[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh Railways Interurban

Mon Oct 12 20:49:16 EDT 2009

Bob:

 From a guy who spent a life time working in labor statistics, I love  
the story.

I have long been convinced that the life of a business is often just  
one generation
because either the second generation doesn't understand that they  
have to work
70 hours a week to make things function or there has been a paradigm  
shift in the
meantime such as that which makes steam locomotives, canal boats,  
Kodachrome
film or some other product useless.

I tried to find Acheson on the internet and it seems to have  
disappeared like so
many old time Pittsburgh area manufacturing institutions:  Crane  
Plumbing,
Armstrong Cork, Mesta Machine, Walworth Valves, Jones and Laughlin  
Steel,
Pittsburgh Steel, Dravo Corporation, Gulf Oil ... want me to keep  
going?   How
about West View Park, Loews Penn Theater, Stanley Warner.   And then  
there
was my dad's favorite, the Casino.

http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A65862

By the way, note who wrote the letter asking the question in the link  
above.

On Oct 12, 2009, at 6:55 PM, Bob Rathke wrote:

> Speaking of Boggs & Buhl...and Pittsburgh trolleys:
>
> Around 1912, my grandfather worked as an office boy at Boggs &  
> Buhl. He
> often told the story about how his family encouraged him to "learn  
> a trade",
> and get a job with a future, and so he left the department store  
> and became
> a foundryman.  He eventually advanced to supt. at Acheson Mfg. Co. in
> Rankin, and retired in 1960 - two years after Boggs & Buhl closed.   
> Maybe
> his family was correct.
>
> Acheson manufactured brass plumbing fittings, and my grandfather  
> was proud
> of the big order they got in 1958 to supply all the plumbing  
> fittings in
> Pittsburgh Hilton then under construction. He never had a drivers  
> license or
> a car, and for years he took three trolleys to get from Spring Hill to
> Rankin. Then from 1956-60, one Monday a month he didn't need to  
> take PRC to
> work - he just needed to ride the Spring Hill trolley (later the  
> bus) from
> home to downtown Pittsburgh to attend all-day management meetings that
> Acheson held at the Ft. Pitt Hotel.
>
> Growing up, he taught me how to cast metals in sand molds, and I  
> still have
> some of his molding tools and artistic castings, as well as a few  
> of my own
> not-so-artistic castings.
>
> Bob 10/12/09
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Schneider Fred" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Cc: "Haney Sue" <shaney7366 at aol.com>
> Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 6:57 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh Railways Interurban
>
>
>> For what it's worth ... my mother's brother, now deceased along with
>> his wife and my parents,  grew up on Pittsburgh's north side.   When
>> he returned from the Coast Guard in 1945 with a newly acquired wife,
>> my grandparents renovated their home on Delaware Avenue off
>> Perrysville Avenue creating a second floor apartment.   Remember,
>> after the war there were a lot of servicemen coming home and needing
>> places to live and a lot of kids born ... the baby boom generation.
>> There were a lot of people who even lived in old streetcar bodies.
>> I remember four of them lined up next to the Ohio River Bridge in
>> Marietta Ohio as temporary housing from 1947 until 1960ish.
>>
>> Well, my aunt and uncle lived on the Norside (north side?) from 1945
>> until the 1950.   They moved out the day of the Thanksgiving weekend
>> snow in 1950 ... the moving van never made it back to Pittsburgh from
>> Cheswick (between Aspinwall and New Kensington) the same day.
>>
>> Now the rest of the tale ... since the story started with the other
>> Boggs and Buhl venture, the trolley line to Evans City, Butler and
>> New Castle.   Let me explain that in 1958 my uncle took his two kids
>> (then about 7 and 11 ... the youngest died of cancer a couple of
>> years ago) to Boggs and Buhl for back to school clothes and other
>> supplies.   The store was having a clearance sale.   A final
>> clearance sale.   A going out of business sale.   Freddy told me he
>> put it on his Boggs and Buhl charge card.   The bill never came.   By
>> the time he realized it never came, there was no one answering the
>> phones to ask where is my bill?
>>
>> http://buhlplanetarium2.tripod.com/bio/boggsbuhl.htm
>>
>> The article in the link above claims that most of shoppers at the new
>> North Hills shopping center off McKnight Road had been former Boggs
>> and Buhl customers.   Well, in 1959 Freddy directed my dad how to get
>> there.   He was one of those former customers whose loyalty was now
>> in the burbs.
>>
>> By the way ... if any one cares, I'm working at PTM next weekend.
>>
>> On Oct 11, 2009, at 5:24 PM, Phillip Clark Campbell wrote:
>>
>>> From: "Barry, Matthew R" <mrb190 at pitt.edu>
>>>
>>> This is interesting that Wikipedia lists a diagram for the
>>> Pittsburgh Railways interurban routes:
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Pittsburgh_Railways_Interurban
>>> ________________________________
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>> From: Phillip Clark Campbell <pcc_sr at yahoo.com>
>>>
>>> Mr.Barry;
>>>
>>> The Butler interurban is similarly shown with a map:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
>>> Pittsburgh,_Harmony,_Butler_and_New_Castle_Railway
>>> ________________________________
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>> Mr.Barry;
>>>
>>> Thank you for sharing this map;  I look forward to your posts.
>>>
>>> While not a map in the true sense of the word, the enclosed
>>> does show many - most - all station stops on the Butler
>>> Interurbans.  I am sure most here have heard the following
>>> haven't they:  "Believe only 50% of what is read;  nothing of
>>> what is heard."  We are aware of these problems in an
>>> imperfect world without preachers for the same aren't we.
>>> Maybe that percentage needs downward adjustment in
>>> light of the internet.  (My apologies;  I don't know the source
>>> of this map - somewhere from the internet.)
>>>
>>>
>>> Phil
>>> Without a 'coast' but not a 'cause.'
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -- Attached file removed by Ecartis and put at URL below --
>>> -- Type: image/jpeg
>>> -- Size: 219k (224889 bytes)
>>> -- URL : http://lists.dementia.org/files/pittsburgh-railways/
>>> Butler.jpg
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>