[PRCo] Local of PTM - Answer to Mark

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Is County Home Siding where the Fairgrounds are now? Also, where
> PTM now has the Arden Loop, did the original line continue into Washington
> from there? I have seen one map in a 1952 issue of E.R.A. Headlights
> available at PTM. This only shows  the map from Tylerdale Car House to the
> city of Washington. It does not show wher e PTM is now located. Does anyone
> have a map of the old Washington line they'd wish to share with me. A copy
> would be appreciated. I would gladly pay for such a map. Alot of questions
> would be answered with the appropriate map. Thanks a bunch!
>                         Mark McGuire

I'll try to describe the museum property Mark, but someone else will
need to scan a map for you. I have no scanner.

The Pittsburgh Electric Railway Club owned three cars in 1953 and were
looking for a place to locate.  Long story made simple.

Most trolley rights-of-way in Pennsylvania were only leased to the
railways and would revert back to the owners on record in 1903 or their
heirs or assigns.  Very little property was available for outright
purchase.  They settled on approximately 1/2 mile of track between the
Pennsylvania Railroad and North Main Street about three miles due north
of the center of the city of Washington, Pennsylvania.  At that point,
both Main Street, the railroad, and the trolley line were not going
north-south but almost exactly east-west.  

The Pennsylvania Railroad was on the scene first.  Considering the
somewhat less than flat topography of southwestern Pennsylvania, they
found it advantages to follow Chartiers Creek all the way from the Ohio
River west of Pittsburgh to Washington ... roughly the same alignment as
the original US 19 and of I-79 today, passing through Carnegie,
Bridgeville, Southpointe, Morganza, Canonsburg, Houston, Tylerdale and
into Washington. 

The creek actually flows from west to east at the museum site.  The
railroad was coming down from the north (actually north north east of
Washington) and then circles all the way around the north side of
Washington to the northwest.  

The trolley line, which came along in 1904 after the opening of the
railroad, chose or was forced to follow the north side of the railroad,
again, all the way around the city from Northeast to Northwest of
Washington.  It was unable to cross the railroad except on Jefferson
Avenue, a public street that went west north west out of downtown
Washington.  This obviously ultimately added about three miles to the
car line distance to Pittsburgh, but it was not a significant deterent
because the population also followed the creek.  The later 1940 edition
of US 19 was shorter but it skipped along the hill tops where no one
lived.  (No one then, they do now). 

There was a half mile of right-of-way available for sale in 1953 between
North Main Street and the Pennsylvania Railroad, running east west,
about three miles due north of downtown Washington.  The Washington
County Home was located on this piece of track, as was County Home
Siding.  [The provision of a final shelter and health care to indigent
older people in Pennsylvania is a county responsibility ... the names
vary from time to time and place to place such as Lehigh County Alms
Home, Berks Heim, or Lancaster County Home but the meaning is the
same.]  County Home Siding exists as a placed to store cars placed
attractively under large blue bags.  

As a sidebar, subsequent to the abandonment of the trolleys, a new
Washington County Home was built on the north side of North Main Street
and the older facility between the highway and the carline was removed.

The original property included at its western most end a bridge over a
tributary of Chartiers Creek, which was removed in a fit of sanity.

Tylerdale, situated just outside the Washington city limits along the
extension of Jefferson Avenue to the northwest or west northwest, was
the location of the third division car house and the final substation
for city routes in Washington and that end of the interurban.  The barn
took the expression pole barn to its logical extreme ... it was nothing
more than a long ugly structure covered with corrugated steel with the
east end completely open to the weather ... an ideal place to work in
the winter.  It was so dark inside that I couldn't even read the dials
on my camera at two o'clock in the afternoon.  The barn was accessible
by a dirt road but I don't remember a large parking lot.  Of course the
first trick and last trick operators had to begin or end their day
their.  The museum site is several miles east of Tylerdale.  

Now lets talk about extensions:

Much of southwestern Pennsylvania was underlain by bituminous seams,
some as little as an inch thick and some, like the Pittsburgh seam,
which were thicker than a man is tall.  For the most part, the
Pittsburgh seam has been mined out in this area.  There is another
recoverable seam farther down but why touch it when we can get cheaper
coal closer to the surface in West Virginia?  There were railroad
branches at one time all over the place in southwestern Pennsylvania
that penetrated this ravine or that valley in order to haul out soft
coal.  One such branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad crossed the trolley
right of way perhaps 100 feet south (railroad and trolley direction) or
west (compass direction) from the south (west) end of County Home
Siding.  It ran up a revine carved out by a tributary of Chartiers
Creek, ending at a mine in the village (local terminology is mine patch)
of Arden.  I believe that mining at Arden ceased in the 1930s and the
railroad branch was removed ... some say as part of a World War II scrap
drive.  The railroad right of way reverted to Washington County.
Beginning sometime in the late 1960s and ending in the early 1990s (give
or take a few years) the museum struck a deal with the county to use the
right-of-way, and extended one mile of track up the valley.  This is at
right angles to the the original trolley line, basically north-south off
of the west end of the original line.  We now have an L shaped line,
about 1.5 miles in length The car shops and barn and current visitors
center at at the lower left corner of the L.

The final extension is taking place now ... to extend the bottom of the
L eastward one half mile to a new visitors center on the Thepit factory
property.  This extension will be partly on the old trolley right of way
and partly parallel to it ... a sewage pumping station erected on the
right of way forces the museum crews to circle around it.  The wire is
up on the east extension, which allows the track crew to use the old
Pittsburgh Railways crane to lay rail under the wire and ahead of
itself.  Two weeks ago Dan Bower's crew had about one fifth of the
single track extension spiked down. 

Does this help, Mark?

fws  



Macmarka at cs.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 11/10/01 11:05:34 AM !!!First Boot!!!, pghpcc at pacbell.net
> writes:
> 
> << In reality, PTM  IS  Actually Operating on a portion of the old Washington
> Interurban
>  through County Home siding   ---   most definitely the Real PRCo.
> PCC--Interurban--1711
>  was the last revenue car out of Washington and through County Home! >>
> 
> 
>