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

[Edward H. Lybarger]

I don't recall Mr. Bryant's name among the list of U.S. presidents!  But
that wasn't due to lack of effort.

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of
Fredbruhn at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 5:15 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Re: PSSST - WANNA BUY LOUSY PICTURES?



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