[PRCo] PA Vol 4

[Fred Schneider]

To: Roy King


Morning Sun's Pennsylvania Trolleys Volume 4 arrived today and I thank
you very much for remembering me.   The album pages such as 86 and 87
without captions represent a wonderful way to treat the issue of not
knowing where or when something was taken ... it tells me that we don't
know and we're not going to create a myth.  How novel and refreshing.

I am certain that there are errors because I've never seen a book
without them, and I'm not looking for them at this point but I am going
to admit at least partial culpability for one mistake.

The location is wrong for the picture at the bottom of page 126.  Many
years ago I obtained a color print from John Seibert.  John didn't
remember where he took it.  I showed the picture to Charles Shauck, the
Pittsburgh Railways Superintendent of Power and Inclines, who located it
at McChane stop.  That was plausible, because there was also a bridge
over the track at McChane, but not correct.  Apparently I forwarded his
comment back to John and he "corrected" his slide.    Where was it
really taken?  Well we need to look for overhead bridges that looks down
onto some industrial environment (note the smoke in the distance).  John
Seibert was really standing on the bridge at Summit stop between North
Charleroi Borough and Black Diamond Junction.  The destination sign is
correct.  The car is northbound.  The smoke is coming from the Wheeling
- Pittsburgh Steel Company works on the other side of the Monongahela
River in Monessen.

If Jim Shuman failed to explain the background, is old friend and mine,
John Seibert, first went into color about 1940 with a cheap 828 size
camera.  Jim actually has some pictures taken with that same camera ...
borrowed for the weekend ... on an Indiana Railroad fantrip.  John spent
much of his life giving to others.  He worked in the boy's department of
the Lancaster YMCA, and in the late 1940s and into 1952 he was Boys
Director at the New Kensington YMCA (which accounts for the 1949-1952
pictures in the Pittsburgh area).  John's wife Fern was my wife's Sunday
School teacher; John spent many years running the boys choir at St.
James Episcopal in Lancaster (and if parents were too busy to take their
children to practice, John would go and get them and take them home
afterward).  Sadly, John died of a brain tumor in the 1960s and Fern
passed on many years later.  And Jim got all of the color slides, some
of which are only identified to Jim ... not a really be issue at this
point.

There was a discussion on a Pittsburgh Railways e-mail last last week
about what the track looked like at the new Simmons loop, and I'm going
to recommend that Mark McGuire by the book at look at the Shuman picture
on page 127 which answers the questions.

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The Lancaster collection is particularly nice ... On page 83, my father
used to buy suits at Groff and Wolf, when there were competing upper end
men's stores and when men still dressed for the occasion.  The picture
at the top of page 84 is really a John Seibert picture which he took out
of the window of the Lancaster YMCA.  Before 1950 the three brick
buildings on the left were torn down and a new H L Green five and dime
went up it their place  (The first floor of which is still used as a
Rite Aid drug store).   The middle picture on the same page shows St.
James Episcopal on the corner, and the parish house two doors down the
block ... I spent this afternoon with our former minister who served
there for more than a decade.    And on page 85 we see the M. T. Garvin
department store ... I worked in the camera department for a while and
as a janitor in that store, convincing me that I needed to go back to
college.   The Red Rose restaurant, behind the awning in the same
picture, is still in operation and still owned by the same family.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And did Jim tell you that the two lads in the top picture on page 72,
swimming in the lake at Rocky Glen Park on the Laurel Line, were skinny
dipping?

Thanks, Roy, for the memories.

fws