[PRCo] Re: West Penn Destination Sign Photo

[Fred Schneider]

And in the West Penn era, many of those roads were still dirt.  The Masontown replacement
bus did not serve Leckrone because there was no paved road into the company town.   I
understand that the Lincoln Highway (partly US 30) was not completely paved until 1935 and
it was the first coast to coast highway that was fully paved.  We're only talking fifteen
years later and about four or five years after the last transcontinental highway was
totally paved.  I'm sure in 1950 there were still, in the Coke Region, a lot of roads
where the dirt was simply masked by the coal dust.  No doubt that helped West Penn to
survive as long as it did.  (Don't quote me ... it's an opinion.)



Fredbruhn at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 1/17/2005 5:56:14 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> PRCoPCC at P-R-Co.com writes:
> If the
> > system works right, Derrick's computer will take it from here and put
> > it where you all can view it if you like.
> Sorry for the panic message.  I dropped the ULR and it came up just fine.  I
> lack computerese.
> Question - Isn't the Uniontown, Hopwood, Fairchance color the same as the
> Dawson sign?
>
> Fred,  the other Fred, not the  one with the titanium knees and
> extensive travel schedule.
>
> You may remember a couple of years ago we had a long discussion of a trip
> Derrick, Ed, Fred III, and I took over most of the WP lines.  With the discussion
> of the bus substitution, it may be of interest that what we drive on today as
> "rural" narrow two lane roads were the main highways of the 40's - 50's.  We
> took off out of Revere on the line to Brownsville and Martin which was less
> than a two lane road and Ed commented this was the only road in WP days.  It is
> only a 10 or 15 minute drive from McClellandtown to Uniontown today on the
> nice 3 and 4 lane road, but it was a winding disjointed trip by car in 1950.  The
> road today cuts off McClellandtown on a high bank and took out the wonderful
> curved crossing in front of the school that was pictured in many books.
> There is a bit of the concrete wall in front of the track that is still left,
> but its not easy to find.  As Ed has said before, the WP didn't exactly
> travel through many towns.  Republic was almost totally missed,  and in Mt.
> Pleasant on the main line if you didn't know where the WP came through you would
> never find it.  Probably a half dozen city blocks from the center of town.  Many
> of the towns are just a few houses and a company store supporting the mines
> around them.  Today it is mostly gone.  The back line from Uniontown to
> Connellsville almost missed every town and today if there wasn't a large building left
> (the ex company store) or a sign designating the town's name you would not
> find it.  I guess my point is you can look at a WP map and see all these
> communities, and believe it was a prosperous source of revenue, but those towns
> weren't.  Someplace long ago I read that almost no rider (except railfans the last
> couple of years) took the entire trip from Uniontown to Greensburg.