[PRCo] Re: did i miss the comments on this?

[Fred Schneider]

My only two train rides compliments of the army were overnight from  
Bremerhaven, Germany to Kaiserslautern and then north from Koblenz to  
Bremerhaven two years later.   Both trains were chartered troop  
movements to connect with ships.

The southbound trip was behind steam in late July 1959.   Typical  
German sleepers ... three berths high on both sides of each  
compartment.   When morning came I was in my glory hanging out the  
open window.   I thought this was fantastic watching the farmers tend  
their grape vines on the hillsides along the Rhein (Rhine if you wish  
to Anglicize it).   It was such a beautiful country.   I think the  
others thought I was a fool.   They were being forced to go to  
Germany.   I was treating it as a two-year-long paid vacation.   I  
had been detailed to the base finance office in Fort Dix two weeks  
before to cut pay vouchers for people coming home from Germany and I  
was astonished to discover that we were paying more than 90 percent  
of our servicemen on discharge for 100% of the vacation time they  
earned in Europe.  I vowed that would not happen to me.   I used mine  
to see Europe.    If I was off duty, I was usually off the base.    
Also,  I'm probably one of the few people who has been back on the  
base in Germany three times since they sent me home for release from  
active duty in 1961.   The base is now an industrial park.   My old  
mess hall was turned into a Jeep / Chrysler dealer after the ill- 
fated merger with Mercedes Benz.   By now I'm getting close to as  
many months of vacation in Europe as I spent there in the army.

The last train ride with the army ... I don't remember it ... left  
Koblenz in the evening and went to sleep.   Woke up in the morning  
and walked onto the General George M. Brucker to be floated back  
home.  That was near the tail end of the Military Sea Transport  
Service.   I tried the other day to find out when MSTS yielded to air  
transportation but nothing came up on Google.    Probably in the  
early 1960s.

All those German railroad mainlines that were steam in the late 1950s  
and early 1960s are now under catenary.   That ride south behind  
steam in 1959 was all night and into mid morning to go half way  
across Germany from north to south.   I just pulled up a schedule  
from Munich to Hamburg ... fastest Intercity Express going almost the  
full length of the country south to north now days is 5 hours 34  
minutes!    Get up in the morning in Munich and be in Hamburg for  
lunch.   Hell, the air lines cannot do any better than that by the  
time you drive to the airport and go through security.   And the ICE  
trains even have a television set at your seat!

On Jan 22, 2008, at 11:20 AM, robert netzlof wrote:

> --- Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> ..'This was the Panhandle tunnel that PAT (the T) uses now.
>> Never rode through the tunnel on a train;...
>
> In November of 1959, a board comprosed of my friends and neighbors,
> acting on behalf of the President of the United States, invited me to
> join in the defense of the Free World. After much milling about in
> the old post office building, we went to the PRR station and boarded
> two Pullman cars. I was in the Greensburg Inn, a nice touch since the
> aforesaid draft board had its office in Greensburg.
>
> The train departed through the tunnel in question but, as it was late
> at night, everything was dark both inside and outside the tunnel.
> Didn't see much even though I had taken up station in the rear
> vestibule.
>
> Watched until we were out around Carnegie, then went to bed. Awoke in
> the small hours as the cars were shunted onto another train
> (Columbus?) and again in the early dawn (Cincinnati?). Passed on
> breakfast so as to watch the Kentucky landscape recede, again from
> the rear vestibule. Was startled at one point to see the train was
> running down a street in some small Kentucky town, have no idea what
> town.
>
> Arrived in Louisville on the L&N. Went from there to Ft. Knox by bus.
>
>> But Union Station never included the non PRR carriers. The
>> closest
>> we ever came to a true "Union" station was the P&LE station which
>> the
>> B&O also used.
>
> Well now, depends on how you look at it. From around 1870 to 1917,
> the railroads west of Pittsburgh were controlled by The Pennsylvania
> Company. Yes, the Penna Company had been created by the PRR, but in
> many ways the western lines ran their own show(s). PRR had its
> engineering offices at Altoona, but Lines West had a similar
> organization in Fort Wayne. Locomotive design and car design differed
> between the two, as did operating practices.
>
> There were differences at a higher level also. The PRR, for the most
> part, owned or leased lines east of Pittsburgh for its exclusive use,
> with very few joint operations with other railroads. The Penna Co.,
> in contrast, was a member of several syndicates (e. g. Little Kanawha
> Syndicate, Green County Syndicate) and part owner (Lake Erie and
> Pittsburg with NYC, Monongahela with P&LE and B&O).
>
> The genesis of the Penna Company lay in an attempt by the Pittsburgh,
> Ft Wayne and Chicago to build a line into Pennsylvania to connect
> with railroads other than the PRR. That miffed the PRR which had been
> encouraging the Ft Wayne to turn eastward traffic over to PRR and
> which had been assisting the Ft Wayne in the hope that "friendly
> relations" would pay off.
>
> But the relationship after the early 1870s seems to have been in the
> area of strategy or even grand strategy, rather than tactics. In
> effect, the PRR didn't much care how the Ft Wayne and the Panhandle
> did their deeds, so long as PRR got the traffic destined for the
> seaboard.
>
> Indeed, internal PRR documents, such as "List of Stations and
> Sidings" didn't breathe a word about Lines West until after the WW1
> era transfer of the western lines from the Penna Co. to the PRR.
>
> So, while it may seem a bit of a stretch to call the Pittsburg(h)
> station "Union Station", its not a great stretch in my opinion.
> "Lines West of Pittsburgh and Erie" was not just a convenient name
> for a part of a monolith, but recognition of real financial and
> operational divisions.
>
>
> Bob Netzlof a/k/a Sweet Old Bob
>
>
>
>        
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