[PRCo] Morning Sun Pa #4

[Fred Schneider]

Darn it, Roy,
you take all the fun out of reading a Morning Sun book.  When you don't
know something, you ignore it instead of guessing.  There is no fun
hunting mistakes.  I can find incredibly few.   About all I can do is
add a few things and comment here and there on how much I like it.
Anything that I could actually find that was incorrect is in purple.

There is one urban legend that you picked up on ... it's been repeated
so many times that people actually believe it.  That is the story that
television cutting into West Penn's evening riding (page 105) helped to
lead to abandonment.  The truth?  When West Penn wrote down the value of
the property to scrap in 1948, with the intention of abandoning, there
was no acceptable television reception in that area.   It was in one of
the abandonment petitions, but management was not against twisting the
truth a little if the PUC people in Harrisburg didn't understand.

Additions:

Page 107, top:  Otterman St. turning into Pennsylvania in Greensburg.
The track through the intersection from left to right was used by Irwin
cars coming to Greensburg.  The track directly through the intersection
in the east-west direction had not been used since city service in
Greensburg ended.

Page 107, middle:  The post abandonment fantrip is at the end of the
line in Martin.  Photo looks northeast.  The actual village or mine
patch of Martin was ahead of the car, but getting there would have
required a substantial bridge to cross a ravine.

Page 107, bottom:  I've never stood in that exact position.  However,
the destination sign reads GREENSBURG, OAKFORD PARK, JEANNETTE, PENN,
MANOR, IRWIN.  There was no similarly open track on the South
Connellsville line, the only other service in 1952 that used the 280s.
Let us analyse farther.  Look at that highway construction in the
distance ... the extension from the original west end of the turnpike at
Irwin to the Pittsburgh interchange.  There should be two bridges on
that part of the turnpike, apparently the one over the US 30 is hidden
behind the tree behind the trolley.  The one that shows spans the old
Lincoln Highway.  Out of site to the left (in the book gutter), the
tracks turn right and parallel the old US 30 through that bridge you see
in the distance.  The location is called "Straw Pump."  (DamfIknowhy)
The Irwin turnpike toll plaza sits on the original roadway, hidden
behind the new higher roadway and the tree.  Why can't it be on the
other side of the turnpike ... because from Straw Pump to Irwin the
tracks were on the side of the highway.  The car is eastbound and
heading in almost a north compass direction.  And that fits because
early on a May morning the sun would be almost due east.

Page 108, bottom:  did you notice the row of bee hive coke ovens in the
distance.  I know that Ed Lybarger is going to argue that my math is not
quite perfect, but I once calculated that there were more miles of ovens
in the Coke Region than West Penn had track.

Page 109 center and lower ... notice that the switch stand for Hecla
Siding shows at the bottom of both the center and lower picture.  You
could actually have squeezed about five cars through here at one time.
I like the fact that you've picked up on the dress.  I wonder when we
are going back to that.  I was waited on in a bank in Germany a few
weeks ago by a braless teller with a one-button top covering herself ...
nice in the bedroom but embarrassing in a business office.

Page 112, center.  So many things in our lives have disappeared.
Remember super salesman Arthur Godfrey on CBS from 10:00 to 11:30 every
weekday (after the Breakfast Club)?  In fact remember when we had
network radio?   They say that getting the product name across is more
important than anything else in advertising, and I truly remember one
night Godfrey told us that he saw the chicken being dipped into Lipton's
Chicken Noodle Soup, and then pulled back out.  The name was remembered.

Page 114, third one down ... Hutchinson Siding on the Fairchance line.
The second one down is at the Brownfield "honor roll" of lost veterans.
The other two are somewhere along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Page 115, center --- Gotcha, Roy.  This one isn't on the mainline but
rather on the Martin line near Lambert (about midway between
McClellandtown and Brownsville Junction).  The next day buses were using
the road to the left.   Isn't it great!  Jim always had a willingness to
hike for a picture and he preached it.  Sometime ask him about hiking
with Bill Janssen, and George Krambles through the rattlesnakes in
Montana.  Or is story about walking for miles along the Milwaukee Road
for one picture of the Olympian Hiawatha ... one picture in one day and
he was happy as a cricket next to a warm hearth.

Page 115 upper is an afternoon Latrobe - Baggaley car in Younstown.  The
photo looks north toward Latrobe.

