[PRCo] Re: Harmony bridge pier

[Fred Schneider]

Ed Lybarger and I did the Harmony Route and the Mars line on two different
days ... partly on a summer evening and again on a winter day.
I'm thinking back and realizing that the evening had to be when I worked in a
state wide job between 1978 and 1987. I can remember the routes Dad used to
get around Wilkinsburg, East Liberty, and Squirrel Hill back in the 1940s but
remembering what happened in the 1980s is considerably more difficult.    So
maybe I saw the culvert near Eidenau and just don't remember it.
What was impressive about the Harmony Route was the money they spent on those
closely spaced line poles, and then how brief the line's history was.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I've added the entire list to this because the memory was long enough to
recall an item I read last night:  Electric Railway Journal, February 26,
1916:  The Pittsburgh, Harmony, Butler and New Castle seeks to build two
routes across eastern Ohio, one in Columbiana County to East Peoria, New
Waterford and a connection with the Youngstown and Southern at Columbiana,
and the other to a connection with the Youngstown and Ohio River Railroad at
Lisbon, Ohio.

And, should one wonder why something so minor as rolling over a car at
Smithfield and Carson in the Christmas shopping rush in 1917 could force
Pittsburgh Railways into bankruptcy, consider this from the Electric Railway
Journal of Feb 12, 1916:  United Traction Co., Pittsburgh, failed to pay
dividends of 2.5% on $3,000,000 in preferred stock.  All of the stock is
owned by Pittsburgh Railways.  Seventy-five thousand dollars is a lot of
money to give up in 1916.  There was a similar item in January about
Consolidated, the other major underlier.  One might suspect that the
inflation during World War I was already affecting the company.

Bob Rathke wrote: