[PRCo] Re: Interurbans and Animals

[Jerry MATT Matsick]

Thanks Dennis and Fred for the 'great' stories of Interurbans and Animals, I am sure others have some
unique stories to share also.   Keep them coming!    Makes for great and humerous reading!
--
Jerry Matsick.
-------------- Original message from Schneider Fred <fwschneider at comcast.net>: -------------- 


> Jerry: 
> 
> A lot depends on the weight differential between the animal and the 
> vehicle. 
> 
> Hitting a water moccasin with a Florida East Coast freight train 
> isn't even going to leave you with a decent snake hash dinner. 
> 
> I suspect if I were to hit one of those ubiquitous deer that cross 
> PTM's right-of-way with the Red Arrow center door car at Christmas 
> time, the car might have some fur on it and some crying kids inside 
> and that would probably be the extent of the damages. A deer only 
> weighs a few hundred pounds and that car frame was engineered for 
> multiple-unit operation and the anticlimber is a foot high with a 
> coupler underneath it. 
> 
> On the other hand, there was a great story relayed to me by Harry 
> Bortzfield back in 1963. Harry was one of those people who started 
> working for the trolley industry as a young man and was fired when it 
> quit ... in this case he still relatively young. The Lancaster and 
> York Furnace Street Railway opened in 1903 and went out of business 
> in October 1929. All they had to do was smell the Depression coming 
> and they were gone. (They had a subsidiary company that ran cars 
> to Hog Pen Station, south of Rawlinsville, from 1904 to 1908 and 
> again from 1912 to January 1916.) 
> 
> In the company's better years cars operated from a connection with 
> Conestoga Traction Company in Millersville to Pequea every hour in 
> the summer and every two hours in the winter. The summer service 
> was "needed" to haul fisherman and campers and people with summer 
> homes down to the Susquehanna River. The winter service was best 
> described as an accommodation for ghosts. In the final years they 
> were down to every 90 minutes in the summer and 120 minutes in the 
> winter. That what you get when you build a trolley from nowhere to 
> no place and back. The trees outnumbered the people in that area by 
> several thousand to one. 
> 
> Well, Harry was describing a trip on a rainy fall night. He came 
> over a hill or around a curve and the headlight on the little single- 
> truck wooden car picked up a bull standing on the track. Now a bull 
> isn't light weight. It probably weighed 30% of the weight of that 
> wooden trolley. The bull was not about to be intimidated by a 
> trolley car. It stood its ground. Harry blew the whistle and 
> stomped repeatedly on the gong. The bull just looked at Harry and 
> then turned around with its rear toward the car. And Harry, in 
> spite of his best efforts, was unable to stop. Remember I said the 
> trees outnumbered the people. Well, you just don't stop a streetcar 
> on leaf covered wet rails ... it's sort of like the skating rink at 
> Rockefeller Center. Harry summed up the incident by saying, "There 
> was shit all over." Knowing how fragile that car was, I suspect the 
> bull may have been dead but the car was too. 
> 
> By the way, in the good years, when it had its subsidiary company 
> connection, it hauled a whopping 192,000 passengers a year. That 
> was before anyone knew what an automobile was. But it only worked 
> out to 1.32 people per car mile. 
> 
> Fred Schneider 
> 
> 
> On Feb 12, 2009, at 9:35 AM, Jerry MATT Matsick wrote: 
> 
> > Having had the opportunity to hang out on the tracks of the 
> > Charleroi interurban line near Eldora, I know 
> > there were alot of "wild" animals in that area, I was wondering 
> > have animals caused accidents or derailments on any of the PRCo 
> > interurban lines? Also here in Florida often "wild" fires near 
> > RR tracks 
> > have suspended train operation, was that face by the PRCo trolleys? 
> > -- 
> > From: Jerry "Matt" Matsick "PHD" 
> > Living without trust in God is like driving in 
> > the fog. 
> > -------------- Original message from Schneider Fred 
> > : -------------- 
> > 
> > 
> >> Amazing..... that is the population of the city!!!!!!! 
> >> 
> >> On Feb 10, 2009, at 9:04 PM, Bill Robb wrote: 
> >> 
> >>> BobDietrich wrote: 
> >>>> I was in the middle of 300,000 Steelers fans last week and none 
> >>>> were 
> >>>> behaving badly. 
> >>> 
> >>>> Don't knock the sport because of the actions of their "fans". 
> >>> 
> >>> Maybe the 300,000 were fans of something good happening for 
> >>> Pittsburgh rather than "sports fans." 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
>