[PRCo] Transit evolution

[Fred Schneider]

I'M USING THIS LIST TO REACH DERRICK AND HERB BRANNON.   FRED BRUHN  
MIGHT APPRECIATE THIS TOO.   THE REST MAY READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Yesterday I was driving up Interstate 77 from Marietta to Cambridge,  
Ohio.  I have a connection to that area.   My father was born in  
Marietta, along the Ohio river in southeastern Ohio.

As I drove I observed the abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad right-of- 
way between Marietta and Caldwell off to the right.   I thought about  
my father once having taken the PRR from Marietta to Cleveland and I  
remembered a picture, which he sadly destroyed before his death, of a  
PRR D16sb in Marietta on the passenger train.   At the first rest  
stop I pulled out a reference book I was carrying with me: the  
reprint of the January 1930 Official Guide to the Railways.  The  
Running Time for that train from Marietta to Caldwell, Cambridge,  
Newcomerstown, Akron and Cleveland was 7 hours 27 minutes.    
Strangely, it was identical southbound.

I remember my father also talking about the day he drove in a snow  
storm in the 1924 Chevrolet from Marietta to Cleveland.   The car had  
no heater and dad recalled stopping every few miles to scrape the  
snow and ice off the outside of the windscreen and the frost off the  
inside.   The journey took all day and late into the evening.   That  
probably took place the year he worked in Cleveland, which was summer  
of 1927 to summer 1928.

My next memories are that Lake Shore Coach Company, the successor to  
Lake Shore Electric Railway had traded franchises with Central  
Greyhound.  CG ended up with the Cleveland - Toledo route and LSC got  
the Cleveland to Marietta service.  In the 1950s I remember Lake  
Shore Coach Company's PG 3701 buses in Marietta painted brown and  
orange ... the orange probably a leftover from the interurban car  
livery.    I don't have any schedules but I suspect they might have  
averaged 25 to 30 miles per hour, which would have required 5 hours  
30 minutes to 6 hours 45 minutes for the Marietta - Cleveland run.    
Driving it in an automobile in those days would have taken at least  
five hours.

So why doesn't public transportation work today?

Because I can get in my Volkswagen and drive the 168 miles on  
Interstate 77 in 2 hours 30 minutes in spite of Ohio's overly  
aggressive State Troopers.