[PRCo] Re: Another trip

[Derrick J Brashear]

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003, Fred Schneider wrote:

> I had one Buck Regal (1991) which needed a transmission at 80,000 miles.  When I
> complained, the dealer asked me what my bitch was.  "After all," he said, "it's a

If I had a "one buck" car I wouldn't bitch if it broke.

> Amazing isn't it, how cars have improved over the last century decades!  My

So why haven't rail cars? The PCCs from the end were run into the ground.
Your car might make it that long, if you did regular and heavy
maintenance. The Duewag cars are being heavily rebuilt: after like 20
years. Now, your car wouldn't make it that far without a lot of work, if
at all, but I don't think the PCCs were getting a lot of love in 1969.

> Does this help us understand why Pittsburgh Railways isn't around today?

Not really. I drove to Trenton Thursday, took the train to New York and
back Friday, and drove home. Local transit is local transit. Distance
driving is distance driving, and if I could sleep on a train from
Pittsburgh and be in New York by 9am, I sure would...

But if you tried to string together a trip by local transit, you'd get to
Latrobe... if you left before 1942! Apples. Oranges.

> And Derrick would like this ... driving east out of Chicago toward Fort
> Wayne dad saw smoke in the rear view mirror.  He was a closet railfan
> (compared to us). Pull over.  Bail out.  Set up the movie camera.
> Somewhere in this house is a rather brief 8 mm color film of a
> passenger train on the Pennsy flying across northern Indiana at a
> speed almost incomprehensible then.  I wonder how many
> times I gone just that fast on remote German autobahns???

I wonder if I went faster on route 60 through Beaver County. I bet I
did. Haven't done it again since (anywhere). Did I get to Brady's Run Ice
Arena faster than trolleys would have gotten me there, even ignoring the
gap between Sewickley and Leetsdale? Yup. But Brady's Run Park is on the
highway, route 51, and not in any of the old towns anyway. Apples.
Oranges.

Speed is only half the story, the traffic on route 20 is the other half.
It's only worth it to me to drive to Oakland because my job allows me to
ignore rush hour. Otherwise, the bus would be a net win always, being able
to sit and work on the way home or no. And even if we still had streetcar
service with the old routes and I needed to change twice (62 Trafford, 87
Ardmore, and then pick something in Wilkinsburg) it probably would still
beat going near Oakland in rush hour.