[PRCo] Re: Historical Question

[Fred Schneider]

Fantrip Herb!   ... M1, West Penn 832 and 3756 were operated under their own power to the museum site.  The next Monday the scrappers cut the power and continued ripping up the tracks from the museum site northward.
Dick Steinmetz told a story at an NRHS meeting in the Lancaster or Harrisburg area that he had the fastest imaginable ride ever up through South Hills Tunnel that day in a single truck car.   He was in M-1 out of Ingram that day and the operator had the controller against the peg up through the tunnel.  

Either he or someone else told a neat story about stopping for lunch in Canonsburg.   Here were hundreds of guys flooding town looking for food.   One restaurantier asked, "How did you all get here?"   He was told by streetcar.   "But they quit running months ago?"   He was then told about the museum excursion.

Sometime after that vandals chopped down the trolley wire at the museum site and gutted some of the copper out of West Penn 832.

I remember how Herman Rinke used to be one of those obnoxious types in the ERA office in New York City.   No matter what subject came up, he was old enough to always be able to jump in and say he had been there and see it all.   I guess I'm now old enough to be the same kind of S. O. B.   
I have to admit guys there were things my mentors talked about that I wished I had ridden.   I'm really not singing that song, "I've been everywhere."  

Wouldn't it have been nice to have ridden the West Penn from Uniontown through New Stanton to Connellsville like Steve Maguire did?    No I didn't ride that.   I never even rode the mainline.   Only rode a few blocks in Jeannette.   

 Or Altoona and Logan Valley from Altoona to Tyrone like my good buddy John Bowman did back in 1933?   Johnny also rode the Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton ... what a ride that must have been over two mountains.   

And Jim Shuman enjoyed the riding the Indiana Railroad from Indianapolis to Peru to Fort Wayne to Anderson to Indianpolis to Louisville and even to Terre Haute.   WOW!    Jim talked about going to Allentown to see the first ex C&LE cars on display before they went into service in 1940.   I was just born then.   I never even rode the Liberty Bell route ... only saw the city cars in Allentown in 1952, the year before they quit.   

And my old vacation companion Donald Duke told this great story about his dad's card playing buddy coming into the Duke home and saying, "Do you know what your son has been doing after dinner?   Seem that one evening President Smith got onto one of his cars and found the motorman studying for his college classes and the conductor sitting back in the rear corner of the car.   After chatting with both of them he asked, "And who is running the car?"   Turns out that Don Duke used to go out after dinner and spell the motorman so he could study ... Don made a round trip from San Marino to Glendora.   "Your son is a good motorman ... better than a lot of our men ... but we have to stop letting him do this," Smith is alleged to have said to Norman Duke.     Don could have written the book, "I was a teenage motorman."    Don't I wish I had the same chance! 

Sad that all these old friends are now dead....

Friday night I drove to a Tractioneers meeting in Washington DC.   Ara Mesrobian asked how I could still drive all the way down and back in one night.   He said he would be camped in a hotel!    I guarantee in a few more years I will understand Ara.   I no longer drive to Pittsburgh and home just to get an Eat 'n Park hamburger!   

Oh well, my fun and games was pulling leverss at the Pennsy's interlocking plant in Lancaster during the summer of 1957 when the regular block operator was sick.    Then there was the chap at the local bus company who worked evenings with me at Sears Roebuck ... after the store shut down, we would go to the garage.   He would fuel the buses and I would drive them into the garage.  

We all have our stories, don't we.....   


On Feb 13, 2011, at 1:19 PM, Herb Brannon wrote:

> On or about February 7, 1954 a low floor car (3756?) was moved from
> Pittsburgh to Arden. How was the car moved; under it's own power (if the
> PRCo tracks to Washington PA were still intact) or on a truck?
> -- 
> Herb Brannon
> In Cuyahoga Valley National Park
> 
> 
>