Page 116 center right - the car is on the Dickerson Run line.  The track
in the foreground was shared by Uniontown-Phillips-Connellsville and
Dickerson Run - Connellsville cars.   Has to be a morning picture.

Page 117 upper - its a Martin car.  The Brownsville line is at the
bottom of the hillside behind the Martin car.

Page 117, botton -  Car 611 was the only one of four cars built for
Westmoreland County Railway and acquired second hand by West Penn.  It
and air-brake 204 were regularly used in Connellsville - South
Connellsville local service.  The 611 had last been in revenue service
in August 1939 ... the Orpheum Theater advert for Andy Hardy Gets Spring
Fever, that we see in this fantrip photo, was on the car when Charlie
Dengler photographed it on August 27, 1939, and the dates on the sign
work with a perpetual calendar for 1939 service.  That gives us a fairly
decent idea when the 830s were assigned to South Connellsville.

Page 118.  Notice that Greensburg City Lines, the successor to West Penn
owned Penn Transit, was still using the Greensburg terminal in 1949.
And wouldn't you like to have that Ford bus today?  Well, maybe not.
They were noted for falling apart.  And I can personally testify that
the Ford we have at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum is an absolute bear
to drive in contrast to the 45 foot GM diesel from the same era.  Those
drivers earned their keep ... a steering wheel rubbing the gut, no power
steering, a crash box transmission, and making change while you are
trying to pull out from a curb.  It was ten times worse than my old
Packard.

Page 118, lower - The freight house was immediately behind the passenger
terminal.

Page 119 upper left ... this was the bridge over the Pennsy used by
Phillips, Brownsville and Martin cars.  Looks north.  Jordan Wye (page
116) was at the far end of the bridge.

Page 119 lower ... Obviously along US 119.  And we can see the Pennsy's
Southwest Branch on the hillside.  But you've made me decide I need to
drive the highway to figure it out.   North of Scottdale doesn't make
sense because the trolley line shunned the shoulders of roads for miles
and miles north of Scottdale.  My instinct wants to put it somewhere
north of Colebrook (Coal Brook) and maybe near Moyer Siding.  Jim had a
talent for standing back, and therefore it does not match any other
pictures I own taken by less ambitious fans.

The Pittsburgh Section...

Page 120 -- What can I say about Lawson Hill's picture of 4207 in Donora
other than I love it.  There were very few unrebuilt Jones cars left,
and I'm not sure if they still had Jones control or not.   Glad you
thought to bring out the smog.  Today Donora is place with no smog, no
industry,  and no young people.  One by one as people die off their
homes end up defaulting to the borough for unpaid taxes because no one
wants to move there.  Sad.

Page 121 -- Again, somewhere in the suburbs is correct if you assume any
town outside of Pittsburgh is a suburb.  John Seibert took three
pictures on the isolated Schoenville shuttle line down the Ohio River in
McKees Rocks.  One of the businesses for which McKees Rocks was best
known to railfans was the principal shops of the Pittsburgh and Lake
Erie Railroad, whose tracks isolated this line from the rest of the PRC
system.  Allegedly, when the platforms on 4344 sagged so much that the
doors would no longer close, the line was abandoned and replaced by the
Broadhead Manor - Schoenville bus line.  Maybe that story is just
another urban legend.  But platforms did sag on double-door low-floor
cars.  I have a picture of a 5200 with platform sag when it came out of
the factory door.  And the railways company drew the moment drawings to
show the design was sound!

Page 131 - Glad to see that you had the courage to publish Johnnie
Seibert's left side-rear of 5230 at Lincoln Place.   I never cease to be
amazed that PRC bought 253 single-end, multiple-unit, low-floor cars but
I can find evidence in the company route cards that they ran them in
trains only on route 88 and then only briefly.   There is, however a
published picture of a train on route 82 with some company executives,
but that view was actually taken at Forbes and South Braddock on route
67.

Page 122-123.  What a wonderful array of yellow cars.  I used to pass up
PCCs on route 8 and wait for a 5500.  And so ugly they were ... 1912
designs replicated 14 years later.

Page 123 - The sagging but recently repainted 4366 was sitting on the
farthest track on the back side of Keating Car House, out of which route
12 operated.   Like most of the low floor cars, this one was not speeded
up in the 1930s.   The cemetery in the distance is along Troy Hill Road
on the other side of McKnight Road ... the 12 Evergreen line ran down in
the ravine behind the weeds.

