Pittsburgh in San Francisco]

Tue Jul 6 23:19:35 EDT 1999

Rege Cordic left Pittsburgh in 1965 for a radio and TV career in Los
Angeles, but he's still remembered for his antics.  In 1954-55 he had a
daily 7 PM program ("On the Town") on KDKA on which he phoned people with
elaborate "put ons".  I recall two of his rail shows:

Once he called PRC and asked about renting a trolley for a party.  The
PRC person gave him all the information and rates, and then Rege asked
him if PRC could remove all the seats from the trolley so that his party
could dance as they rode around town.  PRC wouldn't give in to that
request.

Another time he called the B&O at Glenwood yard, and asked if he could
use the services of the railroad's steam crane.  He said he lived under
the railroad's bridge on the line between Glenwood and Hays, and he was
getting ready to pour a new concrete floor in his garage.  He wanted the
B&O to position the crane above his garage and pick it up while they
poured the concrete floor.  I think the B&O person said their answer
would depend on how much rail traffic they had that day.

Bob Rathke 7/6

On Tue, 06 Jul 1999 00:09:34 -0700 Jim Holland <pghpcc at pacbell.net>
writes:
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>Greetings!
>
>	While searching the web for PRCo, I came across one dance 
>sight where a 
>couple visiting San Francisco thought they rode a Pittsburgh PCC car!  
>This was 
>probably 1704, an ex SF 1100 series car bought second hand from St. 
>Louis and 
>repainted in St. Louis colors.  I wrote to tell them this and here is 
>the reply:
>
>-- 
>James B. Holland
>       To e-mail *off-list,* please click here: 
>mailto:pghpcc at pacbell.net
>              PITTSBURGH RAILWAYS COMPANY (PRCo), June of 1949 -- June 
>of 1953
>      Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (PTM) member #273; 
>http://www.pa-trolley.org/
>N.M.R.A.  Life member #2190; http://www.mcs.net:80/~weyand/nmra/
>
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>Message-ID: <602d52f7.24b2f82c at aol.com>
>Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 02:11:56 EDT
>Subject: Re: Pittsburgh  in  San  Francisco
>To: pghpcc at pacbell.net
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>Hi!
>
>Thanks for setting me straight!  I went to Carnegie Tech (E '65) and 
>the 
>Forbes Avenue cars ran just outside the window of my fraternity house. 
> At 
>that time, you could rent a trolley for a party, which we did about 
>twice a 
>year.  The best part of that was when they went up on Mount Washington 
>and 
>you could see the city at night.  
>
>At one time (1958, I believe) one of the fraternities (NOT mine!) at 
>Carnegie 
>Tech got a bunch of pledges to board a downtown car using pennies to 
>pay the 
>fare.  Some others applied thermite to the wheels and welded the thing 
>to the 
>track.  The thing sat there for two days and the PRC had to lift the 
>body off 
>the trucks with a crane. The fraternity was banned from campus and we 
>heard 
>that two people actually served jail time for it.  This is an 
>oft-retold 
>legend at Tech.
>
>You must be familiar with Rege Cordic's labeling of the 77/54 (I 
>think...) 
>Frankstown car as the "Flying Fractions".
>
>I did a lot of dancing by taking the cars to West View and Danceland.
>
>Check out our writeup of our recent Pittsburgh Dance Workshop:
>
><A HREF="pitwrk.html">The Pittsburgh Workshop</A>
>
>or HTTP://www.jitterbuzz.com/pitwrk.html
>
>We have photos of one of the last polychrome tile Gulf Gas Stations 
>and a 
>well preserved Isaly's
>
>Thanks again for your help!  (IT sure looked like an old PRC car to 
>me!)  ... 
>or maybe I wanted it to be one.
>
>Best
>
>---Frank
>www.jitterbuzz.com
>
>
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>

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