[PRCo] Re: West Penn Cars at PTM

[Jim Holland]

Good Morning!!

> Fred W. Schneider III wrote:

> I'm suggesting that we be capable of recreating 1900 or 1920, and how
> people lived, and why they used the trolley, and why they went shopping
> for perishable groceries at the corner store every day (because
> refrigerators were a 1930s thing), why you rode the trolley to work
> instead of your horse (old Dobbin didn't like standing in the sun for
> twelve hours like your car does) and why twelve hours (because it was
> simply accepted that people worked 60 to 80 hours a week).  And that
> they used the trolley to go to the cemetery on Sunday afternoon to lay
> flowers on Aunt Matilda's grave because that is just the thing you did
> on Sunday.  And I'm suggesting that, if needed, we even have people with
> props on the car ... the lady with flowers who gets off at the grave
> yard and the woman with a live chicken for dinner (caged of course), and
> the kid who gets on the car to peddle newspapers.

> Or am I not making sense?

	You are   ---  making sense.   Recreate the scene.

	Fort Edmonton in that City IS just that.   It has a very large streetcar loop with small
car yard and just several pieces of equipment.   Double track line which runs down several
streets with 90-degree turns from street to street, buildings to fit the era, autos from
the early 1900s, and people dressed the same.   Very Nice turtleback trolleycar.  
Excellently thought out   ---   built this way, so that makes a difference.   WELL  worth
visiting.

	But Rio Vista, by contrast, it not so appealing in that manner.   Trying to run a museum
on 1,000--feet of track like a transit system is ludicrous and even more so if the actors
ain't no good!!!   So many bells before starting, so many whistles before grade
crossings.  Car is stopped, bells and whistles go off, car moves 10--feet to a grade
crossing and stops, more bells and whistles, operator's head snaps right and left (wish
someone would snap it off!), lurch ahead.   Running museums on schedules ala the
prototype  --  a need, I guess, but as an operator, I like to escape that atmosphere.

	Easy job for you at the museum, Fred, and you don't havbe to worry about keeping the
schedule on the cars   ---   just lay by the prw and someone will throw flowers at you!@!!

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James B. Holland

Holland  Electric  Railway  Operation
    "O"--Scale  St.-Petersburg Trams Company Trolleycars  &
        "O"--Scale  Parts  mailto:pghpcc at pacbell.net
        Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (PTM) http://www.pa-trolley.org/
    Pittsburgh  Railways  Company  (PRCo),   1930  --  1950
N.M.R.A.  Life member #2190; http://www.nmra.org

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