Page 123 - an aside, and not an error ... there was a group of low-floor
interurban Jones cars with HL control (3750-3769) that did have
toilets.  And maybe the arch window 3600s did.

Page 123, bottom.  The last two active non-PCC interurbans were based at
Charleroi circa 1950 or 1951.  John's picture of 3811 with a 3700 behind
it is on a track between the barn in Charleroi and the Pennsylvania
Railroad.  Curious thing here is that the pole on the wire suggests that
the car had been used recently.  And the 1700s were in service.

Page 124 - What an absolutely glorious memory of the smells of fish,
fruits, veggies.  Diamond Market was one element of downtown that I
truly miss, sort of a hold over from the days when people actually lived
downtown.  My grandpap ran an electrical contracting firm two blocks
away at 209 Fourth Avenue (Rick Sebak featured the building and its
lions on a WQED show as one of the oldest surviving downtown edifaces).
I think we lost something when the non-bra movement began in the 1970s
and men threw out their coats and dies.  And those suits and straw
hats.  My grandpa wore detachable collars until he died in 1953 because
you could rid yourself of collar dirt twice a day without washing the
whole shirt.  His father came to Pittsburgh sometime in the middle 18th
century ... he moved out of Germany to avoid wars and wound up serving
in our Civil War.  He was one of those people who lived in downtown when
that is where one lived and worked.  Sometime near the end of the 19th
century, he moved his family (and his tailor shop ... homes and shops
were often in the same building in those days) over to the North Side.
I'm sure this caused a great stir because he was German and the north
side was populated by English.  Jean Cerra, a waitress at Max's
Allegheny Tavern, told me that her grandfather had to lie about his
ancestry in order to get into schools on the North Side ... that Italian
vowel on the end of her name came with her husband ... her grandparents,
like mine, were German.  I'm sure that my old German great grandpa also
upset people by falling in love with my Irish great grandmother from
Herron Hill.  (Some things never change, do they...)  At any rate, I
love Lawson Hill's picture from an era when five alpha-numeric spaces on
license plates were all we needed.

Page 125 top - Can I suggest that the 1200s were the ultimate in air-car
design?  I see this one still has wheel tread brakes.

Page 125 bottom:  Long trip ... I wonder how many trips a man could make
in a day and how many different points were used for street reliefs?  By
the way, Roy, the buildings in the background comprise the Westinghouse
Air Brake complex.  To the right of the trolley and behind it is the
Pennsylvania Railroad's Wilmerding station.  And almost hidden by the
trolley (see the red TO TRAINS sign through the trolley windshield) is a
tunnel that passed under the PRR four-track mainline to the factory.
This was the old Wilmerding Wye, not the later loop.  Can you imagine
backing a trolley into that pocket track at shift change with literally
hundreds (maybe a thousand) workers streaming up that staircase?  And
there isn't even a legal disclaimer reading "Caution!  Backing Trolleys
May Be Hazardous to Your Health."

Page 126 ... memo last night says McChane is really Summit.

Page 127 -- for those not in the loop, Paris Lake was just north of the
Allegheny County / Washington County line.  Ed Lybarger remembered the
old swimming hole perhaps a half mile from the car stop.

And now to Philadelphia:

Page 7 - the closest I'm going today to the location of the picture on
the bottom of the page is my desk.  West Philadelphia still had some
vibrancy in the early 1950s when Lawson Hill took the picture.  I like
it.  But I'm not going there today.

There is a two typos in the upper caption on page 11 ... the typesetter
apparently changed route 53 to 35 and 75 to 15.  Curious picture because
I was told that the Brilliners had clearance problems on route 75.

Page 11 - And I like running an all-electric drum-brake car better than
an air car.

Page 13 - Isn't that a fantastic picture of a modernized eighty-hundred
at Broad Street Station?  I rode into that station once before it closed
in 1952.  But why are the bricks on the west end so clean.  Did the dirt
reach a critical mass and fall off of its own weight?   The taxi cabs
will probably dash over to Walnut Street to go west.  Pennsylvania used
to have a law that the speed limit on state highways was 50 unless
otherwise posted.  And that law superseded the general 25 mph city
limit.  Broad Street was route 611, Chestnut and Walnut was route 3.
They never had posted limits.  George Arnoux was once told by the city
engineer that it deliberately was done that was to expedite traffic.

