[PRCo] Re: West Penn - March PTM calendar

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Yes, Roger.  I've seen this BS before.  I think you might have read it
in a Trains magazine piece circa 1950 but take it with a grain of salt. 
There are a lot of falsehoods out there in the railfan literature.  

If West Penn had been so profitable, why was the last modernization done
as far back as 1930? Because management, after seven years of losses,
finally recognized it didn't pay.  

West Penn was a public stock corporation owned primarily by West Penn
Electric Company, a New York-based holding company.  It lasted until the
holding company was no longer willing to accept the annual losses, which
began about 1923.  The railway carried a surprisingly large although
inadequate number of passengers until they attempted to run buses.  
When passengers were waiting in the woods for a trolley, the company got
the revenue.  Once the passengers were waiting along public roads,
friends would pick them up. The southern end bus service lasted from
1950 and 1951 until June 1953.  The company wasn't even willing to
invest in replacing the cars with buses after 1951 because the noble
experiment to replace cars with buses failed.  The cars had failed.  Now
the buses had failed too.   Fayette Coach, Lincoln Coach, and
Westmoreland County Trailways were the suckers who briefly ran the rest
of the system after 1952. 

Interestingly, the McKeesport Division, which was abandoned in stages
between 1932 and 1938, was the most profitable part of the system.  The
earliest abandonment, albiet the weakest part of Division B, was the
service from Boston Bridge to Scott Haven.  In the abandonment petition,
the railway pointed out that the engineering costs alone for adding
tracks to the new Allegheny County-owned bridge over the Youghiogheny
River represented more nickels that the company took in on the line in
an entire year.  That was before they even began to buy steel! (Before I
get kicked in the but, I'll qualify Scott Haven as the earliest railfan
era abandonments ... the line to Wilmerding went out much earlier.)

The remainder of the McKeesport Division was a very compact, high
density operation.  They took in more money per route mile, more money
per car mile, and more money per car hour than any other operation the
company had.  What wiped out McKeesport if it made so much money?  The
city wanted its fair share from West Penn for repaving Walnut Street. 
The company didn't protest that the city's demands were unfair.  Rather
the West Penn calmly pointed out to the PUC that, without even
allocating any overhead costs to the division, that it simply did not
take in enough money to pay its way.  This was in the depths of the
depression.  The railways even told the PUC how many people were out of
work from each major industry in the city.  The case dragged on for
three or four years until West Penn finally pulled out in 1938 and the
city paved Walnut Street without rails. 

The Trafford-Larimer line was torn up because the freight connection to
Pittsburgh was no longer needed ... few were riding the passenger cars. 
Protests over the abandonment of the Larimer to Irwin section involved
emotion ... what will out little kiddies do without the trolley for a
school bus ... no one else was riding ... and the PUC approved the
abandonment simply because the cars were empty except for school kids on
360 trips each year!  The alternate mainline from Greensburg via New
Stanton and Tarr to Scottdale was torn up because the borough of
Youngwood had the audacity to suggest that West Penn help to repave a
street in that town.  

WEST PENN DID NOT ENDURE BECAUSE MINERS DIDN'T WANT TO GET THEIR
AUTOMOBILES DIRTY. Pictures of mines on the Commonwealth show copious
automobiles parked there.  West Penn survived until 1950 probably only
because Connellsville didn't try to extract money to repave Crawford
Street (that was done in the 1920s), and because Greensburg and
Uniontown were silent too.  It probably lasted as long as it did because
what was running paid for salaries, wages, the power bill, and minimal
maintenance ... as long as the company could extract a few more miles
from the depreciated system without needing to invest money in it, it
could survive. 

Wagering is safe when no one can prove you wrong.  Therefore I'll wager
that the entire West Penn trolley system would have been gone in the
very early 1940s if the depression and World War II had not reduced
sales of new automobiles, and if income had been more evenly distributed
between the rich and the poor enabling more car sales.      



ROGER Jenkins wrote:
> 
> The West Penn lasted as long as it did because the coal miners did not
> want to dirty up their autos with the coal dust that clung to their
> clothes after working and rode the trolleys to and fro . The smell on
> the cars probably was from the coal dust left on the seats and on the
> floor after they got off !  I read that somewhere but don't remember
> where. Maybe one of PTMs books.