[PRCo] Re: Committee Work

[Jim Holland]

 > Ed wrote:
.
 > As someone has spent my share of time prowling through PRCo records, 
I have to completely endorse what Fred is saying. That company must have 
kept an army of scribes with quill pens and green eyeshades on hand to 
keep all the details. The route histories are something Ollie Miller 
struggled with for years, and he didn't make much headway. Just the 
street name changes could drive you crazy, let alone the temporary 
diversions. And then there all the discontinued routings to 
consider...like the north bank of the Monongahela River from Glenwood to 
Homestead, and trippers to mills and factories.

 > Ask Dave Hamley how easy the roster has been, too!

 > It has been embarrassingly difficult for me to assign work to 
volunteers who have no knowledge of the system, simply because they 
don't know what they're looking at or how to interpret it. I have to 
give them such mundane jobs as filing Westinghouse catalog sheets by 
style (model) number or entering data from envelopes containing photo 
negatives into databases. They get bored and I don't blame them, but how 
do I give them a quickie course in something that took me 40 years of 
osmosis to learn?

 > The company had departments with specialists in each. We don't have 
that luxury, unfortunately. Unless, of course, everyone moves back to 
Pittsburgh and adopts one!
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I didn't see your email until now  --  Yes  --  I  Do  Understand.     
Just an Academic Understanding but I have Observed and Learned from the 
past that if I Do Understand Academically then Understanding From 
Experience would make the Academic Understanding seem like a child's 
observations~!~!~!     There is greater difficulty in such work than can 
be imagined by a person who hasn't experienced it.
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-- 
*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/