[PRCo] Re: Maintenance

[Boris Cefer]

Was it possible to see a PCC with a carhouse crew waiting in a loop to make
a repair (to fix doors etc.) on an another, regularly scheduled one? There
are some sorts of repairs that can be easily done within a couple of
minutes. Or did they simply exchange the cars? What was the procedure of
fixing / replacing defective cars that could continue with certain service
limitations, say propulsion not involved?

B
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 10:01 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Maintenance


> Good point.    The only one I remember was a GE 1100 that failed on
> Perrysville Avenue and a supervisor's truck was being used to push it
> into the wye at Charles Street so the next outbound could push it
> back to Keating.   That was 1958.     My memories of PRC were limited
> when I was old enough to remember what was happening, i.e. after I
> became a teenager.   At that time we went back to Pittsburgh for one
> week every Easter during which I roamed all over the city.   My last
> year of that was 1958; then I had one week in town on leave from the
> army in 1959.   There were also a few isolated periods ... funerals
> and the like in 1952 and 1953.   And like Jim points out, I too never
> saw car failures.   Paint work was fair but even the yellow cars were
> not too bad because there was a rash of painting in the late 1940s.
> The real paint collapse came in the early 1960s ... why fix anything
> when the politicians are talking about taking your empire away from you?
>
> I think it also deserves to be pointed out that when the steel mills
> belch out sulfur dioxide in smoke, that turns to dilute sulfuric acid
> in rain.   The environment was not exactly conducive to keeping
> things looking nice.