[PRCo] Re: Memories

[James B. Holland]

Fred Schneider wrote:

> Its been almost a half century since the shutdown of the Pittsburgh 
> and Philly systems began! It's a different world today. Matt suggested 
> that the sidings would probably not be overwhelmingly appreciated in 
> 2004. 


Did you forget to include the connection to the single track and 
sidings???????

> My dad was an engineering student at CIT (now CMU) in the late 1920s and
> graduated in 1930. Mom commuted....... Those two met on Valentines
> Day 1927.......  He rode Pittsburgh
> Railways in the era of high floor cars (even some 3400s and 3500s were
> still running), trailers, gazillions of low-speed low floor cars, and,
> sorry Boris, not a single PCC. To him a car in orange paint was
> unusual; most of the fleet would have been maroon.


Probably Plenty of Orange Cars.       3750s arrived in Orange in 1925; 
so did a number of the 5000--5549 series, probably a majority of 
same.       And in one of the calendars Ed mentions that cars were 
repainted every several years back then.       So I would wager there 
were Not A Few Yellow-Orange cars in the latter 1920s.

And the PCCs weren't far off.

> Matt Barry wrote:
>
>> This morning, on the way to work, motorists took turns sharing one 
>> lane, south-bound and north-bound, as street workers had dug up what 
>> seemed to be at least 100 sq feet sections of asphalt in several 
>> places on West Street in Munhall, near the Municipal building. 
>> Exposed were the single-track rails of the former route 65 
>> Miunhall-Lincoln Place route, seeming perfectly preserved along with 
>> the red brick paving surrounding it. I'm not sure how far down the 
>> workers were going to excavate, but the work stopped short this a.m. 
>> right before the trackage would have split into double-track at the 
>> old Homestead Hospital.
>>
>> I often think that a carline through Munhall from the old Muldowney 
>> Loop to the new Waterfront shopping center would be a great addition 
>> to our neighborhood. I'm dreaming, I know. But, even if it were 
>> something possible and {ahem} acceptable by a large percentage of the 
>> residents from Lincoln Place thru Munhall, to Homestead, I know that 
>> the old single track with passing sidings would probably be a 
>> nuisance, perhaps even a nightmare. And personally, I'd find the 
>> overhead construction, as it exists in Allentown, unattractive. 
>> Single wire as it existed through 1965 in Munhall is much more 
>> aesthetically pleasing, at least to me.
>
>>
>> But, it's only a dream.
>