[PRCo] Re: McKeesport_--_WP_-&-_PRCo

[Edward H. Lybarger]

I haven't looked at the DIA reports in years.  I do recall that West Penn
had very few fatalities -- generally under 5 a year -- for the entire
system.  Newspaper accounts would indicate that most of these were people
sleeping on the track...which I guess may not have been that hard to do if
one was sufficiently intoxicated.

I read the citations in Ron's McKeesport book in their context.  It appears
he was quoting (or paraphrasing?) from newspaper accounts after the
fact...they sounded like a "good old days" article.  I do know that
McKeesport was very hard on the trolley companies.  In the '20s they went
after West Penn for bad track, and the company spent a large amount of money
on repairs so the franchise wouldn't be withdrawn.  The city did ultimately
revoke the franchise of Highland Grove Traction for track and street
deficiencies.

And yes, West Penn was "liked" better than Pittsburgh Railways by the city
fathers...it probably had to do with corporate attitude.  But they really
didn't "like" any of the operators...they tolerated them instead.

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: Sunday, January 28, 2007 8:37 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Re: McKeesport_--_WP_-&-_PRCo


I do not have time to investigate now...   And I probably do not have
time period because I think I got suckered into heading up the 50th
high school reunion committee.  Ugh.

However, if someone wants to go to Harrisburg and look for the
information, lt's all there for the looking.  Perhaps not in fine
detail but in summary form.  And you will not find it for McKeesport
but you will find data for Pittsburgh Railways accidents and West
Penn Railways (or PMG or PMC) accidents.   Depending on how much work
EHL has already done, he may have already dug out the West Penn data.

Each transport company was required to mail an annual report to the
Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs.  These reports were
largely financial in nature but they also showed some general
information on equipment (passenger cars, trailers, and freight and
service cars by type), passengers carried, employees and employee
wages and accident data.   The 1911 report, for example, showed the
accidents beneath the car roster data on page 55 and it broke out the
number of passengers, the number of employees and the number of other
people who were killed and who were non-fatally injured.  This same
general summary followed in each year.

The reports filed by individual companies (West Penn and Pittsburgh
Railways for example) will be found in the Archives Tower at the
southeast corner of North 3rd and Boas Sts in Harrisburg.   The state
prepared summary statewide reports each year from the company
reports.   The summary reports are filed in the state library.

How dangerous were streetcars?   When Harold Cox was doing his two
roster books on Philadelphia Rapid Transit, he was confronted with
the problem of having no scrap dates for many of the cars.   However,
Harold did have very comprehensive accident information.   He told me
there was at least an accident every week involving every one of
PRT's cars.   Therefore, if the car did not reappear on the accident
matrix for six months, he presumed that the last one had been the one
that wiped out the car and he listed it as scrapped.     What we need
to realize here is that accidents were often reported but they were
probably seldom very serious.   A lot of people stumbled getting off
cars.   Kids hitched rides on the outsides of cars, which is why the
bumpers had sloping sheet steel plates installed (to prevent riders
from standing there).   Phillly installed similar plates on the
trucks of some Nearside cars to prevent kids from standing on the
trucks and hitching rides.   There could be a man who wants on the
trolley, raps on the glass and puts his hand through it.  There's an
accident report form.  There was a lot of paper filed but very few
serious forms.  A lot of the accidents prior to 1920 involved horses
who didn't have the good common sense not to run in front of a
trolley.   In the 1890s we had idiots who thought they could hold
electric wires.

Was Pittsburgh Railways truly any worse in McKeesport than West
Penn?   I doubt it.   I suspect that if you were to look at the
reports in the archives you might find that they were remarkably
similar in the number of miles each company was able to operate
between accidents and between fatal accidents.    However, there
might have been prejudices by the McKeesport Daily News or by some
other newspaper that the book's author unwittingly picked up on that
favored West Penn as a home-town operator over the more distant and
alien Pittsburgh company.

I found similar prejudices when I was researching Conestoga Traction
Company's early history here in Lancaster.   The town has always had
multiple newspapers and if we were to go back into the 1860s and
1870s the behavior of those papers was just plain comical.   One of
them made no mention of the War Between the States until the battle
of Gettysburg, perhaps in the hope that it would go away, and then
they gave that battle only a couple of column inches of space.   The
other paper mentioned it every day.    When the Lancaster and
Millersville horse car line opened in 1874, one favored it and one
despised it.   The one that favored it remarked every time a new car
was purchased or an old one repainted.   The other paper reported
every time the line was shut because of a snow storm or all the
accidents in absolutely glowing terms.   I remember one fatality ...
and remember this was about a horse car line ... that described the
"5 o'clock express train to Lancaster thundering up George Street in
Millersville when it ran over and killed a dog....."    IN ORDER TO
GET THE ENTIRE STORY, I HAD TO READ BOTH NEWSPAPERS.  Read Mr. Beale
with a grain of salt.  If there had been a huge number of accidents
with West Penn, would they have managed to stay in business until
1952 in rural Pennsylvania?



On Jan 28, 2007, at 7:20 PM, Bill Robb wrote:

> Maybe it was one person per week killed by trolleys.  Remember most
> people have never encountered heavy machinery in their daily life
> before the trolley came along.  By the turn of the century
> streetcars were getting larger and heavier.  When researched the
> Toronto Star archives a couple of years ago I was appalled by the
> number of people getting maimed and killed by streetcars in Toronto
> even into the 1950s.  People running for streetcars and either
> getting hit by a car or worse falling under the streetcar-- when
> there was almost always a streetcar in sight. These types of
> accidents aren't directly chargable to the streetcar system, but
> happen because people were not safety conscious in the streetcar's
> operating environment.   Probably the worse accident I came across
> was the track walker cleaning out switches who was crushed between
> two steel cars rear bumpers on a non-clearance curve at Bloor and
> Yonge.
> Even with TTC having very good equipment and track there were many
> accidents with open switches and rear end collisons.  Numerous
> newspaper photos of PCCs and articles these accidents atest to the
> number of accidents.  Many times it was a young or inexperienced
> operator at the controls.
>
> The attached photo in the old Frederick Street shops shows the type
> of casual attitude to heavy machinery.  A steel car hoisted up on a
> wooden barrels, cobblestones and wooden blocks for truck repairs.
> This was standard operating practice at the Toronto Railway Company
> until 1921.  By 1924 the TTC had built a modern repair shop.  But
> not every city could or did rebuild their system at mid-life.
>
> Bill Robb
>
>> May I be the first to observe that this is an Absurdly High Death
>> Rate
>> --  Even for All PRCo!!!!
>>
>>
>> Jim Holland wrote:
>> .
>>
>>> From pg.140 of Beal's *McKeesport__Trolleys::*
>>> .
>>> .......(unlike PRCo carmen who seemed to defy speed limits, load
>>> limits and all other authority, and whose irresponsible actions were
>>> blamed for one death per week in McKeesport.) Meanwhile, the WEST
>>> PENN
>>> carmen gained a reputation for care and courtesy.
>>> .
>>> .
>>> .
>>> Jim___Holland
>>
>
>
>
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