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

Fri Sep 7 08:26:58 EDT 2007

86 was via Liberty; 88 and 89 were via Penn, as was Forbes-Shady-Penn routes 
and perhaps Bloomfield belt lines.

>From: Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>
>Reply-To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>Subject: [PRCo] Re: Route 86 East Liberty / Pavarotti / Books
>Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 10:26:04 -0400
>
>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/
> >
> >
>
>

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