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

[Fred Schneider]

I'm very forgetful in my aging condition ... but didn't he  (Bill Gwynn) also
take the picture at the south end of the Brownsville Juction bridge showing the
alternate transportation?   While the railfans were out at the requisite photo
stop on the day after fantrip in 1950, the replacement bus came along.   One or
two of the railfans actually had the presence of mind to photograph the car and
a brand spankin' new GM diesel bus side-by-side.   I think Bill might have been
one of them.  Maybe it meant something to him because he drove them in
Wheeling.  Sadly there were never many pictures taken of their buses, and the
bus empire lasted only until June 1953 when declining patronage ended the
operation.  I think the mainline and the Irwin branch, which were sold to
Fayette Coach Company and Lincoln Bus Lines lasted a few years longer ... I
chased one of their buses southward out of Greensburg in the winter of
1957-1958.   I took a couple of negatives of buses inside the old Uniontown
carbarn during Memorial Day weekend in 1953 but I doubt that they (the
negatives) even exist today.

Community Transit certain prospered by West Penn's short sightedness.  It isn't
every day you find a group of 30 and 42 month old buses in the used bus market.
I'd wager that none of them had even piled up more than 15% of the miles they
were engineered to run.  Geissenheimer could tell us how many were still around
when PAT took over in 1964 because he worked there.

"Edward H. Lybarger" wrote:

> Bill Gwinn's negatives are largely "mapping grade," but every now and again
> a relatively sharp one shows up.  Sometimes, too, he aimed the camera 180
> degrees from all the other fans (90 degrees in the case of the West Penn
> crossing at McClellandtown) and got a wonderful alternate view that no one
> else bothered with.
>
> Bill's house in Bridgeport recently disappeared...whether it collapsed or
> was taken down for safety reasons, I'm not sure.  I was there after he died,
> to acquire the collection for the museum.  It stank, not unlike other homes
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