[PRCo] Re: Route 86 East Liberty / Pavarotti / Books

[Fred Schneider]

Express routes:   Well I would have to think that the 86 line by way  
of Penn Avenue would be a lot faster than a horse and buggy.   It  
would also be a lot faster than the 96 East Liberty, which ran via  
way of Butler Street from downtown and then up the hill to Negley.    
(That line has a long convoluted history and in 1905 it only went to  
Negley, and eventually it got into the middle of East Liberty, and  
eventually the downtown Pittsburgh end was chopped back to 62nd and  
Butler.)  The East Liberty Express has to be somewhat faster than the  
more convoluted Fifth Avenue Lines (71, 73, 75).   It might even be a  
tad faster than the Liberty Avenue 88 line but I wouldn't bet on that.

Evolution of cars?   I was thinking of tracing major components ...   
example, the baby motor on the Jones cars in Pittsburgh ca. 1912  
leads to all the subsequent low-floor cars.   The Battery truck  
motors lead to all the 300 volt motors on PCCs and so forth.   The  
development of a cam controller for a Steinway subway train in  
Manhattan in World War One leads to all the PC and PCM control  
schemes that GE produced up through 1973.  The work by Bosenbury in  
1913 on safety cars allows Birney to produce his car and leads to  
safety car control everywhere (which we have no rejected on all the  
pseudo Birneys built by Gomaco).

I also once thought of a railway control book for the museum  
types ... I've got all the photographs done to illustrate it.

Problem with all those ideas, once Mac Sebree recognized that there  
was no market for traction books and threw in the towel with  
Interurbans Press, there is really no place to go with that sort of  
book.   I already had two books dummied out to send to them when they  
shut down which will never be done that were to be follow-ons to  
Steinheimer's Growing Up With Trains series.

And Pavarotti?   WITF in Harrisburg PA is honoring him all day today.



On Sep 6, 2007, at 5:57 AM, Jim Holland wrote:

>> f3 wrote:
> .
>> There are a lot of book projects I've wanted to do
>> before I die. One was the evolutionary history of
>> the streetcar, sort of in parallel to a series that used
>> to be on the learning channel called Connections,
>> where we take invention a and follow it. Another
>> project I wanted to do is a book on those streetcars
>> in our museums that are significant and deserve to be
>> preserved based on a engineering and evolutionary
>> perspective instead of "I rode it" perspective ...
>> sort of a bible for the museum archivists. A third
>> project is a legible route directory for Pittsburgh,
>> starting with the route cards, and going
>> forward and backward.
>
>> Obviously, for a man who is 67, I dream a lot.
> .
> You plan on living for quite a while, Y~e~s~?~?~?
> .
> Thought you were cool to cold on writing books after the PCC  
> experience.
> .
> All sound very interesting.    You emphasized in the books that the  
> PCC
> is Evolutionary but there are some Dudes in Oz or NZ or thereabouts  
> that
> say that modern lrvs are totally new creations and totally  
> unrelated to
> anything else - according to them they reinvented the wheel And Much
> More~!~!~!
> .
> Will be interesting to see the criteria by which TrolleyCars are
> classified as Significant from engineering perspective.
> .
> I was going to change the sub line to  PROJECTS  but will leave it  
> as I
> found the very brief study on the 86 to be quite Fascinating.     This
> led to the latter day 87, a combo of two routes - one from downtown to
> E.Liberty // Tioga and one from Wilkensburg to E.Pgh / Ardmore.
> Every little detail could be boring  --  limits need to be set.
> Since both Penn and Liberty were solid two way double track
> thoroughfares for at least a decade or more, it would be  
> interesting to
> know what lines served each street.     Maybe some routes served both
> --  IB on one and OB on the other then crossover back to regular  
> route!
> .
> Wonder how 'Express' was defined then  --  A Faster Ride Between Two
> Points than Alternative travel?     Would seem that the 86 would still
> run locally but offered a route between E.Lib and dntn that was faster
> than traditional 88.     Today an Xpress is used to make for faster
> trips for those who live at the outer ends of a line - stops are local
> to a point then the vehicle dead heads to dntn for instance -  
> reverse in
> the PM.
> .
> Just got the news on the radio coming home at 2-AM Wed/night Thur/morn
> that Pavarotti has passed - Just 71 (hit my inet news just an hour
> earlier.)     We were in a restaurant in North Beach about 25+  
> years ago
> when he came in with others  --  every so often they would belt out a
> few bars  --  private concert that was Far More Than Exhilarating~!~!
>
> -- 
> *Jim Holland*
>
> Studying *Pittsburgh Railways Company*
>
> ....................From 1930 -- 1950
>
> *Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (PTM)*
>
> http://www.pa-trolley.org/
>
> *N.M.R.A.*
>
> http://www.nmra.org/
>
>