Page 15 - I'm not going to lay money on it, but I would suggest that the
picture of the car on route 38-A is turning from Parkside Avenue into
52nd Street.  There was only one curve on the line.

Page 19, lower right - Millbourne station in the Borough of Millbourne.
That appears to be the parking lot for the Sears Roebuck store to the
left of the front of the train..  The picture of the boys in the front
door of that string of Frankford cars is priceless.  One of them could
easily have been me.  There were toilets at 69th Street, I suspect so
mothers could wash the faces of their children....  (For those who are
receiving this note who don't know the difference, the monitor roof cars
(upper left page 18) were built for the opening of the Market Street
subway-elevated in 1907.  The arch roof cars came in the 1920s when the
line was extended to Frankford.  They disappeared in 1960 when the
"Almond Joy" cars were delivered by Budd.

Page 20-21-etc.  Fairmount Park Transportation Co. was the only trolley
line in Pennsylvania that consistently (for every one of its 50 years)
ignored its responsibility to provide annual reports to the Pennsylvania
Department of Internal Affairs.  So we have no idea of how many people
they moved.   For all I know, the may have considered themselves exempt
because they also ran Woodside Amusement Park (on Parkside Avenue near
50th).  The park lasted longer than the trolleys.   I have not paid any
attention lately, but for many years the carbarn was a city garage ...
the back end was right along the Surekill Crawlway.

Page 28 - center - The 70 and 80 cars certainly reduced operating
expenses.  The consumed less power per car hour than any other cars the
company owned, and, as result, when substations were down for repair on
weekends, the 80-cars would be out.  Whether they saved enough power and
maintenance costs to offset their cost plus interest is another issue.
I think what really happened to this company was that suburban
development came faster after World War I than passengers climbed into
automobiles ... a very unique situation.  And all the while, downtown
Philadelphia was still a magnet (something not true today).  It may have
been nothing more than the right place at the right time.

Page 29 - I want to believe it is about just inbound from Westgate Hills
where the Penn Fruit store was being built.  The brick houses also
match.

Page 29 - center.  West Chester Pike at Chester Creek Trestle at
Westtown Way, village of Miltown, East Goshen Township.  The last full
day of rail service on the West Chester line west of Westgate Hills was
June 3, 1954.    Rush hour rail service was maintained in conjunction
with West Chester buses over 3.5 miles of track between 69th Street
Terminal and Westgate Hills stop until August 23, 1958, the date given
in the caption.

Page 30 center -- the last time I was at Pine Ridge Stop (west of
Smedley Park on the Media line) it has not change a bit (except for
different leaves).

Lehigh Valley Transit Company:

Page 34 looks east from the eastbound platform at Ardmore Junction
station.

Page 39 upper, see page 41 lower.

Page 40 - lower picture.  I'll lay money on this picture is going north
(instead of south) on the north slope of Lehigh Mountain and north of
Summit Lawn stop.  Trouble is I don't know the stop numbers.  Stop 123
is on the south side of the mountain where the tracks went under US
309.  Two digit stops were farther south.  But this is clearly on the
mountain and the sign says stop 120.  There was a cross street on the
northside just north of Summit Lawn, and I think that is where this is
taken.  Want to go for a walk, Roy?

Page 41 upper is at Lanark.  You can see where it curves off the highway
and behind the convent about a block north of where Jim was standing.

Page 41 lower is near School siding on the Coopersburg cutoff ... the
grading on that 1925 relocation away from the old Bethlehem Pike was
quite substantial.

Page 42 - School Siding had equal laterial switches at each end.  Could
be it.

Page 43 - Not hard to see what happened in those few years after the
war, is it.  Lester Wismer (who is about a decade older than I am) told
me he last saw full cars on the Liberty Bell Route in World War II.

Page 45 - You can see Sellersville substation in the distance.

Page 46 -bottom - The location between Sellersville and Telford was
known as Deersteins stop.  It was still a dirt road in the 1960s.  Today
it is asphalt and in the middle of a suburban housing development.  The
residents need to drive miles now to get their corn stalks and pumpkins
for the Great Pumpkin.  And yes, we might be able to claim it is near
Souderton. .. how could one tell one housing development from another
these days.

