Oral History Interview
Dick Bowser (Engineer and Inventor of the Arch Transportation System)
Supplemental Information
Received by Bob Moore, Historian, JEFF
August 16, 1996
BOWSER: Several times I have committed myself to telling you some Arch stories, and [I thought I would] put them on a tape and send them to you, and this is going to be an attempt to [tell] some of those [stories]. You listen to them after you get it, and if you want them re-done, or if you can work off of what I've given you, that will be fine. I am not going to get into a lot of technical stuff about the trains right now, maybe I can do that at some later time.
In I would say late April or May of 1967, I came up to the Arch to make a final inspection as part of my contract. When I got there both trains were operating and we tested them and we checked things out and so forth, and they were acceptable. However, at that time it was apparent that there was a tremendous amount of moisture in both of the legs of the Arch, and this moisture would condense on the steel and on the concrete walls down in the lower area, and would run off for 24 hours a day, and it continually went into the boxes that have the control units for the door operators. The [boxes] had some rectifiers in them that could not stand this dampness, and it was ruining one rectifier after another. Planet [Corporation] was stuck with buying and installing new rectifiers, and as I recall they cost about $13 apiece, to keep the door operators [functioning]. No one, [not] the Park Service, or the contractor, Planet, no one would stand the expense of running the air-circulating fans 24 hours a day to eliminate that moisture. One of the factors on that, as I recall, was you had to have a full-time, qualified electrician on the power panel, just because some equipment was turned on in the building, in order to have the electric power to run the fans. This made it a tremendous expense, because on overtime those fellows got time and half and double time, and everyone refused to put up the money to do this. So the water ran down the equipment and down in those panels day in and day out.
The south leg of the Arch [lagged] behind the north leg, in that very little of the air conditioning system had been put into it. So after this inspection, the south train was parked so the air conditioning people could put the ducts up through the leg of the Arch. I don't recall how much they had to do, but it took a great deal of time for it. The north leg had most of the air conditioning in, it was pretty well completed. However, the steps and the whole lower load zone had nothing but rough poured concrete, the terrazzo flooring had never been installed. And as we approached a date when we could open the train for the public, there was no way we could get the terrazzo in, so the lower steps, and the whole walkway, and the actual loading zone itself, were all covered temporarily with plywood on 2x4s. This made it so the public could board the train. There were no stanchions or anything, so they used pedestals with ropes on them that they use in theaters to control people, and where they can walk. This is the way [the north leg was when it opened]. The air conditioning men worked almost totally on the south leg. When we finally opened, (and it seems to me it was after the 4th of July), the Arch had one train running, and the people had to go down and walk on those wooden steps. This went on for quite a while. We used to have to go in there with hammers and drive nails back down in the [temporary deck], so people wouldn't stub their toes and that sort of thing. Up at the top of the Arch, it was very plain. The whole visitor area was just painted, there was no carpet, there was no insulation or ceilings put into it, it was just all metal, and quite noisy when people were in there.
We finally started to run the train, and we were doing quite well with the one train. We had a few problems. Some of our problems were the mercury switches. Within the first week, there was a wire for one of the leveling motors on one of the capsules that looped down around in such a way that as [the train] went up and down in the Arch [the wire] would rub against the edge of the rail. One night [when the train was leaving the upper load zone the wire broke in two, and made it so there was no power to keep the capsules level. This was our first emergency situation, with people in the train. There was a couple of maintenance men there, and I got a call at home. I came tearing down there, and Ted Rennison came in, and we all got in there and were running around like chickens with our heads cut off. [We finally] got up [to the top]. During the construction phase [of the Arch] a power-threading machine had been adapted to put on the drive-motor shafts in an emergency, to move the train. This had never been done, but it was an idea that somebody had promoted; and of course, that thing was put on the [hoist motor]. We had an elevator man named Bill Nolan, there, and he said, "That is not going to work." And I said, "I don't think it is either, but we're stuck with trying this." So when they turned that [machine] on, to try to slowly pull that train back up into the station, the whole mechanism, [with] the load on the elevator, just spun the [machine] and flopped it all over up there. Fortunately, no one got injured before we turned it off and threw it away. And then Nolan went down [under the floor to the train control panel] and jumpered out some safety circuits and manually [operated] some switches [that] brought the train back into the upper load zone, so the passengers could get off. They'd been on the [capsules for] over an hour, and I think they were quite relieved to get off. Then they had to walk down to the [workman's] elevator and we carried them 10 or 12 at a time down the elevator. That's how they got out of the Arch. The other people who were up at the top of the Arch had to walk half way down [to the workman's elevator], because the train was not functioning. Of course, all this made the newspapers. We had [the train] back running again the next morning, there was nothing seriously wrong.
