PERC PRCo Fantrip

[Fred W. Schneider III]

When did they begin to require a route supervisor? 

I chartered 1707 on July 13, 1958 on behalf of the Lancaster NRHS and,
in addition to myself, we had a huge crowd that included Austin Hardy of
Lancaster and his young son; Bill Allen of Lebanon; Buddy Sheetz (Bill's
cousin) from Philadelphia; Joe Hamill of Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Raph
Chilcott of Forest Hills; and Winston Gottschalk of Lancaster.  Huge in
this case equals eight people.  I was the youngest and 18 ... I'm 61
now.  John Hamill (with whom I've lost touch, would be about 65 now). 
Bill Allen is past 65.  If Austin is around, he would be about 80 and
his son would be about 51 now.  Winston is has been dead for a decade.  

Our motorman was Roy Taylor, who was one of a handfull of men with a
system-wide qualification.  I saw Roy once after that in December to
take a picture to him.  I understand he had a heart attack and died not
too long after that.

There was no route supervisor.  The "Railways Company" had no idea in
advance what kind of a group was involved.  Actually it consisted of
more transportation students than railfans.  Two or three were
mechanical engineers. Several of us were approaching the army.  One was
an artist.      

We were able to talk Roy into letting us run the car.  I started out on
Route 38A and had my second crack at it on the long sag on route 56 in
West Mifflin.  But we all had a chance to run whenever we were on
private right of way.  Roy was careful enough not to regard Fineview as
one of our opportunities.  I do remember Winston hitting a particularly
bad kick coming down the west slope from Kennywood Park and for a second
I thought we were going to learn how cold the Monongahela River was.  I
also recall Buddy Sheetz, whose father was a PTC motorman at Woodland
Depot, instinctively land in the seat with his feet simultaneously
hitting power and deadman to the floor ... that was out on route 62.

Taylor had remarked that we were an unusual group.  He brought a lunch
bag because every other fantrip he had ever operated insisted on running
constantly to get in the most possible time moving.  We stopped out on
route 62 and talked a store keeper into opening his mom 'n pop grocery
store on Sunday to feed all of us!

As far as keeping a schedule.  We didn't.  And I don't remember a lot of
phone calls to the dispatcher either.  We were late getting started
because we had to run around the downtown loop a second time to pick up
people who just couldn't get out of the restaurant on time.  We ran to
Drake (my picture from inside South Hills Tunnel looking out was taken
on that trip ... with Taylor shouting out to the dispatcher that
everything was OK.  We came back on 38-A, 38, 42.  We were supposed to
use Carson St. and the Tenth Street Bridge but detoured through downtown
because a disabled car was being pushed into Carson Street at
Smithfield.  We then ran Homewood for a shop tour on Sunday!  Then to
Trafford and back over 55, 65, 68 to McKeesport, then 56 back downtown,
then 21, then back to Tunnel.  I think we ended up two hours late.

The fare was $10 a head.  Bill Allen and I each paid $17.40 to split the
shortage.  The total was $94.80 and I still have the farebox receipt.  
  

John Swindler wrote:
> 
> Charter order specified routing and times to avoid conflicts with scheduled
> service.  I have several from early 1960s, and they would specify departure
> from a time point down to minute.
> 
> Any deviation required call to dispatch (?).  Also car carried a route
> supervisor, which was frequently filled by John Baxter.  Now realize that
> his real purpose was probably to keep the railfans out of trouble.
> 
> Essentially, the order of the day was along the lines of "you guys can
> charter a car to tour our system, but we want to know where you are, that
> you are not blocking scheduled service, and that you don't do anything
> stupid."
> 
> John
> 
> >From: Jim Holland <pghpcc at pacbell.net>
> >Reply-To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> >To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> >Subject: Re: PERC    PRCo    Fantrip
> >Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 17:22:24 -0800
> >
> >Greetings!
> >
> > > Jim Holland wrote:
> >
> > >         Basically, a fan-trip could go anywhere and sometimes went where
> >it
> > > shouldn't!!(:->)
> >
> >       Forgot to mention.......
> >
> >       Seemed like PERC  --  PRMA  --  PTM  would file a flight plan as to
> >intentions of the trip and PRCo probably required something like this.
> >       But with the system being so big, it would be difficult to include
> >everything in one trip - don't even know if they ever covered the whole
> >system in one charter before 1960!!  After that it got easier to do year
> >by year!!
> >
> >James B. Holland
> >
> >         Pittsburgh  Railways  Company  (PRCo),   1930  --  1950
> >     To e-mail privately, please click here: mailto:pghpcc at pacbell.net
> >N.M.R.A.  Life member #2190; http://www.mcs.net:80/~weyand/nmra/
> 
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