[PRCo] Re: Which route?

[Fred W. Schneider III]

DUCK, DAMN IT.  I'm in the preach (teach?) mode again.  

The parallel road was somewhat narrower in those days.  I walked the
line from the horseshoe curve at Dravosburg back to Hays one Saturday in
1959.  Bridges I cannot remember but there was a creek in the valley
leading down to Hays.  

We tend to try to evaluate the past based on the present.  I does not
work.  We need to get outside the "Today Box" and put ourselves into the
"Then Box" when wondering how did the trolley line fit in that valley. 
Highway speeds gradually increased over time and roads were widened to
compensate for increased speed.   Many two-lane highways have simply
been widened to cover the trolley line; most roads never had shoulders
originally and the original roadway plus the single-track trolley
right-of-way doesn't even give enough room for today's traffic lanes
plus shoulders.   

Lets try on an example or two.  My father recalled scaring his landlady
half to death driving from Pittsburgh to Wheeling in 1930 in his Model A
Ford at speeds up to 60 miles per hour.  That was truly a white knuckle
ride if there ever was one.  In those days the highway from Pittsburgh
to Washington was the old highway adjacent to the new interstate 79
through Carnegie, Bridgeville, and into Canonsburg, then up over the
hill into Washington.  From Washington to Wheeling it was the old 40 but
much narrower than today.  And the car didn't have sealed beam
headlights.  Brakes were strictly mechanical; we had not even progressed
to hydraulics yet.  Radial belted tires date to the late 1950s and
didn't become common until the 1980s.  And the roads were best described
as 35 mph highways ... 50 in a few places.    

Furthermore, and there is no doubt in my mind that I will insult a few
people when I say this, most Americans today have no concept of how wide
their automobiles are.  They couldn't stay inside a eight-foot-wide lane
if their lives depended on it.  But in 1930, for example, those were the
roads on which we drove.  (And we didn't stay in the lanes then either.)
By 1950, if you drove down US 15 from Gettysburg to Frederick, Maryland,
you were on a two-lane concrete road that had one foot wide slabs of
concrete poured on each side of the original very narrow road to widen
it to a comfortably narrow road.  Today the old road has been replaced
by an expressway with lanes about 12 to 13 feet wide; the old road is
still there but it has also been substantially widened and has had
shoulders added.

The highway from Aspinwall to Tarentum was a very narrow road into the
late 1920s.  It was widened and repaved first from New Kensington toward
Pittsburgh.  By 1935 and 1936 the Tarentum newspaper called it the
"Death Highway" because of all the cars running into each other on
9-foot lanes. We had Ford V8 automobiles but we didn't have roads to
match.  West Penn Railways was evicted (not really forcibly if they'd
had the money and wanted to continue running trolleys) in 1937 so the
highway could be widened to match those faster cars.

I guess it is really hard for most of us to recognize that the
Interstate highways have been around half as long as we've had paved
highways.  I first saw the interstate shields when the US highway from
Waco to Dallas, Dennison and Sherman was being widened to interstate
standards in 1959 ... 43 years ago.  The first part of the Pennsylvania
turnpike opened 61 years ago.  There were some four lane highways in the
New York City metropolitan area 60 to 70 years ago.  But the Lincoln
Highway was first paved with an all-weather surface in this area 79
years ago.  When the Pennsylvania Turnpike first opened, the roadway was
adequate for an unlimited speed (there was no speed limit) but the
vehicles were not ... fan belts (I think we call them alternator belts
today) in particular didn't like the abuse of driving for hours at 80 or
90 mph.  Tires didn't like hot summer days at high speeds.        

Matt Barry wrote:
> 
> I wish that all three of your wishes are granted, and that I can be a
> passenger!  Very vivid detail; made me feel like I was on board.
> 
> Tom, since you are familiar with route 56, do you recall if there were
> any short trestles taht the car crossed alongside Mifflin Road, on the
> way to the intersection with route 65 Munhall?   I ask because I can't
> fathom how the cars on private-right-of-way fit alongside a paved
> Mifflin Road.  Some curves seem way too narrow to accomodate this, and I
> figured that perhaps trestles were in place to take the rails over the
-- Trailing quotes stripped by Listar --