[PRCo] Re: Baggage Rack & Other Interurban Equipment

[Derrick J Brashear]

On Sun, 27 May 2001, Fred W. Schneider III wrote:

> 
> And Jim,
> 
> I'll bet you have not missed sulfurous air ever since?  Strangely, I do
> miss it because the city just does not smell like Pittsburgh any more.   

Edgar Thomson works still blows a sulfurous smell onto Braddock Avenue
just before where old Braddock cuts off and the elevated Tri-Boro Highway
of ca. 1973 begins. And since this and the earlier message suggesting that
other shot reminded me of this, when I started driving you could still get
under the floodgates on old Braddock Avenue, and the tracks were still
visible, complete with a single-tracked section so a railroad spur into
what was by then Keystone Commons instead of Westinghouse Electric could
use the other side of the street. When I was finishing high school they
closed the street and began pulling the track, turned out the street was
closed for good and the spur moved to the center of the arch it passed
under for more clearance. But... the girder rail was cut up and pulled
out, and a friend and I dragged a 5 foot section into my father's pickup,
or more correctly dragged it to the truck, lifted one end, then backed the
truck under it. My father was going to cut a thin slice for me, then a
larger chunk to use for an anvil for himself, but the material quickly
exhausted the mid-size gas tank for his torch! So cutting girder rail must
have been a serious operation.

-D