[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh MO Car Operation

[Schneider Fred]

This needs to be forwarded not only to the Pittsburgh Railways  
address list because of the list but because the man who runs the  
list, Chick, is a descendant of Brashear who founded the observatory  
at the original college along Perrysville Avenue a half mile or so  
above Federal Street.

It is astounding to me that today people think of Observatory Hill  
and forget the original observatory.   They think of the new  
observatory in Riverview Park.   They don't understand all the  
history prior to the merger of the City of Allegheny with the City of  
Pittsburgh when the predecessor of the present University of  
Pittsburgh, then called the Western University of Pennsylvania was  
located prior to 1908 off Perrysville Avenue in that large loop where  
it circles around to gain altitude after leaving Federal Street (and  
before it returns to the straight line alignment of Federal Street),  
and that Brashear had his original observatory co-located with the  
university.   The original Observatory Hill Passenger Railway, the  
Bentley and Knight operation with conduit that was a predecessor of  
part of route 8 PERRYSVILLE, went up the hill to serve the school.    
Without going into my route card file, I don't believe it even went  
as far as Charles Street originally because there was no need to.    
The object was to serve the university.

Fred Schneider

On Oct 24, 2009, at 11:27 PM, Chick Siebert wrote:

> Dear Fred:
>
> I am pleased to hear that you were able to confirm MU car operation  
> on 82 Lincoln and 88 Frankstown, although for my own memory, such  
> verification was not necessary.  I remember such MU operation as  
> though it were last week.
>
> In the summer of 1926 my grandmother and I were visiting her  
> brother and sister in Pittsburgh east end.  Uncle Billy was a  
> bachelor, and Aunt Lottie divorced.  They lived in a little house  
> at 907 or 909 Lincoln Avenue.  Aunt Lottie and Uncle Billy were my  
> dad's aunt and uncle, my great aunt and great uncle.
>
> Uncle Billy taught machine shop at Pitt, and was a serious  
> astronomer as well, conducting programs at the Allegheny Valley  
> Observatory one or two nights a week, lecturing in English or in  
> German, as desired. There were still a lot of German-speaking  
> people in Pittsburgh in 1926.  Uncle Billy had served an  
> apprenticeship with Brashear Optical Company, manufacturer of  
> telescopes, and had worked with Samuel Pierpont Langley, who was at  
> the Allegheny Observatory before going to Washington to become  
> secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. His older brother Joseph  
> had gone with Langley to Washington, built several engines used in  
> Langley's flying experiments, was in the US Bureau of Standards,  
> which Langley founded, from its inception. He was foreman of the  
> Bureau's scientific instrument shop for 40 years. But that's  
> another story.
>
> Uncle Billy took me on a two-car train from his house to downtown,  
> after supper.  This was toward the end of the rush hour, and we  
> were travelling inbound, so there weren't many passengers  We  
> transferred to a Perryville car to the observatory.  At the end of  
> the program, when the attendees had left, Uncle Billy aimed the big  
> telescope on Vega, had me at the eyepiece, and turned off the  
> telescope clock. Vega drifted out of the field of vision.  What a  
> way for a ten-year-old to learn that Earth really spins.
>
> But there is one item that I am not sure of.  I seem to remember  
> that the Perryville car was red, which would mean it was a high  
> floor car, and that may be wrong.
>
> On the same visit to Pittsburgh, I rode with my grandmother from  
> East Liberty to Lawrenceville and
> return in high floor red cars on Route 96.
>
> On an earlier visit, when I was only four years old, I rode with my  
> mother in the front seat on the top deck of a double-decker on 73  
> Highland on a rainy day.
>
> 				Best regards.
>
> 				Chick
>
>
>
>