[PRCo] Re: PRC 313A-317-1202 Franchise Car

[Schneider Fred]

Heading to Baltimore to the railroad show and to meet a friend.   The  
printer will be working all day because it will not print selected  
pages --- only knows how to print the entire P&CS piece.   When I get  
home, then I can print the Civil War batteries.

At first glance, I didn't see any civil war batteries within a few  
minutes of South Hills Junction along inactive track that would have  
made any sense.   I will, however, look more closely.

I also had a problem with those coke ovens unless somehwere under  
those ovens on West Liberty Avenue was a cross over from the inbound  
to the outbound track.   It might just have been another way of  
saying "Go to the Bell House" because it seemed they were still  
trying to perpetuate the old Washington Road (Bell House to Haberman)  
franchise under another name and perhaps with other landmarks and  
other crossovers.

This little bits of earlier year semantics can drive later year  
historians crazy.   In my youth I could tell a bus driver on the  
Lancaster to Lititz bus to "Let me off at the Rotary." and most of  
them knew I meant Delp Road even though the rotary by then was  
imaginary.   It had been knocked out in a thunderstorm in 1935 or so  
and had been replaced by a portable rotary until the trolleys quit  
running in 1938 and here I was using the terminology in 1955-1958 and  
being understood.   It was the name of the stop in carmen's handbooks  
in the old days ... it was an officially named stop in the 1930s.    
The name Delp Road didn't come along until 1950 or 1951.   In between  
it was probably "Just let me off at the next stop, please."

I must say that this route history project does teach one a lot about  
Pittsburgh history that I had never imagined it would.   It also has  
a way of dragging in other people into the loop such as Bruce  
Cridlebaugh, the perpetrator of the Bridge and Tunnel website.   He  
has been a marvelous help when I ask, is such and such a bridge at  
this location ... I cannot think of any other low spot on this  
street????   There is a lot of knowledge out there but the problem  
comes in sorting the wheat from the chaff.



On Jan 30, 2009, at 11:23 PM, Derrick J Brashear wrote:

> On Fri, 30 Jan 2009, Schneider Fred wrote:
>
>> I've been searching old maps and other on-line sources for several
>> hours without success.   Perhaps one of you has the answer to this
>> question:
>>
>> Two locations are involved with the 313A-317-1202 franchise car that
>> make no sense at all to me:
>>
>> One is called "Battery."   This place called Battery was six minutes
>> from the office at South Hills Tunnel by some route.   I have no idea
>> what a battery is.   I've looked on maps for batteries of coke ovens
>> and storage batteries.   I've looked at the 1884 industrial map of
>> Pittsburgh.  Nothing is popping out.
>
> Pittsburgh & Castle Shannon Railroad had 8 coke ovens. Is that a  
> battery?
> Is that "the" battery? I dunno.
>
> http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/pa/pa3400/pa3483/data/pa3483.pdf
>
> I don't know (yet) where they were. One presumes "along the Overbrook
> line"
>
>> The other place is 3rd St. and Washington Road.   Well, guess what,
>> there was no intersection of 3rd Street and Washington Road.
>
> *Old* Hopkins shows Carson St *west* of Smithfield as "Washington
> Turnpike".
>
> Washington Avenue (Warrington) on Sanborns of 1893; No sign of a paper
> street down from Climax.
>
>