[PRCo] Re: JTC

[Fred Schneider]

See text in PCC from Coast to Coast, pages 103 and 104.   Destination signs
show the neighborhood where the car would terminate or in many cases a
separate borough outside the city.    Coopersdale and Ferndale were paired,
as noted in the book, Jim.  Roxbury and Morrellville were also paired.

Franklin was an un-mated (virgin?)  line in the off peak but at shift
changes at Bethlehem Steel, cars would be run from Franklin to neighborhoods
throughout the city.  I have one picture showing four cars lined up at
Franklin Loop on a rather dull afternoon in 1949 ready for the shift
shange.  The first and third cars were 303 and 302, 13-window cars that JTC
bought for Windber interurban service.  The second one was 304, the used
Johnstown and Somerset interurban car that was even one window longer ... a
real monster.  Behind it was one of the second-hand DT Birneys from Bangor,
Maine.  I have no idea where the J&S car was going.  The first and third
cars were signed Morrellville.  One might imagine they did the same thing
before the shift change, i.e. that these cars might have left the barn, gone
to Morrellville or Roxbury, headed for Franklin (dumping the incoming
workers at the plant gate), gone around the loop and come back a half hour
later to pick up those coming home.  By 1959 or 60, Franklin had a 40 minute
headway ... 16 trips a day.  The other four lines (or two pairs were
slightly better.)   Russ Jackson remembered sitting in the substation on
Baumer Street one Sunday and noticing the ammeter had dropped to zero ...
all three cars and the trolley bus were in terminal loops!    (I used
Charles Birney's name loosely because its application to the cars seems to
be more railfan than industry inspired.)

Horner - Messenger - Ash, etc. was the Horner Street line.  A dispatcher
once told me that it worked OK until you got a greenhorn motorman and then
the schedule for every car on the line became screwed up.  Helps to explain
the conversion to trackless.  Horner Street ran to the carbarn.  It never
had PCCs but the route name was printed on the PCC sign rolls.  I wouldn't
care, however, to speculate whether or not one ever ran over the line.  .

Dale did not have PCCs.  It was abandoned before World War II.   The Windber
interurban (beyond Kelso Junction or "Benscreek" was abandoned in 1936
allegedly because of flood damage (more likely because of insufficient
earnings potential).

Also, Benscreek, Southmont and Oakhurst did not run PCCs because there was
no way to turn the cars.  That did not, however, stop JTC from having the
route names on the roll signs.  Do not let that confuse you.  Each ended on
a truncated piece of single track.  Most interesting might have been the
Oakhurst shuttle which ended going downhill at a T-intersection.  There was
a house directly across the street from the end of the line.  One motorman
told me that, "More than once we had to pull cars out of that guy's fron't
yard .... Halloween pranks .... Kids put grease on the tracks."

Johnstown cars did not have a CARBARN sign on the sign roll.  MOXHAM was the
carbarn sign.   I would not be surprised that a sign midway between two
destinations also meant carbarn.   After the B&O demanded that the crossing
in Ferndale be replaced or removed in 1959, the Ferndale end was abandoned
and all cars going in that direction turned back at Moxham ... it had become
a regular route.

One of the clues to Johnstown's heavy patronage for a city of 65,000 people
is that the city was only a part of the older metropolitan area, in the same
manner as Pittsburgh.  Ferndale, to the south, was a separate borough.
Franklin, to the northeast, was a separate borough.  I've been told that the
borough tax collector was the highest paid in the state because he received
a minuscule percentage of the taxes but Bethlehem Steel paid one hell of a
large sum to the borough.  Westmont, at the top of the incline, was a rather
afluent older residential borough.  I'm pretty sure that Dale was a separate
borough, but I have no current street map of the city (one doesn't need one
when you can find your way around without one), and the 15 minute USGS map
from back when the earth was still cooling is inadequate to show borough /
city boundaries.  I think Moxham may also have been a separate borough ...
its main reason for being was as a  company town for the US Steel mill on
the south side.  Bethlehem Steel essentially follwed the Conemaugh all the
way from Franklin to Coopersdale.  And, it looks like there is a dashed line
separating Coopersdale from Johnstown on the map.  So we were probably
looking not at a city of 65,000 but one closer to 100,000 if you added all
the inner boroughs into the stew.   All went well until we caught up to the
pent up demand for steel after World War II and then the city crashed like a
rock.  (It didn't do any better than Altoona to its east.)

When I said collapse, I meant it with a capital C.  Trolley patronage
dropped from about 25 million a year to 6 million between 1948 and 1958.
Johnstown was very much the archtypal one industry down.  Steel, steel and
steel.  It was alledged by a friend of mine that the Bethlehem Steel general
superintendent could drive the wrong way on any one-way street in town and
just be smiled at by the police.  The steel company supposedly paid for
Memorial Hospital.  Their taxes paid for the schools.  And after 1949
everything went belly up.  The steel company mines were closed and flooded.
The mills shut down for weeks at a time, then reopened, and then had more
inventory adjustment layoffs.  Finally in 1982 or so, they closed the
town.   It was so sad talking to people in the park downtown.  You could ask
them what they do for a living and you would be told steel workers.  And you
would reply that the mills were closed and torn down.  These men still had
home that they would be rebuilt and they would be hired back.  A lot of them
moved out of down ... often to the south ... we could track them by
unemployment courtesy claims from other states ... but they'd be back.  Some
would find work and still quit and come home because home was where the
support mechanism was ... but that was 20 years ago.  I haven't been in
Johnstown since 1987.  It was very sad then.   The brain power moved out and
stayed out.


Because you mentioned some street names, I'm sure you have a map.  I can
xerox one for anyone on this list who sends me a business size return
envelope with postage already affixed.   Address is 111 Delp Road, Lancaster
PA 17601-3905.



"James B. Holland" wrote:

> Could someone please describe the routes for the PCCs in
> Johnstown?       Outer terminals seem to be Morrellville, Coopersdale,
> Franklin, Dale, Moxham, Ferndale, and Roxbury.       Were these lines
> through routed with each other  --  like Ferndale to Coopersdale  --  or
> did all loop downtown and return to the outer terminal?
>
> Did PCCs run regular service along Horner, Messenger, Ash etc.?
> Was this the Moxham car?
>
> Did the JTC PCCs have a  Car--House  sign or did they use Moxham?
>
> Did 406 become the Banana TrolleyCar on the Ferndale route near the
> single track trestle over Stony Creek?
>
> Jim__Holland