[PRCo] Re: Tunnel CH

[Dietrich, Robert J.]

My grandfather opened a gas station on Mt. Washington in (I think) 1929.
it had one of those new-fangled hydraulic lifts  - outside in the cold
and rain.  When my Dad got into the business, after the war, he put in a
new lift inside a garage and as a teenager I spent considerable time
under that lift.  On rainy/snowy days o would turn on the heat and wait
as long as possible - that is until Dad forced me - before going under a
wet cold car to change the oil.  I could just imagine what it would be
like under an outdoor lift.

My point there is that it wasn't always management/worker relationships
that dictated working conditions.  My Grandfather probably got under the
cars as often as anyone.  It was more the case that that's the way it
was.  Lifts were installed outside and that is where you worked and if
you didn't like you worked somewhere else.



-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of John
Swindler
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 10:00 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Tunnel CH



Not just carbarns lacked doors.  Homestead Works of US Steel was cold in

winter, hot in summer, according to my father.  Most buildings had open 
doorways, which just made it easier for moving "stuff", to different
parts 
of the mill.  Eliminates opening/closing doors, and eliminates
opportunity 
for truck drivers and train crews to plow through a closed door.  But 
employees generally worked in middle - or far end of mill building.  The

area closer to doorways - at least from a summer spent at 160" mill many

years ago - tended to be storage areas.

And maybe that somewhat explains lack of doors at carbarns, even in
northern 
climates.  Security wasn't that strong of an issue.  They were just
large 
"sheds" to keep part of fleet out of elements.

So what about Homewood Shops??  Did the shop area have doors, or was it 
open??  And how much maintenance space was needed at Tunnel in earlier 
years???  (Opps, I see that Fred has already answered this question)

Beyond that, Fred has a valid observation on working conditions and 
labor-management relations (or lack thereof).  It's difficult to realize
the 
way things were just a couple generations ago.  From reading old
newspapers, 
the railroads seemed to be a particularly brutal place to work for
injuries 
and fatalities.

John



>From: Fred Schneider <fschnei at supernet.com>
>Reply-To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>To: Boris Cefer <boris6 at volny.cz>, pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>Subject: [PRCo] Re: Tunnel CH
>Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 14:04:39 -0400
>
>To the group:  This dialog started when Boris attached a PRC picture of
>Tunnel Carhouse that I had taken, and asked about doors on Tunnel
>Carhouse.  Thought some of the rest of you might find some of it
>interesting.  And Happy Easter to all of you.  By the way, I'm putting
>off processing the church collection.
>You just don't understand the concept!  Doors cost money.  If the
>workers get frost bitten fingers you simply hire replacement workers.
>
>I'm not trying to sound sarcastic.  This was the way management
>thought.  This was also one of the reasons behind the development of
>labor unions in the 19th and 20th centuries.
>
>Some workers didn't even have a roof.  Pacific Electric Railway did
>routine operating repairs on PCC cars and the 5050 class, and before
>that the 800s, at Toluca Yards just outside the Hollywood subway
>tunnel.  The place had a pit.  What did they do when it rained?  The
>help got wet.  How about those heavy spring rains in southern
California
>that are driven horizontally by the winds?  Well, productivity
>suffered.  The help huddled around a stove in a shed.  I recall that
>Boston's Cleveland Circle car house had doors when I first saw it in
the
>1950s but I also remember thinking how unusual that was.  I don't
>remember doors at any Pittsburgh car house.  Nor do I remember doors on
>any Philadelphia barn.
>
>Some rudimentary effort may have been made to keep workers warm.  Some
>Philadelphia facilities had a separate shop track with doors and heat.
>Some companies may have put radiant or resistance heaters in the pits
to
>change them from downright miserable and bone numbing  to simply cold.
>
>Companies in the United States believed that the investors and managers
>came first.  Wage employees were expendable property that could be
>replaced if they did something wrong.  This was particularly true
during
>the period of massive European immigration.  The earliest documentation
>I've seen of any company providing benefits, as we know them, was an
>announcement by R. P. Johnson, President, Lehigh Valley Transit Co., on
>July 4, 1913 that is company would not provide company paid insurance,
>sick benefits and pensions and a $200 death benefit.  The company
>offered $1.00 a day when sick, medical and surgical benefits "under
>certain conditions," and a $20 monthly retirement benefit after 25
years
>service.  To put this all into perspective, the national average
>compensation for wage employees in 1911 (according to the U. S. Census
>of Electric Railways) was $674.26, which breaks down to $56.18 a month
>of $2.16 a day if we assume a six day workweek.  Because wages in the
>Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area were significantly below the stational
>average at that time, they were offering about 50% of salary on
>retirement and 50% a day for sick leave.  But remember that this was
>highly unusual at time and I suspect warranted a lot of hate mail to
>Johnson from the presidents of other traction companies.  Ron DeGraw
>told me that his father, a Philadelphia and Western motorman, received
>no benefits until after World War II.  Vacations?  You got to be
>kidding.  And if you have enough saved up to be able to do it on your
>own, you don't belong here.  Unemployment insurance?  That came out of
>the creation of the federal-state employment service by the
>Wagner-Peyser Act in 1938.
>
>Back to doors.  In Pittsburgh, the Manchester, Homewood, and Tunnel
>general overhaul shops had doors.  Kensington in Philly had doors.
Most
>overhaul shops in the north had doors.  I think even Pacific Electric
>put doors on the Torrance Shop in southern California.
>
>Satisfactory?
>
>fws
>
>
>
>Boris Cefer wrote:
>
> >  I cannot imagine replacing small parts such as contacts at about
5F.
> > Did they use an acetylene burner to keep fingers warm??? You cannot
do
> > such jobs with mittens on your hands!
> > From: Fred Schneider
> >  They added doors after it became an overhaul shop.
> >
> > Lack of doors on car houses was anything but unusual.  You just
> > dressed warmly in the winter.  Overhaul shop buildings often had
doors
> > because cars would stay inside for hours.  Carbarns generally either
> > didn't have them or they were not kept closed because openening and
> > closing them would be more of a chore than freezing.  Applies to
many
> > northern cities and virtually all southern US cities.
> >
> > Boris Cefer wrote:
> >
> >> Hi, Fred! Do you remember any doors on Tunnel carhouse buildings
> >> (barn)? The photo doesn't seem to show any. It had to be tremendous
> >> to work there in winters. Boris
> >
>
>
>

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