[PRCo] YouTube

[Schneider Fred]

By the way, if some of you picked up on the YouTube video of the  
reasons why Los Angeles trolleys quit ... I glanced at it and  
discovered it was a hate video against General Motors and National  
City Lines.

I am not one to knowingly post that sort of garbage because I feel  
what NCL and GM did was nothing more than the cost of doing business.

I also recognize that General Electric owned trolley and power  
companies in order to sell hardware.  Their equivalent to National  
City Lines was called Electric Bond and Share Company.   They  
happened to own the fourth and sixth largest trolley companies in  
Pennsylvania.   I think at one time EBASCO may have also owned  
PennElec and also Altoona and Logan Valley because some Hungtinton,  
WVa cars migrated there.

I also understand that Westinghouse had a brother who was a  
consultant in the railway building game.   He could recommend, "You  
want a good deal, by from my brother George."

By the way, if you were to look at the 1950 list of National City  
Lines owned properties in 1950, most of them were not trolley  
companies that they converted but small bus companies that they  
bought to modernize or bus companies that someone else converted  
earlier.   Good examples would be the former Pacific Electric  
operations in Long Beach and Pasadena which, in 1950 were NCL  
properties, but which had been PE bus operations long before NCL  
bought them.   I suspect that 20 percent of the bus seats that NCL  
bought for Philadelphia in 1955-1957 went not to replace trolley  
seats but to replace older bus seats.   The other 80 percent were  
seats that someone was going to convert from rail to bus because the  
affluent were moving to the suburbs anyway and the city had purchased  
a one way ticket to hell and it might just as well be GM guaranteeing  
they were going to sell the buses instead of taking a chance they  
might get the order.   Even SEPTA has converted routes 23, 47, 50,  
53, and 56 from rail to bus since they assumed control ... must be a  
valid reason for not running streetcars in a septic tank.

I'll let John Swindler comment on this...   In the 1950s, route 8  
PERRYSVILLE was one of the heavier Pittsburgh trolley routes.   It  
certainly earned its keep because it was densely settled.   Very  
little private right of way.   Very few bridges to or long streets  
without revenue ... only a few blocks on 6th Street Bridge (or 6th  
and 7th) without houses.   But I wonder today if it (11-D) would be a  
decent revenue producer as a rail line?   John... could you extend  
the North Shore Subway in two branches, one to Emsworth and the other  
to Keating or West View via Perrysville and have two routes that make  
money or is it just a dream?   How far out do you have to go to get  
to people who go into the core city these days?

fws