[PRCo] Re: PAT's cuts

[Fred Schneider]

We're not this list; we're not that list.   But as we get to know the members ...  As I get to know you and Ken and Mark and Ed and Dwight and so forth, the list does tend to take on a different character than you imagined when you began it, doesn't it....

Is that totally bad?

I don't think so.   We all have one common thread.   We came came from or we still live in western Pennsylvania.   One thing after another draws us back to that commonality.   

But we are also all individuals who all like each other.  

For that I will be forever grateful to Derrick for pulling us together.   

By the way .. I missed the grateful Fred at the Tractioneers meeting in Washington on Friday night.   Wonder where he was?????    It was a small meeting, Fred.   Only about five of us were there in addition to the promoters but it was an interesting European show.  I never cease to be amazed at how much some of those systems have changed in a decade or two since I saw some of them.   

The videos that Burkett showed of his trip were a revelation:   Three car trains on Docklands LRT in London ... I remember singles.   New cars on the Croydon Tramlink.   A new generation of cars in Strasbourg, France. Amsterdam and I didn't see any cars I recognized from my visits 15 years ago.   Koln (Cologne) looking down on the throat of the train station was crazy ... always a train in sight ... some of the video scenes showed three trains plus tram trains on the bridge over the Rhein (Rhine in English).   And some great scenes from the barge going down the Rhein of trains along the bank south of Koblenz.   (No expresses ... the high speed service is on a new right of way.)   


On Dec 11, 2010, at 11:52 PM, Derrick Brashear wrote:

> On Saturday, December 4, 2010, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> On the subject of urban renewal (runinal?) ... Lancaster, PA tried it too.   David Schuyler, an F&M professor, wrote a book on the subject about how we tear down the bad neighborhoods without considering where the people will move ... it generally creates multiple bad neighborhoods as we move into the future.   He also talks about how we renewed downtown which was aging and tarnished but people went there.   No now no one goes to the block that was renewed. We will now renew it again.   The department store became a bomb fuse factory and now its empty.   The headquarters building for Armstrong Cork is empty.  The hotel ... well it was shut down for an entire year because of unrepaired defects.   Why?  No one goes to city hotels so the city retaliated and built a new one two blocks away ... a convention center ... to compete with it.  That way we can have two empty hotels.   :<)   Who pays for it?   A tax on the suburban hotels / motels.
>> 
>> http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02207-8.html
>> 
>> 
> I ordered it that day. Read the intro Thursday, most of the rest today
> while sitting in Bergstrom Airport and then on the flights to
> Friendship Airport and the short hop home from there.
> 
> We're not an urban development list, so I'll restrain my comments; I
> don't believe he's fully non-partisan tho he appears to slant like I
> do; I also think your summary of the book doesn't quite do it justice.
> I do remember your comments and my impression of Lancaster Square on
> one of our map-following expeditions  earlier this century, but not
> until
> now did all the pieces fit. I understand this class of story; now, I
> think i understand this story.
> 
> I wonder which Pittsburgh neighborhoods were redlined. I can guess but
> I should probably check.
> 
> -- 
> Derrick
> 
>