[PRCo] Roberta Hill

[Bob Rathke]

I met Roberta a couple of times - although I SAW her much more often - in
the mid-1960's. This was on PAT's North Side trolley lines lines (routes 8,
10, 13/14, 15 and 22) in 1965-66 before they were abandoned.  I was with
friends and other railfans, say on the west side of the tracks, and Roberta
was always on the east side of the tracks.  Or we were on the east side of
the tracks, and she was on the west side.  I talked with her a couple of
times at Keating Car House - which didn't allow much opportunity to be on
the east or west side of the tracks - and I remember that she had a shoulder
bag full of photos that she had taken on previous visits to that site.  She
seemed to be interested in SHOWING us photos that she had taken on previous
visits to that area as much as she was in photographing new subjects that
day..  She took a lot of photos, but I don't think that she was
conscientious about recording information about them. I also remember that
she used a 120-film single lens reflex camera (Kodak or Ansco) - it's too
bad that she didn't have a better camera to support all of her efforts, time
and expense in covering the last days of PAT's North Side trolley lines.

Bob 10/5/03

------------------------------
 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken & Tracie" <kjosephson at sprintmail.com>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 10:45 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Donnell stop


>
>
> Bob Rathke wrote:
>
> >
> > No one ever accused Roberta Hill of writing detailed captions on her
photos.
>
> Some were, some weren't. The former had car numbers, date, time,
temperature(!),
> motorman's name, location, build date & direction of the car. The latter
were
> simply date, time and car number, or just the date. But Ed returned some
of
> Roberta's negatives to me with corrections he made to her notes on Route
85. He
> also corrected some of her mislabeling of stops and locations along the
Drake
> line. I did see references to "Donnell" on some Library line photos of
hers.
> Perhaps a forgotten nickname by locals for a bar or place of business near
a
> stop? If just Roberta had made the notation, I'd write it off as an error.
But
> maybe John Bromley can drop Joe a line and see if he recalls why he listed
it as