Bridges (Was Article from the old Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph)

[Kenneth Josephson]

HRBran99 at aol.com wrote:

> One interesting thing I noticed for many years during the early and mid 1970s
> was that every two or three months PATransit rail maintainence trucks would
> be checking the trackage along Second Avenue from Ross to 10th St. Bridge,
> the trackage on the bridge, and the trackage from 10th St, west along Carson
> to New Arlington. This even including welding sections of rail which were
> extremely worn. I never did ask why they always did this. There was no
> overhead wire in place along these stretches of rail. I first noticed this in
> 1973 when going home from SHJct and crossing the 10th St. Bridge was held up
> because traffic was shifted to the right hand lane only do to welding of
> rails taking place on the Second Avenue end of the bridge. Still a mystery
> why PAT did this. They really could not use the tracks unless they strung
> overhead.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm....current return? Naw, the rails in use were more than enough.

Perhaps the Tenth Street Bridge ***was*** the emergency route. Stringing
temporary overhead on short notice would be less of a political disaster than
restoring the Tenth Street Bridge route overhead "just in case" and causing a
potential panic. Imagine the bottleneck if a rumor started that the Smithfield
Street Bridge was so unsafe, PAT decided to reopen a section of closed trolley
trackage to avoid it. Then PAT would have to use the Tenth Street Routing to
avoid losing ridership. It would wreak havoc with the scheduling, cause motorists
to avoid the Smithfield Street Bridge (I knew some who did anyway), etc.

I remember people living Mt. Lebanon who stopped using the cars during the very
early seventies. Their logic was "if the cars look that terrible, those old
trestles must be just as bad."

Again, Ed or Harold may have the answer.

Now back to sorting these trolley coach images for Herb's calendar project.

Ken