[PRCo] Re: Map of Washington Interurban (9-12)

[Fred Schneider]

Thanks for posting them Don.   And perhaps the comments below will  
help Mark McGuire and some of the others from out of the area to  
understand the maps.   I hope I didn't screw it up too much  
considering I'm not from Pittsburgh and I'm commenting pretty much  
from memory.

We should give Edwardo 3700 lashes with the proverbial wet rice  
noodle for not having marked all the stop names on the maps before he  
scanned them.

Map 2014  Crookham Siding is in the housing development south of  
Drake Loop, probably pretty close to the south end of it.   Paris  
Lake stop was at the cross roads at the south edge of the map.

Map 2012 ... Thompsonville trestle was where the railroad crossed  
over Brush Creek  and the Montour Railroad.  You'll note that the  
south abutment was at the 980 foot contour line (980 feet above sea  
level) and the north abutment is about 965 feet.   The creek is about  
925 feet.   They are much easier to interpret when they are in color  
with the contour lines in brown and creeks in blue and man-made  
features in purple or black and forests in green.   Interestingly the  
survey does not show Thompsonville substation which was built  
sometime around 1930 and is still there (at the car stop at the north  
end of the bridge).   How do I know when it was built?   Charlie  
Shauck, who was about my father's age, and graduated from Carnegie  
Tech about 1929 or 1930 claimed installing the equipment in it was  
his first job with the Railways Company out of college.   He never  
worked for any one else except briefly for PAT until he got fed up  
with them.

You see map 2010 (or 2011), look for Cheeseman - the farm flanked  
both sides of US 19.   Cheesman stop was on the unimproved road to  
the left of route 19 ... the former Washington Cinder Road.   And you  
will see three houses on the west or left side of that road north of  
the trolley crossing ... the third one was where Ed Lybarger grew  
up.   So you understand how he has 550 volts in his blood.   Today he  
lives in a slightly newer house a few hundred feet away.  Snodgras  
stop was where West McMurray Road crossed the interurban west of  
Donaldson's Crossroads.   Van Eman Siding was in what is now a  
housing development west of Alcoa Dam, west of the Van Eman farm lane  
and east of where the tracks come along side West McMurray Road.    
North of Cheeseman's on that same drawing ... I think where the old  
road crossed over 19 (near the 1100 contour line) was Brown's stop  
(it was called Center Church Road at that point).

Continuing south onto map 2009 ... Morganza stop was where the road  
came out of the STATE TRAINING SCHOOL and crossed the Pennsylvania  
Railroad and terminated at state 519.   Route 519, in this area, was  
the old route 19 through Bridgeville and Carnegie.  My father  
remembered scaring the wits out of his landlady driving her at night  
over it a 60 mph in a Model A Ford back in 1930.   And then he blamed  
me for driving fast?

On map 2008, Fine the big worth NORTH in the lower right corner of  
the map, then go up about half way to the top of the page and you  
will see the car line where it crosses the long trestle over the  
Pennsy yards at Richfol.    The large crosshatched building above it  
is the transformer factory.   Richfol stop and the siding was at the  
left end of the bridge.    Ed would have to point out exactly where  
Canonsburg substation and wye are because I cannot remember  
precisely ... roughly on East Pike Street in the block where it runs  
adjacent to the Pennsylvania Railroad, after the street makes that 30  
degree turn to the north and points directly toward the transformer  
factory.   The railroad was along one side of the street with no  
buildings, the trolley substation, freight house and wye were on the  
other side.    If you print it 11 inches wide, then about 1 inch in  
from the left edge you can see where the trolley suddenly leves West  
Pike Street and turns to the south margin of the map and immediately  
crosses Chartiers Creek.   Pike, by the way is synonymous with  
turnpike and this was indeed once the Washington and Pittsburgh  
turnpike.   At one time there was a toll gate right where the trolley  
turned off.

Map 2007 shows the right of way between Canonsburg and Houston ...  
you can see it marked ABAN'D at the middle top of the map entering  
Pike Street in Houston which it followed as far south as Main  
Street.   Main is the second complete cross street ... the one where,  
should you turn left, it goes way out in the country.   At Main  
Street the trolley turned west one block, then right for a block and  
a half, then crossed Chartiers Run and the Pennsylvania Railroad on a  
steel trestle, landing on Grant Avenue, the street one block to the  
left of Pike Street, which it followed to the edge of Houston.    
Arnold Siding was just north of Chartiers Township High School.    
Then it becomes very easy to follow ... side of the road through  
Chartiers Township.

Map 2005  shows US 19 cutting across the lower right corner and Race  
Track Road (that's what it's called today going from route 19 over to  
the old highway at Meadowlands.   The Race Track at Meadlands now  
sits to the north of the road.   There are three or four major hotels  
there.   And now a shopping center is going in.   You can see that,  
when the interurban was abandoned, the area was untouched.  There was  
a short timber trestle on the interurban where it crossed the  
"hollar" where Race Track Road comes out today.   The road back to  
the mine was still dirt in those days.   Allison stop was at the left  
end of the trestle.   The Allison shelter is at a home for wayward  
shelters called the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum ... I cannot seem to  
find a proper home and was moved again last year, this time to the  
new Trolley Display Building Stop.    When I rode the interurban in  
1953, the entire line along Pike St. in Meadowlands ran along a farm  
with a white rail fence ... the fence is now a steel fence.     
Meadowlands stop was at the south end of town where it turned away  
from the street.   Meadowlands siding was also where it turned away  
from the street.   Rich Hill stop was at Rich Hill.     EHL or  
someone had marked the word SUB on the map to indicate where the  
original Washington and Canonsburg power plant was located in  
Meadowlands, next to the PRR.

Map 2003 McClain Stop was located where the trolley line crossed  
Country Club Road / North Main Street.   That is roughly where the  
PTM museum north loop is today.   County Home is where the original  
alms house was; that is where County Home Siding was located.   Arden  
stop was right where Main Street crossed the car line --- right at  
the letter A in Arden.   The PE in Pennsylvania Railroad is adjacent  
to the original carbarn.

Map 2002 shows the Pennsylvania Railroad going under Jefferson Avenue  
at Brownson House and paralleling Chartiers Creek.   The trolley line  
went over the railroad on Jefferson Avenue, them turned off just  
beyond Bronson House (just to the right of the benchmark  (BR 1008)  
and turned north and north east into the Tylerdale Barn property.    
You can see the very compact concentric circles of contour lines to  
the left of the trolley line and to the south (or underneath) the  
word Chartiers which define a culm or mine waste dump that was behind  
Tylerdale Car House.   The Barn sat between the waste pile and the  
swamp, roughly where the letters Cha in Chartiers are.   Again, they  
missed the substation which was across from the barn and which is  
extant.




On Feb 8, 2007, at 1:56 PM, Donald Galt wrote:

> Here are some scans of 1:24,000 maps dated 1954, showing the  
> Washington
> interurban line abandoned. Ed Lybarger very kindly copied these for  
> me several
> years ago.
> The pages are numbered consecutively from southwest to northeast  
> and are of
> manageable size for onscreen viewing. The coverage of each is a  
> function of
> several factors: the arrangement of the xerox copies in PTM's  
> possession, the
> way I scanned my copies of those copies, and the way I cropped  
> those scans to
> get a series of uniformly-sized pages. In some cases - e.g. between  
> pages 14 &
> 15 - you will find the overlap excessive; in others - e.g. between  
> pages 7 & 8 -
>  there is no overlap at all.
>
> Don Galt
>