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

[Fred Schneider]

HAVE NO CLUE WHY I PERPETUALLY SWAP CREMONA AND CROOKHAM.   YOU'RE  
RIGHT.   AND I MEANT TO TYPE IN ADAMS AND FORGOT TO.

You like Ed's reference to the five mile string?   We've both used  
that technique on USGS maps.   It works surprisingly well.   When it  
works perfectly, then you know you have the track in the right  
place.   Just ask Ed about getting the line to Boston in the right  
place.

On Feb 8, 2007, at 7:41 PM, Edward H. Lybarger wrote:

> Crookham Siding is on the Charleroi route.  Fred means Cremona in  
> Map 2014.
>
> If I put all the stop names on, I would have to dig out the scale 5- 
> mile
> string and measure all the distances!
>
> Thompsonville Sub was added at the time that, and because, the 3800s
> arrived.
>
> We lived in the fourth house up the hill from Cheeseman.  I still  
> live next
> door (house not shown on this map).
>
> Canonsburg Sub and wye are on Adams Avenue just east of College  
> Street.
>
> "SUB" (Meadow Lands) is in my handwriting.  I own the original USGS  
> 7.5
> minute sheets from which these copies were made (along with a few  
> hundred
> others...I could buy them in quantity for about 12 cents each at  
> the time I
> was in college, and I have a lot of the 15 minute sheets, too).
>
> Ed
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of  
> Fred
> Schneider
> Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 5:40 PM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Map of Washington Interurban (9-12)
>
>
> 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
>>
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