[PRCo] Ugly Overhead Construction

[Ken & Tracie]

Fred Schneider wrote:

>   Ed Lybarger and Larry Lovejoy once wrote a piece for "Trolley Fare" where PAT was awarded an Andrew
> Carnegie prize for innovative use of steel.  It is damned ugly.  Think how many steel beams for houses could be made out of those cat poles
> ... maybe enough for 2,500 homes?

Buffalo's overhead is just as ugly. Furthermore, Buffalo chose not to use the original steel streetlight standards/line poles along one stretch
of a downtown street and installed new catenary poles right down the middle of the thoroughfare. At least Pittsburgh (as well as other cities
such as SanDiego) used simple trolley wire on street trackage where catenary wasn't needed.

Boston seems to have originated the use of I-beam girders as line poles with their 1959 Riverside line, though Milwaukee experimented with
similar "poles" along a couple of stretches of their Route 15 car line.

I remember one fan referring to Pittsburgh's Phase One overhead construction as the "western branch of the Northeast Corridor."