[PRCo] Re: Fwd: correction to link

[Edward H. Lybarger]

Bruce's last name is Wells, not Well.

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of Fred
Schneider
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 7:12 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Fwd: correction to link


Here is the latest link to Bruce Well's blog.

http://web.mac.com/cuzinbrucie/iWeb/G5/Photo%20Archive.html

When I passed through this morning, a three man crew was painting the  
advertising card racks for 4398 in the shop.   You may remember a  
picture of the jig made to form them ... very thin plywood was bent  
into the proper shape and then glued to another very thin sheet, much  
like forming a bimetallic thermostat.

Up at the other end of the line today a commercial track gang was  
installing special work leading into the trolley display building  
while our own line crew was setting steel poles for the overhead.     
When will it be possible to run cars in and out of the barn?    
Depends on who you talk to.   Maybe three months.

The other news from PTM is the death of one of the earliest members,  
Mac McGrew, on February 28 at age 94.   The number of founding  
members of PTM, according to a conversation I had with EHL this  
morning, has diminished greatly in recent months.   Art Ellis is  
still with us.   Perhaps one other whom I cannot remember.   Pasted  
in below is Mac's obituary from the Post-Gazette.

  News Obituaries
Obituary: M.F. "Mac" McGrew / Foremost authority on metal typefaces,  
worked
at Ketchum
June 1, 1912 - Feb. 28, 2007

Sunday, March 04, 2007
By Mike Bucsko, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

At age 14, M.F. "Mac" McGrew bought a Kelsey Excelsior printing press,
designed as a "parlour press" for hobbyists.

It was the beginning of Mr. McGrew's lifelong love of printing and
typesetting, a romance that culminated six decades later in his  
publication
of a reference book on American metal typefaces that has become the  
bible on
the subject.

Seen as the leading authority on typefaces, Mr. McGrew received  
inquiries
from around the world from those in the printing and design business who
were stumped by a certain typeface, said Mr. McGrew's son, Jon, of  
Kingston,
N.Y.

Mr. McGrew was also one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Trolley  
Museum
in Chartiers, Washington County.

Mr. McGrew, 94, died Wednesday of complications from pneumonia at the  
Asbury
Heights retirement community in Mt. Lebanon, where he had lived for  
the past
20 years.

Born in Chattanooga, Tenn., Marion Foreman McGrew moved to Crafton  
with his
parents and younger sister in 1916. Mr. McGrew's interest in  
typefaces may
have first been stirred by his father, Carl, an architect who  
specialized in
inscriptional lettering, that is part of the architecture of  
buildings. The
Chamber of Commerce Building, Downtown, is an example of Carl  
McGrew's work,
said Lucinda Dyjak of Ben Avon, Mac McGrew's daughter.

In high school. Mr. McGrew experimented with typewriter typefaces and  
their
use in portraits. A typewriter typeface portrait he made of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt later appeared in "Ripley's Believe It or Not,"  
his
daughter said.

Mr. McGrew worked at a few printing companies in Pittsburgh while he
attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon
University, before he opened his own print shop in Crafton. After a  
stint in
the Army during World War II, Mr. McGrew moved back to Pittsburgh and
continued to work in the printing business.

In 1950, Mr. McGrew got a job as the typographic director at what  
became the
Ketchum Advertising agency. He worked at Ketchum until his retirement in
1977.

Over the years, Mr. McGrew wrote hundreds of articles about typefaces  
for
various publications. He began work when he retired on his classic
reference, American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, which was
first published in 1986.

Mr. McGrew's encyclopedic knowledge of typefaces made him the person  
to seek
for companies and individuals with questions, including Adobe and other
companies that design computer software for the printing and graphic  
design
business, his son said.

In addition to his son and daughter, Mr. McGrew is survived by a  
grandson. A
memorial service for Mr. McGrew will be at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Asbury
Heights, 700 Bower Hill Road, Mt. Lebanon.