[PRCo] Re: PRR Federal St. Station

Wed Apr 11 08:57:49 EDT 2007

And remember also the station at East Liberty which was much more an  
important station for East-West trains.    I'm not sure when it was  
removed from the timecards but I know when I last stopped there.   My  
first wife's father spent a life in automobiles ... he wrapped up his  
career owning a Hertz franchise.   That was handy for me if I wanted  
a mini vacation.   "Hey, you got a car stuck in Pittsburgh that you  
want brought back home?  Or even better, has Lancaster got a car  
stuck in Pittsburgh that they want brought home."   I remember one  
time when Pittsburgh Hertz had me bring one of their cars home and  
gave me a train ticket to get back to Lancaster.   I took the  
Philadelphia Night Express, sleeping upright in a coach.   When you  
are 24 years old and you've exhausted yourself driving over and  
taking pictures all day, you have no problem sleeping in a coach  
seat.   That would have been 1964.   Yes, we made a stop in S'Liberty  
going east.

Gee, now if only I could find a Fairbanks, Alaska car today stuck  
down here and still had the same warm relationships.

On Apr 10, 2007, at 9:28 PM, Bob Rathke wrote:

> I checked some old PRR timetables, and it appears that the Federal St.
> Station building (later the Studebaker dealership) was off the east- 
> west
> schedules by 1950.
> However, the Pittsburgh-Cleveland trains still stopped at the  
> Federal St.
> platforms until 1955, and the Pittsburgh area commuter trains  
> stopped there
> as late as 1964. (In 1951, the PRR operated six round trip trains a  
> day
> between Pittsburgh and Cleveland.)  Attached is a photo that I took  
> on the
> Federal St. Station platform in June, 1957.  The view is to the  
> east, and
> the Federal Tire Co. store is visible on the east side of Federal  
> St. along
> the north side of the tracks. At that time, acess to the platforms was
> through a staircase off Federal St. under the tracks.
>
> Like Amtrak service to major cities today, the PRR had major  
> "suburuban"
> stops on its mainlines to Pittsburgh:
> New York line trains stopped at East Liberty, St. Louis line trains  
> stopped
> at Carnegie, and Chicago line trains stopped at Sewickley.
>
> Bob 4/10/07
>
> -----------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bob Rathke" <bobrathke at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 5:55 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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