[PRCo] Re: Europe ....

[Ken and Tracie]

I remember suggesting to the Trains editor that they give Paul Weyrich a 
traction/transit column. The editor responded  by saying the respected 
Paul's efforts in the field, but there was no room in his publication for 
such a column. Shortly afterward, they started such a column, with Mac 
Sebree as the writer. Then another writer took over.

At the time, Paul was part of a committee attempting to reform Amtrak. 
Perhaps that, and the "R" next to Paul's name made him undesirable to the 
Trains staff. Heaven forbid having anybody contributing content to their 
magazine who might upset the gods at Amtrash.

I thought Al was a traction fan. I have a bunch of copy slides he took of TM 
and Speedrail.

K.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Schneider Fred" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Cc: "McGuire Mark" <macmarka at netzero.net>; "Lybarger Ed" 
<trams2 at comcast.net>; "Josephson Ken" <ktjosephson at embarqmail.com>; "John 
Bromley" <johnfbromley at rogers.com>
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 1:26 PM
Subject: Europe ....


> I'm not sure which of you are still on the "demented list" so some of  you 
> may be getting this twice.    There are also some blind carbons.
>
> I think you all know where my heart lies ... if you don't, it's a  blend 
> of history and where are we going in the future and who is  leading the 
> way in the future.
>
> If you are not a subscriber or a regular reader, suggest you go out  and 
> buy the November 2008 issue of Trains magazine.   This is the rag  that Al 
> Kalmbach once proclaimed would never feature trolley cars.   It was with 
> great reluctance that they published Bill Middleton's  interurbans. 
> David Morgan had his personal interests and once told  me we should get 
> together over coffee and discuss the trolleys in  Louisville (his old home 
> town) but he knew better than to anger Al by  putting anything about them 
> in Al's magazine.
>
> Well, times they are a changing.   Every issue now has a section on  urban 
> mass transit.   And the November issue has an article by Matt  Van Hattem 
> on an unimaginable three-week-long Odessy through seven  countries in 
> Europe (England, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands,  Switzerland, Italy and 
> Germany) riding 83 trains and 37 transit  systems.   He covers an area 
> roughly 1,000 miles by 1,000 miles from  Yorkshire in England to the 
> Pyrenees, east to Milano, the Alps and  Berlin.   He talks about light 
> rail, about mixing streetcars with  high speed trains in Germany (they 
> figure out how not to make them  come together, we say you can't do it 
> because they will come  together), about 80 year old Peter Witts rebuilt 
> and still running  full bore in Milano, about 6 mile per hour moving 
> sidewalks, the  ancient monorail or Schwebebahn (literally translates 
> dangling  railway) in Wuppertal, cable cars at England's Birmingham 
> airport,  200 mile per hour trains all over Europe.
>
> I used to preach that it would not work here because we lived scattered 
> all over the landscape and they understood how to live in cities.   I  am 
> coming to realize that they may be the model for our future  because we 
> either have to learn to live in cities again and use less  energy or run 
> out of fuel or find ourselves involved in some rather  bloody and 
> continuous wars.
>
>