[PRCo] Re: B3 TRUCKS ON PITTSBURGH CITY 1700S

[Boris Cefer]

Does that mean that the crane remained in PRCo ownership?

I hope to hear Ed's comment when he has a few minutes.

B

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 12:41 AM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: B3 TRUCKS ON PITTSBURGH CITY 1700S


> Pittsburgh Railways shifted a lot of the inspection work from  
> Homewood to the car houses in the early 1960s.   This was brought out  
> in the condemnation proceedings.   The county pointed out that PRC  
> had reduced the number of cars going through Homewood and the  
> railways countered with a statement that they were doing a lot of the  
> work in the car houses.   What work, I don't know.   It may have  
> simply been a fluff statement.   There was documentation of the A, B,  
> C program in the Transit Journal when it was started about 1933 as a  
> depression economy move.  What they were trying to do was rationalize  
> how they spent money and inspecting cars on a mileage basis seemed to  
> be a logical answer.   I think we would all agree it makes sense ...  
> that's the way we do our automobiles today.
> 
> But by the 1960s the company is in a liquidation mode.   The county  
> was condemning it.    The company was simply trying to conserve  
> cash.   Conserving cash meant not wasting it running cars across town  
> to the shops to inspect them if you could do it in a car house and  
> not fixing something that didn't need to be fixed.
> 
> It also meant that some things could be delegated.   If the motorman  
> could be coerced into washing his own windshield, then let him do  
> it.   If you think I'm kidding, I'm not.   I remember Norm Vutz  
> telling me about a conversation with a motorman about what it was  
> like working for PAT and the answer was, "I didn't have to wash the  
> streetcar windshield this morning."
> 
> There were only three car houses left when PAT took over:   Tunnel,  
> Keating and Craft.   If memory serves, there were about 360 active  
> cars ... the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s and 1700s.  The 1200s were mostly  
> stored in Rankin.   Keating closed in 1965.   Craft closed in early  
> 1967.   They wanted to keep Homewood open and tracks were maintained  
> but it rapidly became impossible to get cars in and out of the shop  
> because people would park autos on the tracks.   I'm also not sure  
> what PAT did in Homewood between 1964 and 1966.   They took the  
> building but not the overhead crane.
> 
> So after early 1967 the issue of which cars went to the shop and  
> which were done in the car house was moot.    They might have trucked  
> parts across town for a while.
> 
> EHL can fill in the details from Trolley Fare when Homewood was  
> physically closed.