[PRCo] Re: MU service on Frankstown

[Fred Schneider]

John:

My first instinct was to look up the assignments to see how many MU  
cars ran.  The route card doesn't even show that ... it shows a  
timetable that overlaps the MU and non-MU periods.   About 3/4ths of  
the rush hour cars on 88 pulled trailers and balance were singles ...  
probably means that with MU cars 3/4ths were also MU and balance were  
singles.   So I did look that up.

In that period, route 87 was using Frankstown Avenue and turning back  
at East Liberty and 86 was coming out Liberty and Centre and briefly  
using Penn and Frankstown to get to the Shetland loop.  There wasn't  
a whole lot of impingement on the 88 cars except once you got down  
into the Strip District  and then I suspect that traffic was probably  
so bad that it would not have mattered what cars you had, you would  
not have moved fast.

Route 86 went one-man in 1926.   Route 87 Ardmore went one man in  
1924.   Route 86 was the inner end of the 87 everyone on this list  
knows.   It was a very heavy route and one of the first to go one- 
man.   The MU cars came later.   Route 68 McKeesport in 1931 was one  
of the last.

When we consider that San Francisco and Chicago had two-man cars  
until 1958 and Philly into the 1970s, the Pittsburgh conversions were  
phenomenal.

But then, John, remember our scholarly friend Howard White.   He once  
came to me asking "What percent of corporate decisions are good  
ones?"   I didn't know what he read that morning ... might have been  
something he saw in the Wall Street Journal.   But the answer was,  
"An incredibly well managed corporation might make 58% of its policy  
decisions correctly and 42% incorrectly.   A company cruising for  
bankruptcy might make 52% of its decisions properly and 48% of them  
would be faulty."   There was a lot of room in any corporate business  
environment for stupid decisions. May simply be that the orders of  
the MU cars were a classic example of "Let not the right hand know  
what the left hand is doing."

fws

On May 14, 2008, at 9:30 AM, John Swindler wrote:

> Hi Fred
>
> Maybe to get rid of a high floor car or single truck car from a  
> predecessor?
>
> The low-floor trailer fleet didn't disappear with delivery of  
> 5000s.  Maybe the higher performance level of mu train not needed,  
> or could not be used, as would be similar to mixing PCC cars and  
> low-speed cars on a route.  For operational scheduling reasons,  
> perhaps a motor-trailer operation worked best on 88.  As single  
> cars the 5000s could replace two older cars.  Did the 5000s stay on  
> 88????  There were a lot of routes operating on Penn Ave.
>
> Maybe the delivery of 5100s, 5200s, and 3750s was in anticipation  
> of future plan that did not foresee one-man cars on routes like  
> 88.  This is like asking why did so many cities buy PCC cars after  
> WWII only to discontinue rail service a few years later.
>
> We keep forgetting that we are looking back to this era with 20/20  
> hindsight.  We know that there was a Great Depression around the  
> corner.  PRC management didn't.  Likewise we know how auto  
> ownership, suburban development, etc occurred.
>
> Just surmising.
>
> John
>
>> From: fwschneider at comcast.net> Subject: [PRCo] MU service on  
>> Frankstown> Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 22:28:48 -0400> To: pittsburgh- 
>> railways at dementia.org> > Here is an issue that cries out for  
>> resolution should anyone want to > read stacks of newspapers.> >  
>> Why did Pittsburgh Railways install MU cars on route 88 FRANKSTOWN  
>> > on December 10, 1924 only to eliminate the service on April 8,  
>> 1925?> > One might suspect that they converted the line to one-man  
>> operation > so that there would no longer be a labor saving by  
>> running MU > trains. That wasn't the case. While PRC was  
>> converting to one-man > service all through the period from 1926  
>> to 1931, route 88 did not > get one-man cars until Feb. 9, 1930 on  
>> Sundays and October 6, 1930 on > Monday through Saturdays. In  
>> fact, the platform hours do not drop > completely on October 6-11,  
>> 1930 rather obviously because they > continued to run trailers in  
>> the rush hours on 88 FRANKSTOWN through > August 29, 1931 and they  
>> needed conductors on !
>  the motor cars to pass > bell signals from the trailer conductors  
> to the motormen of the motor > cars.> > So why did they quit  
> running the MU cars? And why did they buy the > 5100s, 5200s and  
> 3750s after they quit running the 5000s on FRANKSTOWN?> > Maybe  
> just reading the Sun Telly or the Press or the Post Gazette on > or  
> about April 8, 1925 will yield an >  
> answer..................................... > >
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