Dick's substitute transcript, a re-written page [as of October 27, 1997]:
Before the terrazzo flooring was installed some outfit sold Bi-State a crowd-control system for the lower load zones that consisted of an automatic ticket canceling unit that would cancel the tickets, count the tickets and return the ticket to the visitor as a souvenir. There was a large panel that displayed the time, number of riders, etc. Also, there were electrical controls for the eight turnstiles (one for each capsule) with locked-unlocked signal lights for each turnstile, all located in an additional control panel near the train control panels. As I recall this system cost between 50 to 60 thousand dollars.
This money was from the train operating income at a time when Col. Smyser would call the park superintendent if we used an extra hour in the morning to prepare the train, or call the newspapers if we had to stop the train during the day for a minor repair, because he was losing money.
The conduit for the crowd control wring was just installed in the south train so the terrazzo floor could be installed and the north train conduit was installed after the south train was operating. The plywood flooring was removed when the north train could be stopped.
As I recall the south train started to carry passengers in late February or early March 1968, 6 months after the north train started, and it was May or June 1968 before both trains were operating. Before the south train started we were able to replace the parts that were used to keep the north train running. We made some minor modifications. The south train started operations with practically no problems. The air conditioning system in the north leg also had some refinements made prior to operating both trains. I always felt that there was a lot of unfair criticism about the delay in operating both trains because it was much easier to say the trains weren't ready than to explain that the air conditioning and the terrazzo floors were not completed.
Actually, both trains could have been in operation in 1967 if the air conditioning and the floors had been ready.
Before the summer visitation rush started we realized that we had to stagger the trains operating schedule to prevent both trains from arriving at the top of the Arch at the same time. Unloading 40 passengers from each train at the same time 40 passengers were waiting to board, plus the accumulation of visitors at the top of the Arch was just too much for the limited space at the top. The whole crowd control system was of little if any value.
Original transcript:
It was within six months after that [the opening of both trains], that we had [some severe storms that caused] a flood of water, and it ran down the ramps into the visitor center. [From there] it ran down into the lower load zones, where the water was something like 18 feet deep. Fortunately the night that that happened, both of the trains were parked up in the Arch, so that the only thing we had to work on was coils on doors and switches and things like that. We had one train going within 24 hours after the flood, and the other one was going within maybe another twelve hours after that. There was no great damage done to anything, except that fancy crowd control system on the gates and the turnstiles and all that, [which] they finally decided that they weren't going to repair. The insurance company wouldn't pay them for it, and a few [other] things, I've forgotten just what it was. I think they finally got a settlement out of the insurance company, which I think the insurance company got from their original supplier, or something like that. [All of the electric wiring, the added control panels and the large panels that had been installed on a lower load zone wall that counted and displayed the number of visitors that had ridden the train each day were removed. All that remained were the turnstiles and the trains, and the lower load zones have remained like that ever since. Some time after that, some blocks of cello-tex were installed in the lower load zone to reduce the noise level. [In the observation area of the Arch the deck and walls were] carpeted. It made it much more comfortable as far as the heat and cold, and it made it a lot quieter. There have been considerable improvements made along those lines over the years. That's the end of one story.
