[PRCo] Boggs & Buhl train

Tue Apr 10 21:34:13 EDT 2007

I have an article from the B&O Magazine in1951 that lists all the depatment 
stores in the East that had the B&O miniature trains.  It mentions Boggs & 
Buhl.  The Boggs and Buhl train was battery powered; as recently as the late 
1980's I saw a gasoline powered version of the train at an outdoor carnival 
hgere.

Bob 4/10/07

-----------------------------
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Robb" <bill937ca at yahoo.ca>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 6:42 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Allegheny

> The G12 trains were built by Miniature Train & Railroad Company and were a 
> common sight in department stores at Christmas in the late 50s.  I have an 
> article on them in Grand Scales Quarterly, but not close at hand.  I think 
> they were rented for the holiday season.  There's a bit of info here.
> http://www.trainweb.org/parktrains/history/mtc/index.html
>
> Many of these trains still survive.
>
> Here's a larger G16 that has been preserved. Click on the link at the 
> bottom and you'll see a B&O G16.
>
> http://www.toytraindepot.homestead.com/16INCH.html
>
> Bill Robb
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Bob Rathke <bobrathke at comcast.net>
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 6:55:48 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Allegheny
>
>
> Boggs & Buhl closed in 1958.  In the 1940's and 50's they operated a train
> ride in the toy department at Christmas and Easter - an electric 1 ft. 
> guage
> B&O streamliner.  I've often wondered what happened to that train after 
> the
> store closed
>
> Federal St. was still stop on the PRR up to the time the commuter trains
> were discontinued in the Fall of 1964.   I'm not sure when the Federal St.
> Station building cesased being a station, but I remember the auto dealer
> that took over the building - Reed Studebaker, I believe.
>
> Bob 4/10/07
>
> -----------------------------
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Cc: "Dennis Lamont" <ge13031 at yahoo.com>
> Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 10:33 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Allegheny
>
>
>>I guess we all have our memories of the Nor'side.
>>
>> My Grandma Rebele lived off the 3400 block of Perrysville Avenue so I
>> have my memories of the former City of Allegheny too.   In fact, as
>> long as Grandma lived, the lower Nor'side in her mind was still
>> Allegheny.   She never adopted the word Pittsburgh.    But then she
>> was married to my Grandpa and moved from Pittsburgh to Allegheny
>> before it was annexed to the larger city.
>>
>> My Great Grandpa Rebele, whom I never knew, lived at 1439 Sandusky
>> Street in a house that, surprisingly, still exists near Allegheny
>> General Hospital.   I've had conversations with a waitress of German
>> ancestry, Jean Cerra, in Max's Allegheny Tavern who remembered tales
>> about how her relatives were forced to lie about their ancestry in
>> order to enroll their son (her grandfather or father) into a
>> parochial school on the Northside.   No German's were desired in that
>> neighborhood at that time because it was for English people.   The
>> Germans, like my Great Grandfather and hers, lived in the triangle
>> between the rivers after the War Between the States.    Eventually
>> much of that part of the north shore the river and Troy Hill became
>> German but not without protest.
>>
>> My memories of the 1950s when I was running around the Northside was
>> a of quasi-vibrant but declining area with a market at Ohio and
>> Federal Streets.   Pittsburgh Railways still maintained an house on
>> Sandusky Streets north of East Ohio Street with the line / inclines
>> department on the first floor (Charles Shauck was the superindent in
>> my era) and the track engineering department was on the second
>> floor.  Shauck dragged me around to some wonderful places to eat in
>> the market after, he claimed, I'd dumped all my money in company fare
>> boxes.
>>
>> Allegheny had its own department store.   Boggs and Buhl survived
>> until 1957 I think.   Ed Lybarger could fill you in on the details:
>> one of the original founders of the store was one of the founders of
>> the Pittsburgh, Harmony, Butler and New Castle Railway as well as one
>> of the land development schemes up north near Warrendale.   I
>> remember the story that my uncle took his two daughters in to outfit
>> them for school during the grand going out of business sale and the
>> store forgot to send the bill.
>>
>> The Garden Theater degenerated in later years to an X-rated venue on
>> North Avenue.   That part of Allegheny became rather nondescript.
>> My grandmother and mother used to worry about me if I was waiting for
>> an 8 car down at Federal Street and North Avenue.
>>
>> I can also recall when the Pennsylvania Railroad was tearing down its
>> grand castle of a station on Federal Street ... also known as the
>> Fort Wayne Station.   At one time the PRR station on the North Side
>> was a base for some trains starting there and heading west.   It was
>> also a starting point for some trains that went east via the
>> Allegheny and Connemaugh River lines to Johnstown.   I'm not sure
>> when the waiting room closed and it just became a non-agency stop for
>> commuter trains ... probably even before World War II.   I remember
>> it as a Studebaker dealer.   Then in 1954 I took some 35mm negatives
>> of it being dismantled.
>>
>> But I remember the Northside as a city ... blocks this way and blocks
>> that way filled with buildings.   The last time I drove through there
>> a few months ago I was suddenly struck by a totally different
>> impression.   It was one of how many blocks of buildings had been
>> bulldozed away in order to build the East Street Expressway, the
>> Crosstown Expressway and the I-279 Expressway.   Perhaps 20 square
>> blocks of buildings vanished.    And as the link Boris posted pointed
>> out, the heart and soul is gone thanks to the loop around the middle
>> of it.   Just restoring transit to the middle of Federal Street and
>> East Ohio Street won't change anything ... the market is gone.
>> Sears Roebuck is gone.   The Carnegie Library is empty.   The
>> shoppers are out at the mall off McKnight Road.   A small number who
>> are captive may still be downtown because they have no automobile to
>> take them to the mall.
>>
>> But, if you drive out East Ohio Street, between East Commons (we used
>> to call it Sandusky Street) and East Street) there are still a couple
>> of blocks of stores reminiscent of old Pittsburgh including ... get
>> this guys ... a camera store and an Isalys.    I've added a link to a
>> google map showing that area today.
>>
>> http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Federal+Street+at+North+Ave.,
>> +Pittsburgh,
>> +PA&layer=&sll=32.442523,-87.032472&sspn=0.098367,0.148659&ie=UTF8&z=16&
>> ll=40.452123,-
>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> 80.006669&spn=0.011087,0.018582&om=1On Mon, 9 Apr 2007, Boris Cefer
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> http://www.newcolonist.com/finding_allegheny.html
>>>
>>> There's an exhibit in the Heinz Architecture Hall at the Carnegie
>>> Museum
>>> of Art which suggests other ways Allegheny might be revitalized.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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