Page 47, bottom - Just to confuse the issue, LVT sited Acorn Siding at
Normandy Farm stop.    Randy Kulp once told me that the Lehigh Valley
Chapter of the NRHS had to explain to the new management (ATA, the same
people who ran Cincinnati, Newport and Covington) that 700s and 800s
were built to run in trains before they could run this trip.  Randy went
on to say that the trip was such a success that the management began
running the freight cars in MU after that.   I'm sure that the NRHS was
appreciated by the transit union members after that.

Page 49, Top - the bridge carried the Stony Creek Branch of the Reading
Company over the trolley line.  The picture to the lower left on page 48
was taken from the same bridge.

Page 54 top - Sad that all of the 950s were scrapped.  Personal opinion
... no one needs to agree with me.  Those ten cars had Westinghouse VA
(variable automatic) control operated by a hand joy stick or a foot
pedal.   Impressive for a small city to buy something that sophisticated
as late as 1930.

Pages 56-57.  Where did Jim get those 1939 color pictures?  I knew he
took a few 616 Dufaycolor slides on a west coast trip that year.  Were
this the same?  If so they come within a year of the color we've never
seen on the C&LE.

Lancaster...

Very minor typo on page 82  ... the 41 Birneys were not enough to run
the entire Lancaster city network sometime between 1933 or 1934.  The
conversion of the local route in Columbia, 12 miles west of Lancaster,
released one or two Birneys.  The one used in suburban service on the
Coatesville line as far as Mellinger's Church was released in the summer
of 1932.  Maybe some service cutbacks helped.  It was around 1934 that
the newspapers announced that the Cabbage Hill Gets Smaller Cars and
Speed.   Looks like an ACF product (page 83) ... is an ACF product.  CTC
bought some Yellow Coaches (see upper picture on 83), Fargos, and even
some war-time Fords. But the lion's share of the bus fleet from 1934
until 1950 came fron ACF or ACF-Brill.  We even got the last C36 ever
made.  It was not until 1951 that Lancaster bought the first GM diesels
and never looked back.

Hershey...

Text page 88 - the Ephrata and Lebanon quit the last day of May 1931.
Whether or not HTC bought the LE&L cars immediately or just provided a
home for them until a buyer could be found is not clear.  One of the
four Cincinnati cars became an out building or restaurant (I have a
picture of it in that condition), the other three would up as HTC 4, 7
and 8.   John Bowman recalled them as much slower than Hershey's other
suburban cars.   For what it is worth, the E&L would up as part of
Lehigh Power Securities Corporation, along with Pennsylvania Power and
Light Company (PPL Utilities), United Gas Improvement Co. (UGI Utilities
Inc.), Lehigh Valley Transit, WIlliamsport Passenger Railway, Jersey
Shore Electric Street Ry., Williamsport Passenger Railway,  and
Conestoga Traction Co.  LE&L had an office in Lebanon (with an out house
instead of indoor plumbing), but William Griest, who was president of
the Lancaster Division of LPSC gave the orders.  (The tallest building
in Lancaster is the Griest Building ... it was built for UGI, PP&L and
CTC.)  And, for whatever it's worth, LPSC was own by Electric Bond and
Share Corporation, which controlled over 13 other holding companies and
more than 50 individual railway properties in the U. S. and several
foreign countries.  The EBASCO presence was also in Dallas.  And who
owned EBASCO?  Why, General Electric.  Made is easy to sell hardware
just like GM owning NCL.  Now you know why the Lancaster Birney cars had
GE controls, GE compressors, GE motors.

Page 94 - Did fog lights work?

Page 95 - Isn't Lawson Hill's picture of the girl and the Electromobile
great!!!  Someone who had the common sense to include both.  Fabulous.
She is probably 65 and a grandmother these days.   That is the first
color picture I've ever seen of a car in the late 30s modernized paint
scheme.   And was really a cloudy day or just a smoky day.  Bill Allen,
who lived there when his Bell Telephone stuck his dad there, remarked
that it was a "three shirt a day town."   I would love to see a train
sheet for Slope or Alto towers on the Pennsy in 1944 ... probably more
than 200 trains a day with helpers coming down light from Gallitzen
screwing up the works.  And if you wonder why it and some of the other
pictures are blurred, be reminded that Kodachrome had an ASA rating of
10, which translated to 1/100th at f 5.6 on a sunny day.  Or 1/10th at f
4 on in heavy overcast in Altoona.