Steps for railway and street cars.

Application filed April 10,

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, Mae Beck, a citizen of the United: States, residing at Perry, in the county of Dallas. and State of Iowa, 5 have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Steps for Railway and Street Cars, of which the following is a specification.

This invention relates to improvements 10 in steps for railway and street cars and has for its object to provide steps that may be folded under the car when not in use.

Another object of the invention is to provide a folding stair that may be thrown 15 into or out of position by means of a lever.

Still another object of the invention is to provide a stair formed of lazy tongs.

With the above and other objects in view I have invented the device illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which—

Figure 1, is an end view of my device attached to the fragment of a car. Fig. 2, is a section on line A—A of Fig. 1. Fig. 3, is a side elevation of a fragment of a car 25 partly in section showing my invention in operative position, Fig. 4 is a top plan view of the device shown partly broken away, and Fig. 5, is a detail top plan view of a step member.

Like reference characters indicate like parts throughout the following specification and in the several views in the drawings in which 1, indicates a car having a platform 2, beneath which is rotatably mounted a rod 35 3, upon which is fixedly suspended levers 4, which are pivoted to the ends 5 and 6, of the lazy tong members 7 and 8, which are integrally connected by the step 9. The step 10, which is fixed on a plane with the plat40 form 2, has the upper ends 11, of the lazy tong members 12, pivoted thereto. The central portion of said members 12, are pivoted at 13, to the central portion of the members 7, and the lower portions 14 thereof, are pivoted to the ends 15, of the members 16, which support the step 17. All of the other steps 18 and' 19, are similarly formed and connected together by the members 20, 20' and 21.

1914. Serial No. 830,958.

Fixedly mounted upon the rod 3, is a 50 lever- 22, slidable in the guide members 23, and by operating this lever, the lazy tong will be extended or collapsed to throw the steps into or out of operative position.

By means of my invention, the platform 55 of a car, no matter how high from the ground may be easily accessible by any desired number of steps, the rises of which are of such a height as to ifiake comfortable steps for those ascending to the platform. 60 Although the steps when in operative position may extend out beyond the sides of the car, when they are collapsed to the inoperative position, as shown by dotted lines in Fig. 1, they come within the plane of the 65 car sides and below the platform 2.