PERC PRCo Fantrip

[mrb190]

These trips sounded like a blast.  Wish I could go back in time, if only to be an
extra passenger, particularly on the Saturday tour.

"Fred W. Schneider III" wrote:

> 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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