[PRCo] Re: PSSST - WANNA BUY LOUSY PICTURES?

[Fredbruhn at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/28/03 3:35:54 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
fschnei at supernet.com writes:

<< Sadly, bus drivers are not the world's wealthiest people, particularly in 
a small city. >>

Bill Gwinn would have spent his last dime to feed a railfan or help someone 
out.  He drove bus after 4/48 until his retirement.  He finally bought a used 
car in about 1963 or 64, the first he had ever owned.  He lived on the 
Lansing line (rt. 61) which was his regular run on street cars, and later on 
route 69 which was an extension of the Lansing line with buses.  Most 
Pittsburgh fans knew of Bill as he almost never missed a fan trip in the 50's 
or 60's and was on a couple of the West Penn trips too.

Bill finally replaced the box camera with a Kodak film camera in the 70's.  
He developed his own pictures in a closet off the kitchen and had a cross 
reference file second to none in an upstairs bedroom he used as his den.   
His home was at 650 Main St. in Bridgeport which is also the National Road 
and a dandy place to park his street car while his wife brought a hot lunch 
out to him.  Unfortunately, the house has been vacant for several years and 
this past summer (2002) it was condemned and is probably gone by now.  

Bob has put a photo of Bill on his site before and if you were on a trip with 
him you would remember as he always wore a Wgh. Traction motormans cap and 
badge.

In the last years of street car operation and through much of the bus years 
of Co-Op Bill maintained several glass fronted cases in the dispatch room of 
the island barn
to post photos of the street cars for the operators and bus drivers to enjoy. 
 He would 
rotate the photos every now and then.

Bill got serious about trolley photos about 1941 (although always a fan and a 
photo taker) when a fan trip by either a Columbus, Ohio group or Akron RR 
Club (with Bob Richardson of the Colo. RR Museum who was working in Akron 
then and a member, as well as Bruce Triplet, another well known name of the 
time) came to Wheeling.   That is when he found out others were fans too, and 
started to increase his activity.
While he took some during the war, he took almost all the photos of route 59 
Shadyside on just one or two trips, getting on and off the cars to snap 
photos. 
Felix Reifschneider, who most of you have heard of, worked out of Cleveland 
during the war and was involved in transportation.  After a slip along the 
route 69 Barton line 
in 42 (+/- a year) Felix came down to Wheeling and closed down the line 
rather than have it repaired.  As a result Bill only has a few photos of that 
line.  From the end of the war until the lines quit in 4/48 he was quite 
active, and he had a large collection of PCC' shots in Pittsburgh from the 
50's and later.  

As Fred said, our contributions will help keep his negatives stored properly, 
and as a 
serious student of the Wheeling system in the Co-Op years I can tell you 
beyond Bill's collection there is only skimpy crumbs, not quality wise, but 
location and scene wise.  Cliff Scholes is a good source as well as McCarter 
out in Arizona.
(This is on topic as Wheeling was a West Penn property guys)  McGuire and 
Jeff Windslow both had some shots and there are a couple of others, Russ 
Nixon I believe is one but his prices are too high for this retiree's budget. 
 

W J B Gwinn,  stood for William Jennings Bryant Gwinn, after the late 
President.

If you all wait long enough until I die my copies of Bill's photos (about 95% 
of what he had on Wheeling, the balance were indeed lousy) will go to PTM and 
you won't have to dig through the negatives.  It was an interesting system.

the other Fred