[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh Overhead

[Ken & Tracie]

I remember some people joking about the Northeast Corridor being extended to 
the South Hills.

Opinion warning! (Below):

I believe the Buffalo overhead is total overkill, especially downtown. The 
steel streetlight standards, which doubled as line poles during Buffalo's 
latter year of streetcar operation, were still in for lighting use while the 
line was under construction. For all I know, they may still be there today. 
They could and should have been reused for simple span trolley wire 
construction on the main drag. San Diego uses simple span overhead 
construction on its street running.

The Shaker Heights lines also have some degree of overkill. Those line poles 
look like something out of the novel "War of the Worlds."

K.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dietrich, Robert J." <Robert.Dietrich at unisys.com>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2005 5:16 AM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh Overhead


> The rumor I heard was that the overhead was designed to withstand a
> tornado.  True or not it did the job - the tornado went up the hill to
> avoid a conflict with that mass of steel.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of Bob
> Rathke
> Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 7:47 PM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh Overhead
>
> I think that John is on to something here.  A parallel in the commercial
> aviation industry: in the 1950's, the approach lights to airport runways
> were attached to heavy steel towers (not unlike high voltage electrical
> power transmission towers).  Numerous  accidents occurred when too-low
> aircraft struck the towers - the towers survived the impact, but the
> aircraft crashed to the ground.
>
> The old structures were called "battleship towers", and by the 1980's
> most
> were replaced by the lighter, frangible (bendable) towers that are in
> use
> today.
>
> I always called PAT's catenary support structures "battleship towers."
>
> Bob 3/16/05
>
> ----------------------------
>
>> Pittsburgh was an early light rail project.  The available consulting
>> engineers were probably (guess on my part) more familiar with metros
> then
>> light rail.
>>
>> John
>
>
>
>