[PRCo] Re: KDKA Pitt Parade

[Fred Schneider]

The name Barry Matthew strikes me as someone I have not heard from  
before on the list?   Who is Barry Matthew?

  Arrogant Fred Schneider the 3rd, sometimes fws3, sometimes signed f3.

By the way, somewhere in Derrick's archives is background on all of  
us and photos of each of us.   I don't know how to retrieve it but  
someone can tell you how.   And Barry, if you haven't had a clue yet,  
there has been some material going back and forth this week about a  
list convention.   Many of us have been around long enough that we  
have met each other.  We've decided to have a little mini convention  
using the trolley museum at Washington PA as a base on November  
around November 16-17 or Friday-Sunday 15-17.  Right now it looks  
like we have about 10 of us planning to show up.   There are no  
definite plans on what to do yet, but it looks like motorcading parts  
of Pittsburgh Railways and West Penn Railways rights-of-way, some car  
operations at the museum, some dinners together, some bull  
sessions.   Maybe someone can talk Bob Dietrich into bringing his  
South Hills Tunnel / South Hills Junction module and some models ...  
should not be too much a problem.  That way we might even get some HO  
operation going.   Who knows, we might even get an East Penn Traction  
Club Table going.

If I'm correct in thinking Barry Matthews is someone new to us, then  
why not tell me something about your self and post a digital picture  
so we can equate a name to a face.....

++++++++++

Oh, yes, I'm an old curmudgeon.   I remember low-floor, low-speed,  
single-end and double end Jones cars.  I rode them in World War II  
but I was a little young to remember the numbers but I remember the  
horrid gear noise.  But I vividly remember the postwar rush hours  
with high speed low-floor cars all over the city.   I remember the  
evening my dad passed the Pittsburgh Press advertising supplements  
across the table for me to read ... the ones announcing the delivery  
of the 1700 series cars.   So looking at movies of 1700s in starting  
their fourth decade of service ... well ... that really wasn't "my  
Pittsburgh."

My Pittsburgh was a stinking dirty city filled with steel mills.  The  
Pennsy powered its commuter trains with G5s ten wheelers.  I can  
remember when the Bessemer and Lake Erie ran its first Baldwin diesel  
into North Bessemer in 1949, I think the number was 401.   That was  
even before the F7s, Derrick.   The engine house was filled with  
2-10-4s and the Pacifics for the Greenville passenger local.   And I  
remember the Island Queen blowing up and burning on the Mon Wharf.    
I photographed a B&O S1 Santa Fe going through the P&LE station on  
the prow of freight drag.   I stood on the bridge PAT uses now for  
light rail and photographed two B&O Pacifics backing in amid a cloud  
of steam and smoke to take the day passenger trains out for Buffalo  
and Wheeling / Kenova / Cincinnati - Louisville.

Used to piss me off when Herman Rinke told me all those places he  
used to go that I did see.   Now I'm the old fart can do it!

And someday you will do.

Can you imagine someday, telling someone you bought a house for only  
$250,000.   When they're struggling to find a down payment on a  
starter home costing $2.5 million?   I guess in Los Angeles that  
starter home will be $25 million in another 50 years.

It's fund getting old and being a curmudgeon.





On Aug 30, 2007, at 12:55 PM, Barry, Matthew R wrote:

> Do you guys remember when KDKA-TV (if you lived in Pittsburgh  
> during the
> 80's and 90's) used to re-run their old Pitt Parade films from the
> 1950's?   I looked forward to these as invariably, there would be a
> Pittsburgh Railways street scene, in the background, or sometimes as
> part of the story.  I recall one Pitt Parade in particular that  
> showed a
> scene of PCCs packed into Craft Avenue House, seemingly right up to  
> the
> curbs on Forbes Avenue, as there was a Pittsburgh Railways strike in
> progress.
>
>
> Here's one Pitt Parade film that was on youtube.  It has the usual
> opening which featured a PCC in the snow.
>
>
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wenlyELs7QU
>
>
>
>
>
> Matt
>
>
>
>
>