[PRCo] Re: Philadelphia You-Tube Video

[Bill Robb]

Here's a bit of TV reporting on National City Lines and GM and Cleveland.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6882337546307300051&ei=YAdUSdycA4rEqQK9x5n2Cw&q=interurban




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From: Schneider Fred 

Many of you probably have seen this before.  If not enjoy. All the  
scenes were taken in West Philadelphia in 1951.

The city had 55% more people living within its borders than there are  
there today and a lot more justification for rail transit as a  
result.  (The inverse number?  A loss of 35%.)  A few years after  
these films were taken, a massive conversion program brought 1,000  
new buses to the city.  What the railfans neglect to tell you was  
that in the process, over 600 transit vehicles simply disappeared  
from the streets of Philadelphia within three years because were no  
loner needed ... people moved to the suburbs; those who remained  
preferred to use automobiles instead of trolleys.  Yes guys, at the  
end of the conversion 1000 buses had replaced 1600 buses and  
streetcars because of declining demand.

We can argue that rail will sustain higher patronage levels but we  
can't argue that rail today would be valid on all the routes that PTC  
had in 1950 because the people just don't live there anymore and the  
jobs are not there either.

But you'll find these interesting.  All were taken within roughly one  
mile of Pennsylvania Railroad's 30th Street Station.  The pictures  
of the street cars and Market Street subway-elevated trains running  
side-by-side are at the 24th and Market Streets portal of the  
subway.  Both came to surface there and crossed the Schuylkill River  
on a bridge.  The film ends with the trolleys coming inbound out  
from under the elevated in front of 30th Street Station and heading  
toward the portal.  In between there are a lot of surface streetcar  
scenes, mostly in the area around the University of Pennsylvania.  
Those lines are, for the most part, buried in the subway extension  
that occurred in the fall of 1955.  (The Market Street subway- 
elevated was extended from 24th to 46th St.), the trolley subway was  
extended over to branches to 36th St.)

Do you not find amazing how fast PTC motormen ran their charges?    
Those were 25 mph cars riding on maximum traction (maximum  
derailment) trucks and they were running them for the most part, flat  
out.    I thought the films might have been speeded up from 16 to 24  
frames per second but the pedestrians look to moving at comfortable  
paces.

Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06jIGTbrIUk&feature=related