[PRCo] Re: 36drake sent you this eBay item: ORIGINAL SLIDE: PITTSBURGH 1652 AVALON PA LOOP (#2282158170)

[Fred Schneider]

I guess, Mark, that the next time you come to Pittsburgh that you need to
spend time rummaging through the carbarn drawings in the library.

By the way, I supported the contention that one of you made that perhaps they
ran the trailers only east of Avalon loop.  My mind was remembering that
there were some stiffer grades once you got near Emsworth.   But the
correlary to that is ... if you run trailers, you want to work them out of a
yard on the line.  That was the only yard on the line.  I would have to look
at this in detail but I doubt that PRC would have hauled trailers from an off
line carbarn with a shunting locomotive in order to meet a car at the
intersection of a and z streets.    You understand that I'm blowing hot air
... I'm too lazy to walk up the steps to get the route cards out.   Therefore
there is also some logic that they could have run the entire line but it just
happens that the barn was where it was.

If you wanted to couple an MU train on 88, you would have probably done it at
Homewood and that wasn't the end of the line.  And trailers for 42 would
probably have been added at Tunnel and that was close to the inner end of the
line.   I can think of very few carbarns at the very end of lines ... Keating
for route 8 only, McKeesport for route 98 and 56, Bunkerhill for 71 and 73,
the old barn at Charles and Irwin for routes 7 and 9, Herron Hill for route
85, and the facility at South Hills Village Mall for current routes 42 and
47.  The rest of them required making up trains in the middle of the line.
(And I cannot imagine trailers on route 85 on those grades.)  Note, for
example, that Craft had a pull out track off of Forbes Avenue, where cars
could pull off the street, have a trailer added, and then pull right back
onto the street.

Have I rendered sufficient bull shit?  (And you can use the r word either
way.)



"Edward H. Lybarger" wrote:

> I can't tell you much about it, but there might be a track map lurking
> around the PTM Library (no guarantees!).  Route 13/14 was a heavy hauling
> corridor, and I suspect that a visit to its route card(s) might be
> enlightening.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of Mark
> McGuire
> Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 4:43 PM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: 36drake sent you this eBay item: ORIGINAL SLIDE:
> PITTSBURGH 1652 AVALON PA LOOP (#2282158170)
>
>  Aha! So that's what the two small lines are for under the 14 on the
> PERC map of 1959. Can someone tell me more about this trailer yard?
> I knew nothing about it. Thanks!
>
>                             Mark