[PRCo] Re: Route 29 Thornburg

[Schneider Fred]

And following up on Ed's comment about "no sane company," a company  
that had managed to get rid of almost all their conductors in the  
1924-1932 period gives me some indication of sanity.  Within a few  
days I'll have a complete record of one-man routes in Pittsburgh.    
Very few lines got past 1931 with a second man.   Route 22-85 had  
conductors until 1932 in base service, probably until the company  
decided the conductors were more expensive in the Depression than a  
few lost fares on that Allegheny - Bedford service.   Sewickley had  
trailers until 1931 and conductors until 1933, probably because of  
the heavy industry on Neville Island ... or what had been heavy  
industry until the Depression.   After than (and I still have the  
Ingram and Carnegie lines to do), the only two man cars left were  
running rush hours on Bellevue - Westvue.   Yup ... they had trailers  
until 1937 which required two men on the motor car and one in the  
trailer.   As soon as they had enough of those new fangled PCCs, the  
trailers were G O N E and so were those conductor's jobs.
The speeding up of the low floor cars and the PRC participation in  
the PCC program also shows a committed management.   They understood  
that faster cars would not only get you home faster but would save  
cars and save employees.

The only problem with analyzing how that worked in Pittsburgh is that  
as they installed high speed cars, we also came out of a depression  
and they had to add more cars anyway.   And as they bought PCCs, we  
went into a war and they needed more cars because suddenly we went  
back to work.   So we can't prove that high speed cars meant fewer  
cars.   It simply becomes an academic statement.

On Jan 10, 2009, at 6:28 PM, Edward H. Lybarger wrote:

> There were no timetables in 1932, other than internal ones.   
> Unhappily, the
> ones we have are from Rankin and don't help with Ingram routes.   
> Apart from
> the clarity of the route card records, why would any sane company  
> put a line
> like Thornburg on as a through route in the middle of the Depression?
>
> I would also interpret "OD" as "one door."  As in Washington, they  
> blocked
> the center doors on these "dinkey" lines.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of
> Schneider Fred
> Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 5:41 PM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Route 29 Thornburg
>
> Subject Beal's book, page 403:
>
> Beal claims that route 29 Thornburg was again run from downtown
> Pittsburgh to Thornburg beginning 5 April 1932.   When I saw that, I
> went back to the route cards because I had just typed them into my  
> computer
> file last night.
>
> The route cards are very clear.   Service to downtown Pittsburgh was
> suspended March 18, 1918.   There is no mention of it being restored
> at any time thereafter.
>
> They show it going from double-truck to single-truck cars on June 3,
> 1922.   However, Pittsburgh did not acquire the two second-hand
> Birneys that we are told ran on route 29 until 1926.   The notation
> of car type vanished in 1924 so we have no idea what they were  
> running after
> March 1924.  An annotation reappears in 1937 "OD" which might stand  
> for
> one-door car.
>
>  From August 1930 until abandonment, route 29 only scheduled one car,
> Sunday through Saturday.   Considering the round trip from Thornburg
> to downtown Pittsburgh was nearly 14 miles and the operating speed  
> is about
> 8 to 9 miles per hour average with a low-speed 4200,  I thing it is  
> pretty
> clear that the line wasn't running into downtown at any time in the  
> 1930s.
> The round trip would have consumed about 100 minutes.
>
> The notation "high speed" was not put onto the route cards until 1937
> but cars were speed up starting in the early 1930s.   Had Pittsburgh
> Railways put high speed cars on routes 27 and 30, one would not  
> expect them
> to want a low speed 4200 screwing up the schedules on the same  
> route from
> Crafton to Pittsburgh, particularly because some of the more  
> wealthy riders
> (the ones they wanted to keep from using
> automobiles) lived in Crafton.
>
> Now if Beal or someone can show me a timetable from April 4, 1932  
> to prove
> that the scribe forgot to record it on the route card............
>
>
>
>