[PRCo] Re: European Trams

[Fred Schneider]

Was this an open letter to everyone?  I guess it is now.

Back in 1957 a friend of mine, name of John J. Bowman, Jr., went to England.  John was
in his late 30s then; he is still living but only marginally.  I was his photofinisher
at that time.  He came back with 15 to 20 rolls of Tri-X 120 ...  trams from Glasgow
and Leeds and I think Edinburgh, but mostly British Railways steam.  Fantastic
critters.  They never ran trains as heavy as we did, therefore they never understood a
stoker fired engine.  Those things were all hand bombed.  Some with Walcharts valve
gear but mostly Stephenson, and many with the pistons and rods inside!  In 1958 John
did it again!  After that I just had to see for myself.

I went into the Army on October 8, 1958 (serial RA 13 639 997 ... they told us we
would never forget it).  About three weeks or so before we graduated from signal
school at Fort Gordon, we were all asked where we would like to be assigned.  What a
farse.  I asked for Germany or those nike bases in Bethel Park as an alternate.
Dozens of fellows went to Germany.  The guy in the bunk under me went to Bethel Park.
I went to Fort Hood, Texas ... rattlesnakes, clay so hard you needed a chisel to get
it off your books after a rain, cock roaches that flew through the barracks in
V-formation in June.  I later came to accept Texas, and even to find beauty in every
place I went, but I never really reconciled with the Army.

Well, five months later they sent me to Germany.  (It did have an advantage ... my
transfer back home to the states came less than three months before scheduled release
from active duty, so I was released immediately and went to college in the fall
semester of 1961.)  I was finally going to get a chance to see all those delightful
things overseas.  Wow!!

I left Fort Hood with five weeks to get my butt over to Fort Dix NJ for processing ...
a month of leave and a week of travel time.  A week you say?  I was probably the only
person in the history of Fort Dix who took two weeks to get to eastern Pennsylvania.
There were a lot of interesting things to see enroute: St. Louis still had five
trolley lines.  And there were Chicago el and subway trains and stored PCCs down at
South Shops.  And the North Shore.  And the South Shore.  And Cleveland Rapid and
Shaker Rapid.  Oh, yes, four days in Pittsburgh with my grandmother (when I was
home).  And before I left for Germany, I also made one trip to Baltimore, one to
Washington, one to New York, and spent three days in Boston when the Riverside line
opened.  No the Army didn't pay me that well.  I was constantly in violation of the
Uniform Code of Military Justice for hitch hiking ... something on the other of 8,000
miles in six months.  Amazing what we would do when we were young.

Well, the USS General George M. Brucker docked in Southampton, England to partly
reprovision and to let off servicement going to Britain.  The rest of us were told we
could only get off the ship IF WE BOUGHT A TOUR TICKET TO LONDON. I asked the sergeant
in charge if buying the tour ticket was all I had to do ... would I be forced to take
the tour?  His answer was that I would be courts martialed if I were not on the train
back to Southampton that night.  Fine.  I understood.  And as we entered Victoria
Station, London, I vanished into the wood work.  London Transport was still running
compartment coaches on the Metropolitan behind electric locomotivies as far as
Rickmansworth, then behind the sweetest 0-6-0 tank engines for the rest of the journey
into the countryside to Chesham.  Much of the rolling stock in use on the underground
in those days was still pre-war.  Wow.  And I also made a trip around the Inner
Circle.  Did I regret not seeing the tourist attractions that day?  No.  One cannot
have regrets.  I've been back to London so many times since then that there are few
Americans who have seen as much of the capital as I have.  And I still haven't see the
changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.  But that was one heck of day back in
1959.

The next summer I tried it again, only in much greater depth.  This time getting a
free military air lift from Germany over to Paris (four-engines with props), and then
the Night Ferry from Gare du Nord to London, Waterloo.   I  quick check of B&Bs turned
up nothing, so I bedded down that night in the home of James and Mattie Aird in
Glasgow, after an all day ride on the Midday Scot behind steam.  (That eight hour
journey is now down to four with electrification).  Jim was a railfan who worked in
Philly back in the 1940s as an inspector on a job that Baldwin was producing for India
because North British Locomotive Works could not handle all the business.  Jim and
Mattie later named their home after the town in which the lived during their stay in
the U. S.: Media.  I wandered up to Mallaig, across to Sterling and Edinburgh, back to
Glasgow for the weekend, down to Blackpool, across the country again to York, then
down the east coast to London, and back to Germany.  At that time there the Southern
Region was dominantly electrified, and there were a fair number of diesels and DMU
sets on the east coast up into Scotland, but the rest of the BR network was steam.
Can you imagine the shriek of those peanut whistles under a train shed illuminated by
gas lights?  It was there.  Glasgow still had three tram lines ... a few of the
Standards were running but the ex Liverpool cars were out.  Mostly Cunarders and
Coronations ... for those who understand.  (John Swindler will pick up on it.)
Grimsby and Immingham still ran in the rush hours.  Blackpool had some routes away
from the promenade in those days.

By this time I could not say that British double deck trams and steam engines without
rods on the outside looked strange.  They had come to look perfectly normal.  (Maybe
all this explains why I have a fondness for the National Tramway Museum in Crich and
its people, and why I also donate funds to them.)

What else did I see?  Well, start with thousands of German 2-axle motor cars pulling
one, two, even three 2-axle trailers.  Add in the PCCs in Roma, Pietro Witt cars in
Milano, interurbans in Switzerland, brand-new 4-axle motors and trailers in Basel that
went like the wind.

I never got enough of it.  I've simply not found the time to get outside of Europe
yet.  Hmmm.  Wouldn't Japan be nice.



Kenneth Josephson wrote:

> It's funny how those European systems grow on you after viewing them (or in some
> members' cases, visiting them.) That Milan shot from Bob sure looked like downtown
> Pittsburgh. (Back on topic

> Carl noted in a couple of his tapes that one of the interurbans in Belgium was
> reminiscent of some Pennsylvania trolley lines.

The Vicinal lines around Charleroi were very much line Pittsburgh.  Sadly, they're
gone now.


>
>
> I do wonder if the DVD format and the arrival of HDTV will eventually allow direct
> purchase and usage of CDs for viewing.
>
> I wonder how many tapes Carl will need to cover Philadelphia or NYC (if he intends
> to cover those systems)?

Philly all looks the same ... whether you're on 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 10th, 12th sts.

I doubt that there is a whole lot of New York out there in railfan hands except for
the TARS empire. Because of Fiorello, the lines in Queens and Manhattan were pretty
much gone by 1936.

>
>
> K.
>
> Fred Schneider wrote:
>
> > For those of you who are unfamiliar with John's initials "PAL," it is the
> > European standard for video tapes.  NTSC tapes sold in the United States cannot
> > be played on PAL VCR/TVs and vice versa.

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