[PRCo] Re: Committee Work

[Fred Schneider]

I'm going to get off track here, Jim,

                     because I know you are talking about the 12th  
Street wye and the route cards are peripheral.   But this goes with  
your idea of a committee....

Please indulge me while I make up an example.   This is  not a real  
case, just a fabricated one similar to what you might find.  One of  
the problems with dealing with the route cards is something like a  
change in route from

Penn, German, George, 12th

And on the next column the route changes to Penn, Able, George, 12th.

The routing was changed.   Or was it?   If it was around 1914, 1915,  
1916, 1917, 1918 I would bet that the city or borough simply changed  
a German sounding street name to something more palatable to its  
citizens and the route didn't change.

You will also get a lot of similar changes when boroughs were  
absorbed into Pittsburgh because the fire department does not want  
two streets in Pittsburgh with the same name.   Then in 1907 we merge  
the city of Allegheny into the City of Pittsburgh and we have another  
spate of street name changes.

So when you review route cards for Pittsburgh Railways, you also need  
maps of Pittsburgh and Allegheny and the boroughs at perhaps 10 year  
intervals simply to determine that the list streets over which a line  
runs really changed or simply the names of the streets only changed  
but route stayed the same.

To make sense of the route cards in a hurry, perhaps a group of ten  
people, all looking a maps of the city, while the eleventh person  
attempts to read the names from the route cards, and a twelfth scribe  
reenters it into a computer and a 13th person peering over his  
shoulder makes certain what he heard is what he sees on the computer  
screen....

Why do you think it's only a dream on my part?

And then comes the subject of illegible script.

Perhaps ten years ago I got interested in family genealogy.   A  
relative finished something I had started ... I did the leg work in a  
certain town hall in Marburg, Germany and a cousin finished it and  
came home with the bacon.   Skip also found a whole host of documents  
for relatives in Pforzheim and Karlsruhe, Germany.   Now we had to  
translate them.  You think route cards are hard?   You have not tried  
anything difficult until you try to translate hand written Fractur  
script from the early to middle 1800s from Wurtemburg and Bayern.    
It just looked like a million up and down lines.  I finally found  
examples of all the Fractur letters in an old German dictionary in  
the stacks in Franklin and Marshall College's library here in  
Lancaster.  Then I started going through the words trying to identify  
every one of each letter.   I would look for every letter A on the  
page.   Then every Ä.   Then ever B, Then ever C, and so forth.  I  
finally got so exhausted I went to my German tutor.   Guess what, she  
started doing it the same way I did, one letter at a time.   The only  
difference is, she is actually skilled at Fractur, espectially when  
it is printed in a book.   And she has one advantage I don't have.    
She knew usages of words used in government certficates, like  
baptismal records, that simply are not used today and which I would  
not have recognized or even found in a contemporary dictionary.

I did one route completely from the route cards ... either route 1  
Spring Garden or 2 Etna ... with the idea of making the book.   That  
was when I found out how difficult it was.   I was dealing with The  
City of Pittsburgh and the City of Allegheny.   I think at one point  
in time the line ran on a street that doesn't even appear on the  
PERC / PRM map that Mac McGrew drew.  It's a street that doesn't even  
exist today because it was wiped out by the expressway construction  
on the northside.  It took several days to do just one relatively  
simple line.   Of course I was also eliminating any non significant  
changes, i.e. temporary changes because of fires, parades, and  minor  
street contruction. And that guys is when I said, to hell with it.    
This isn't fun.

But if someone wants to sit down with me for several months and  
ponder the mysteries of the route cards, I might be convinced to go  
back to it.   Sometimes I work better when I have someone pushing me  
and I can also push the other person.

f3





On Sep 7, 2007, at 6:07 AM, Jim Holland wrote:

> This is a Very ImPerfect World -- no one individual knows it all  
> nor has
> access to all information - not even with the Inet~!~!~!
> .
> Thus the formation of committees, Good and Bad.     A few ideas on
> Committees follow  (but Very Far From Exhaustive)   and how each of us
> can participate as a member.
> .
> Each Committee Member has a different way of looking at information  
> and
> brings a unique perspective to a situation.     A committee will
> assemble  A~L~L  the information, facts, observations, thoughts,  
> ideas,
> good and bad that pertain to a certain topic and then sift these  
> through
> a set of criteria for the topic to formulate a plan of action,  
> probable
> cause // effect, or possible scenario, etc.     This involves but is
> certainly not limited to dissecting what is available to gain an
> understanding, reading / learning about habits, customs, priorities Of
> The Day // Time in question, and this involves getting into minutia
> which can be exasperating at times.     We should avoid minutia for  
> the
> sake of minutia but the tedium of this approach can still be draining
> and test the mettle of our civility.
> .
> Those who have studied  *-Legible Writings-*  (as opposed to
> Scrawl~!~!)  of the past, those over 100 years old, will still find  
> the
> Grammar, sentence construction, expressions and Many etc.'s a  
> challenge
> and Very Different from standards of today.     But going back to the
> old English practice of Diagramming the Sentence to identify to whom
> pronouns belong, tense of verbs, subj., object, modifiers  --
> Dissecting and tedium  --  and reading about and understanding the
> customs etc. of the day will then bring about a great enlightening &
> Understanding to the study.
> .
> We need to know ourselves as well.     Forget Fast Food  --  the Inet
> and Instant availability of info makes one think that any question can
> be answered in the snap of the fingers  --  or even faster.     We are
> prone to impatience and tend to accept most any quick fix.     Humanly
> we live Very Much By Experience and if an observation is outside that
> experience then it must be wrong or unworthy of consideration.     We
> need to be able to set this And Much More Aside, advance ideas for the
> sake of the idea, and forget personalities.
> .
> When Inet email lists first formed, it was often stated that the  
> person
> who asks a question should monitor the answers and after a reasonable
> time make a summary.     Rarely  I~F  Ever  is this done  --  and  
> maybe
> more rarely do the questions remain on topic.
> .
> In A Small Way, Committee Work is what we were doing in looking at the
> Single Track Wye at 12th Avenue.     We looked at a variety of
> possibilities for the street, direction of travel, problems in the  
> area,
> a few etc.s and at Matt's suggestion we could work back to make an
> Understanding that this could be for Emergency use because any  
> other use
> could be ruled out.
> .
> Please:      lettuce not make minutia of the above -- but constructive
> comments on Good Committee Behavior / Altitude / Approach / etc. are
> always warranted.
> -- 
> *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/
>
>