[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh Railways Interurban

[Schneider Fred]

Wikipedia shows all sorts of stuff but it falls flat with things that  
are controversial because anyone who doesn't like what is in  
Wikipedia can edit it themselves.   Something that is wrong can be  
corrected.  Then made incorrect by a zealot to make himself feel  
good.   Be recorrected.   Be uncorrected again.  And on and on  
forever.    If you were to look up Los Angeles City in Wikipedia, you  
would probably get some pretty decent information because it really  
isn't something that is arguable.   It's a great place to get  
population numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles

But it is not a good place to get information on something like  
National City Lines, for example, because there are a lot of people  
who still wish to penalize General Motors for things they really did  
not do.   You will notice that the NCL page was last modified just  
eight weeks ago ... not a good sign for a business that essentially  
closed four decades ago.  It's sphere of influence ended when the  
federal government started providing dollars for transit in the late  
1960s, although NCL continued in some cases to stick around to  
provide management services after that.   Houston was a case where  
they sold the business to an authority just a handful of years after  
they bought it but continued to run it for the county ... for a  
while.   ATA did the same thing in Harrisburg PA.   Was that bad ...  
well, it wasn't too many years afterward that GM went out of the bus  
business anyway so it was academic that even a management company  
could favor them.

How good is the NCL write up?   First thing I notice is the claim  
that Cleveland and Detroit were NCL properties.  Huh?  To the best of  
my knowledge both were among the very earliest publicly owned transit  
agencies ...  Detroit Department of Street Railways completed its  
takeover of Detroit United Railways by May 15, 1922 (that's nineteen  
twenty-two).
Cleveland Railway sold their system to the city on April 28, 1942.    
I think the only other big systems that were public before Cleveland  
were Seattle Municipal Railway and the city take over of Boston  
Elevated Railway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_City_Lines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal

There is no sense trying to tell anyone that NCL was simply vertical  
integration of the industry similar to General Electric owning  
trolley lines and power companies in 22 states because the railfans  
would not want to hear that ... it would be scandalous to tell them  
their favorite industry did the same thing that the industry that put  
their toys out of business did.

If you want to see what General Electric owned, look up Electric Bond  
and Share Co.   EBASCO was the GE subsidiary that owned the power and  
light and trolley companies.   In Pennsylvania, it owned Pennsylvania  
Power and Light Company (today's PPL Utilities), United Gas  
Improvement Corporation (today's UGI Utilities), Lehigh Valley  
Transit, Williamsport Passenger Railways, Jersey Shore Electric  
Street Railway and Conestoga Transit Company.   Included in that list  
were the 4th and 6th largest railway companies and a total of about  
500 miles of track and that was just one of almost half the states in  
the United States where EBASCO owned railways.   EBASCO was the  
principal reason why Roosevelt campaigned in the late 1930s for the  
Public Utilities Divesture Act.   But don't tell that to the railfans.


On Oct 7, 2009, at 4:33 PM, Phillip Clark Campbell wrote:

> From: "Barry, Matthew R" <mrb190 at pitt.edu>
> To: "pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org" <pittsburgh- 
> railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Wed, October 7, 2009 12:25:24 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Pittsburgh Railways Interurban
>
> This is interesting that Wikipedia lists a diagram for the  
> Pittsburgh Railways interurban routes:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Pittsburgh_Railways_Interurban
> ________________________________
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> Mr.Barry;
>
>
> This seems to show the 'limited' style operation to
> Washington Jct. doesn't it;  only a few stations are listed.
>
> Here is an ultra-brief history of Prc that also included the map:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Railways
>
> The Butler interurban is similarly shown with a map:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
> Pittsburgh,_Harmony,_Butler_and_New_Castle_Railway
>
>
>
>  Phil
> Without a  'coast' but not a  'cause.'
>
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