Great tidbits!

[Fred W. Schneider III]

It wasn't logical to push a car into town and back out if it broke down.  In the
winter of 1958 I was riding inbound on Perrysville Avenue and came upon a
disabled leader at Charles Street.  One of the company pickup trucks was
muscling it into the end of the Fineview line so it could coupled to the next
outbound going to Keating Car House.  No, I did not stick around to see whether
they coupled it ahead of or behind but behind would be most logical in this case
because it was possible.

Just after the Wall tumbled but a week before the German currency unification, I
came across a train of disabled but almost new Tatra PCC cars in East Berlin ...
a motor and two matching four-axle trailers.  There were no supervisors on the
site ... a city policemen wishing to get things unsnarled.  The follower was a
Gotha-built two-axle motor car towing three two-axle trailers.  The crew coupled
the two trains together, wound off the drum brakes on the PCCs, and off then
went to the carbarn, with the motorman 135 feet or so from the front of the
train.  Then the the BVG supervisor appeared after it was all done!  And those
little two-axle Gotha cars were gutsy sons'a-bitches.

"Dietrich, Robert J." wrote:

> Then again sometimes they would just shove the broken car over to the
> inbound track just as an inbound car was passing :).
> http://www.voicenet.com/~dietrich/SHJ/outback.htm  I'll bet doing that
> gouged out the street making it rough for those buses.
>
> Bob
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From:   Jim Holland [mailto:pghpcc at pacbell.net]
> Sent:   Tuesday, May 09, 2000 6:38 AM
> To:     pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject:        Re: Great tidbits!
>
> Greetings!
>
> mrb190 wrote:
>
> > . . . OR tell me folks, was it a common thing to
> > have a car coming up behind to push a disabled car to a car house?   Maybe
> that
> > was the most efficient way to correct such a situation?
>
>         Yes - that was / is extremely common.  Rarely anything in front of a
> broken down car to pull so the one coming up behind has to push.  If
> there is ever a possibility of turning another car to come in front of
> the broken down car, that can be done and has been done.  Either way it
> is a strain, esp on hills.