[PRCo] Penn Pilot

[Fred Schneider]

Give you guys something to play with all weekend (if the wives don't  
have something more important).

Penn Pilot has a series of aerial photographs of the entire state of  
Pennsylvania taken starting in 1937 and going up to the present.  The  
earlier 1937-1942 stuff is very high resolution.   I can actually  
pick out the trolley cars on a print of Lancaster city (3 miles x 3  
miles) that measures about 3 feet by 3 feet.  So I'm certain if  
someone is nutty enough to do it (and are not all railfans nutty?),  
then you should be able to look at the aerial photographs of  
Allegheny and Washington and Fayette and Washington counties in 1940  
and find the streetcars.

The first link leads to the home page.

The second link leads to a page I was looking at in Lancaster  
County ... one of the April 24, 1940 views.   I can guarantee as I'm  
typing that you will have to paste it back together because it will  
be split by the time you get it.

I took one of the big prints of Lancaster City to the Lancaster  
County Historical Society today and when I left, one of the research  
girls was on line looking at Penn Pilot to see what else she could  
find and marveling at the detail.   I suggested that she would be  
deserting her work and look at Lancaster from the air 68 years ago  
all afternoon.   She said, "Probably."



http://www.pennpilot.psu.edu/

http://www.pennpilot.psu.edu/cgi-bin/mapserver?map=..%2Fhtdocs% 
2Fmapserver%2F40%2F42071%2Fm79080.map&layer=doqs&layer=countyu