Ken's Carhouses & railfan trip thoughts...

[brathke at juno.com]

The Fineview line ran on many narrow streets and some PRW, but all of the
line was either on - or parallel to - city streets.  I use the term
"streets" loosely since some of them were hardly one lane wide, most were
riddled with potholes, and there were some very tight curves.  These
streets were all driveable by car (I drove them many times in both
directions), but I think even PAT's new (1966) old-look small buses had
trouble there.  Much road improvement was needed before even a mini-bus
could serve the entire outbound route.

I don't know how much the roads were improved, nor which type of bus took
over after Fineview trolleys were abandoned on 4/30/66.  I don't think I
ever returned to the Fineview line after that date - I had just four
months to photograph the South Hills lines, and I also wanted to cover
the East End lines.  Although the East End lines lasted until January,
1967, they didn't run on weekends from September, 1966 to January, 1967,
so it was easier to make those all-day weekend excursions before
September, 1966.   In the Fall of 1966, PAT had enough buses to replace
the East End trolleys on weekends only.

Bob 7/4

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On Tue, 4 Jul 2000 12:11:08 -0400 (EDT) Derrick J Brashear
<shadow at dementia.org> writes:
> On Mon, 3 Jul 2000 brathke at juno.com wrote:
> 
> > After Keating closed in September, 1965, I believe that 6/14 and 
> 21 ran
> > out of SHJ (until the end of April, 1966) because of a lack of 
> buses for
> > use on 13 (and then 6/14) which was a relatively long line.  
> 21-Fineview
> > was short, could be operated with one or two cars, and shared half 
> it's
> > route with 8-Perrysville which was abandoned in September, 1965.  
> So why
> > was route 21 kept running for eight months?  I suspect it was 
> because PAT
> > didn't have suitable buses to replace the Fineview trolleys in 
> September,
> > 1965.  Any comments?
> 
> I'd guess the streets were at that point not yet suitable for buses,
> wasn't there right of way which would need to be converted?
> 
> -D
> 
> 

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On the other hand, you have different fingers.
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