[PRCo] Re: AnyOne Here Like West Penn~?~!~?~!~?

[Fred Schneider]

Russ Schramm's picture is interesting for a variety of reasons.    
Remember the oil stains in the middle of the lanes from dripping  
oil?   It was especially bad in the 1930s.    Lubrication gradually  
became better to the point in the 170s or 1980s when they disappeared  
altogether.

Sometime in the 1960s the mowed grass between the eastbound and  
westbound lanes of the turnpike was replaced with a guard rail  
because of crossover head-on collisions.     The 1952 scene looks to  
bucolic with very little traffic on the Super Highway.

Fewer than ten years before this picture was taken the bond holders  
had a real fear that the turnpike was going to go under.   Why?    
Remember that little problem called gasoline rationing?   Dad  
recalled that if you drove the turnpike during the war and you saw  
another automobile ... it was such a rare occurrence that it was  
probably a police officer.   Most people in World War II were  
allotted three and a half gallons a week.   As I understand it,  
rationing was not really to conserve gasoline but more to conserve  
tires because we used nothing but natural rubber then and it all came  
from the south Pacific which was controlled by the Japanese with whom  
we were at war.     Some years before he died, my father asked if I  
could remember the night we had two flat tires driving from Crescent  
Hills into Wilkinsburg to argue with the ration board over the need  
for new tires.   No, I didn't remember.   But I do remember I picture  
of the 1939 Chevrolet in 1945 with four totally bald tires on it.

I actually remember driving under this bridge twice in the early  
1950s and seeing southbound cars crossing over it.

Swindler remembers riding over it.

On Oct 22, 2007, at 2:02 AM, Jim Holland wrote:

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> Jim  Holland
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> Studying Pittsburgh Railways Company (PRCo)
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> ..............................From 1930 -- 1950
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> Pennsylvania  Trolley  Museum  (PTM)
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> http://www.pa-trolley.org/
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> N.M.R.A.
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> http://www.nmra.org/
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