[PRCo] Re: Nachod Signals

[Fred Schneider]

Bob and all:

Back in 1953 one Charles Shauck, then the Superintendent of Power and  
Inclines for Pittsburgh Railways, befriended a crazy just-turned 13- 
year old railfan.   Their family became sort of a home-away from home  
during Easter and summer trips to Pittsburgh.   They became sort of a  
second family in the 1950s and 1960s.  I even remember getting dried  
apple schnitz at the farmers market in Lancaster and taking it to  
Pittsburgh because Charlie liked it.

So back to the Nachod signals.   In 1954 he had taken me up to the  
head house of the Knoxville Incline which was then the Railways'  
signal shop.  It was full of stuff they wouldn't need anymore.   And  
he offered me a Nachod signal, not those little ones with two lights  
but the monstrous 209 pound critter with the moving paddles inside.    
Being a 14 year old at the time, I was not about to turn down such a  
gift.   (I did turn down a three color light interurban signal  
because I didn't know how to get it home.)   Well, the next day a  
Pittsburgh Railways line truck turned up in the alley behind my  
grandma's home off Perrysville Avenue and unloaded this signal.   And  
did I ever take a lot of ribbing from my sisty ugler.   When I went  
outside, she said something about "being kind to dumb animules."

As Harold Geissenheimer has often said, there were a lot of fine  
people working in transit in Pittsburgh.   Charlie was one of them.

He was skeptical of those people trying to run a trolley museum in  
Washington.   I wish he was still living today to see that two of his  
linemen are down there.

The signal wound up on loan to the Magee Museum in 1970 and after the  
flood it wound up, without my blessing, being given to the Rochester  
Museum of Transport.

Fred3






On Jan 1, 2007, at 12:07 PM, Bob Dietrich wrote:

> I remember not too long ago a discussion of signaling on this list;  
> at least
> I think it was this list.  Anyway, the current issue of Trolley Talk -
> #283,September-October 2006 - has a very good explanation of the  
> Nachod
> system with references to a couple other systems as well.  If you  
> are like
> me, ignorant of such topics, this is an informative article.
>
> Bob
>
>
>