[PRCo] Re: Glassport abandonment

[Fred Schneider]

These are the things we all too often miss in our quest for streetcar history.   We search for trolley information but we miss factories, mines, theaters, amusement parks, stores, churches .... all those places to which the trolley cars carried their passengers.    Of course when the mines and factories went down, the riding on the cars went down too.   

They are a very important aspect of the picture.   Our streetcars didn't just run in a vacuum for us to photograph.

How many million riders a year do you think Pittsburgh Railways lost because steel and other workers became affluent enough in the postwar years to buy homes on the hilltops out in the suburbs?   I don't have the numbers in my hip pocket but if there were 30,000 steel workers and if even half of them and their wifes and kids regularly used the cars, and then they moved out of Homestead, or Pittsburgh or Wilkinsburg or McKeesport or or or or ... that's 165 million fares a year.   That's probably just U S Steel.   Now add in Cyclops, Wheeling-Pittsburgh, Jones & Laughlin, Bethlehem, Westinghouse Air Brake, Westinghouse Electric, Crane Plumbing, Armstrong Cork, Heinz, yadda, yadda, yadda.   I think I'm coming up with more people than they carried.   Must have been a lot of people who walked to the mill gates at one time.  


On Aug 31, 2010, at 9:45 PM, Derrick Brashear wrote:

> Here's another.
> 
> 
> http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=vT0NAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LmwDAAAAIBAJ&dq=glassport%20glass%20plant&pg=4655%2C1187519
>