in the combination, upon the ordinary wheeled support of a common car, of an open-car body and a closed-car body, whereby the desired object is secured.

Figure 1 in the drawing is a side view, and Fig. 2 is a vertical longitudinal section, of a railway car constructed according to my invention.

. Similar letters of reference indicate correspondin g parts in both figures.

B is the frame which carries the floor and supports the other portions of the superstructure of the vehicle, and which rests in the usual manner upon wheels. This wheeled support may, when the car is to be used on street railways, have at the front the usual platform 0 for the driver, and be furnished with the ordinary or any suitable draft appliances. The roof D may extend over the whole area of the car intended for occupation by passengers, and near the center of the space, below it or at desired points along the length of the car, is provided a transverse partition, E, which thus divides the passenger-space into two parts. One of these, preferably the front or forward one, as represented in the drawing, is inclosed both at front and sides, and, being furnished with seats F and also with doors and windows of any appropriate form and size, constitutes of itself a closed-car body, affording the same protection to passengers as do cars comprising the whole or nearly the whole available area of the car-floor. The other portion of the space beneath the roof is open at sides and rear, and furnished with transverse seats F, thereby constituting an open-car body aifordin g the same free circulation of air, freedom of vision, and the like that characterize the so-called open cars, the bodies of which are without sides and the seats of which have an arrangement similar to that just described.

By this means a free choice in the same vehicle or car is afforded to passengers between an open and a closed car body, so that those desiring the shelter and protection from dust, &c., afforded by the ordinary close car can obtain the same, while others-for example, while smoking-may avail themselves of the open portion with all the same advantages afforded by an open car of ordinary construction.

Easy access is had to either the open or closed portion of the car by means of a longitudinal step, G, provided at each side of the car at a suitable distance below the level of the floor and above the ordinary level of the street or ground on which the track is laid.

What I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is

A railway car, a portion of which is constructed as a close car and another portion with its sides and seats open, substantially as shown and described.

WILLM. H. T. HUGHES. Witnesses:

CHAS. H. SoHooH, W. A. DIGKMAN.

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