[PRCo] Re: Aspinwall

[Fred Schneider]

What can I add to it Jim Holland's picture?   First of all I don't  
know the origin but I think it is one of those negatives that Frank  
Dodge got his hands on and duplicated (with permission) and then sold  
duplicate negatives.  If that is so, it would not necessarily be  
uncommon.  And I have no idea who took the original.   Most of the  
material that Frank duplicated, under the name Industrial Photo  
Service, came from the GE library in Schenectady, or from Frank  
Goldsmith's own negatives, or from the pre-1942 Bill Watts negatives  
which Frank owned.  This is not one of the images in the Goldsmith  
file (which I own today).

The picture is on the loop in Aspinwall as Jim tells us.

Just like the company did in other areas, West Penn color coded the  
destination signs.  The 830s had smaller sheets of steel than the  
700s, thus all of the old steel sign plates were recycled when the  
cars moved over to the Coke Region.   The paint is peeling off them  
today.  There are several in Ed Lybarger's garage with pealing paint  
and underneath the Coke Region signs we can get a glimpse of the AV  
signs.  The one on this car (New Kensington - Aspinwall) was white on  
red.  Ed and I will probably argue until the cows come home about the  
north end (Tarentum - New Kensington) signs:  Charlie Dengler and I  
both concluded that they were white on the same blue paint that West  
Penn used for the Connellsville-Olver-Phillips-Uniontown signs.  I  
think EHL wants to believe black.   I think there was a lot of "lamp  
black" in with the blue pigment.

I note, in looking at this picture, that the 830s also had the same  
roof mounted clearance lights that were mounted on Coke Region cars.   
They could be rotated 90 degrees from inside the car.   You can see  
one just above the rear door.  There were two lenses ... red and  
green.  You will also see a flat steel plate projecting up from the  
lamp with a curved top on it ... very clear in this picture.   If the  
lamp was turned, you would not see it.  In normal operation, the red  
faced front and rear on both lamps.  The only instance I can find of  
the green being used was on the post abandonment fantrip on August  
10, 1952.  If I could find other two car trips, or second sections, I  
would wager that West Penn used the green in standard railroad  
practice to indicate that there was a second section following.    
This tells a motorman meeting at a siding ... "No damn-it, I didn't  
forget to turn the signal out.  Wait for the car behind me."

The Pittsburgh low-floor is interesting in that it only has a route  
number sign on the roof.  A lot of the earliest low floor cars were  
built with the small route number boxes (where they one or two  
rolls?) and some of those were still around in the 1930s, mostly in  
the scrap lines.   This intrigues me in that the West Penn car is old  
enough to be battle scarred and the Pittsburgh car still had not been  
modernized.  Quite a contrast.

When the 830s were moved to Connellsville in 1937, West Penn told the  
PUC they had plans for rebuilding and repainting.  Not much ever  
happened except that some heavy steel was welded on top of the anti  
climber so that a 700 might no over ride an 830 in a collision.   
Sounds more like controlled destruction to me ... the motorman has an  
extra 1/50th of a second to get his foot out of the way.  But I guess  
it sounded good to the legal types.   What did the PUC have to do  
with it?   West Penn wanted to rent the cars (from themselves).  They  
were never owned by the railways until they had been fully  
depreciated.  Instead, they were owned by West Penn Securities  
Corporation and leased first to Allegheny Valley St. Ry., and later  
to WPRys, and then after they had been written down to nothing, they  
were sold to the Railways.   What a wonderful way to protect your  
investment if there is any chance you might go out of business!

On Sep 21, 2005, at 1:11 PM, James B. Holland wrote:

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>> .I have a photo somewhere of a WP *-Valley--Line-* Cincy curved sider
>> with an PRCo low floor in Aspinwall.
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