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

[Edward H. Lybarger]

You can follow the right of way by car but you can't walk it without
permission of a whole bunch of property owners!

I think you have such video as is available, Mark.

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of Mark
McGuire
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2007 2:04 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Map of Washington Interurban (9-12)


And by the way, I've been on this list long enough to know that you
were talking about Cremona Siding, not Crookham. Am I right in saying
that the part of the line between Drake and County Line is
untraceable with many homes and subdivisions now?  I remember the
large house we were looking for during one of the tours.
  Does anyone know if there is any video available of the complete
run of either interurban line? I have the PTM video by Art Ellis and
Lou Redman but it jumps around alot. I would imagine someone doing a
video but alas, it may have been set aside and destroyed after the
death of a railfan.

-- Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
If it helped, Mark, you're more than welcome.

On Feb 10, 2007, at 12:26 AM, Mark McGuire wrote:

>  And thank you Fred for the wonderful description!
>
> -- Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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
>>
>
>
>