[PRCo] Fwd: Heritage #3

[Fred Schneider]

I'm cleaning out the hopper ... more from Peter with added comments by Fred.  


Heritage #3
VERVIERS 1950-1969.wmv.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdv2a29zHfg&feature=related

Découvrir Vidéos VERVIERS TRAM Part 1 sur Netlog.   

Some of the films that were used to produce this Vicinal series in Verviers, Belgium was shot by Frits van Dam, a resident of Wassanaar, an eastern suburb of the Hague in Holland.   (I showed the photographer Frits von Dam around Boston in the mid sixties.  He referred to the all electric PCC's as, "the prison cars"  ... this is Peter's comment about Frits.      Fred's thoughts on Frits?   He worked for years setting fare collection policy for the entire nation of the Netherlands from the Dutch Ministry of Transport.   

I remember Frits standing in front of my television set observing a news item on a railroad hijacking back home in Holland by Mullockin terrorists.  That was back in the late 1960s or early 1970s.   He wasn't a missing a beat ... he picked up every single word.   I asked him about his language capabilities.   Frits said he was fluent in English and Dutch and could get by in German and French.   But he said to me, "But I can only go a hundred miles on my language.   You can go 3,000 miles.   You shouldn't worry."   I did worry and it made me begin studying languages.   By the way, when he said fluent, he meant both were interchangeable.   He could think, speak, read, listen, dream in English or Flemish.   His idea of getting by in German and French was simply reading, speaking and listening and once in a while he would have to switch back to English or Flemish to think and translate.  Our idea of getting by?   Well, he can also struggle through a book in Swedish or Norwegian and several other tongues and get the gas tank filled and order dinner.   

Frits is one of those lucky people who survived World War II with a number tattooed on his arm;  the rest of his family were exterminated by the Nazis.   How he got away is something I never had the nerve or brass gonads to ask.   He never actually told me; the intelligence came instead in a conversation between our wives.   I knew that for years he was unable mentally to vacation in Germany and he would circle around it to visit countries to the east.  Rienike, his wife, in their Christmas card in 2009, said they had a wonderful vacation in Berlin that year.   I felt so good for him that, he was finally able to look forward instead of backward after 64 years.   

A wonderful person and a great photographer.   I have inch and inches of the metric equivalent of 8x10s that he took around Europe in the 1950s.   And now I see that he also understood how to take equally good movies ... he didn't just aim the movie camera either; he composed the scene.  It is also rather obvious that he understood the meaning of a tripod.    
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbJrWWnTxsY

Découvrir Vidéos VERVIERS TRAM Part 2 sur Netlog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JlnQTbcnL8

Tramways Le Havre 1947.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_hNUOpst_c&feature=related

funiculaire du Havre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90xnP5eG2eI&feature=related

bon vieux temps.

(normally I don't do picture shows yet this one of Montreal was so enjoyable I couldn't resist)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nijXElTgNcU

Montreal by Night - 1947 NFB Documentary.     This is five years before my first trip to Montreal.   Amazing contrasted with today isn't it?   The actually permitted English language signs.   Merchants were allowed to advertise in English.   The politicians didn't freak out if you did something in a language other than French.   That is how it was when I went there in 1953 ... the city was bilingual.   fws

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uggk5tiK-G8&feature=related

Tramways de Montreal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sEyxJeu4jc&feature=related

montreal tramway1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3i4oSfDxGU&feature=related

montreal tramway2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcoaDkH7E_w&feature=related

Parade des Tramways de Montréal - 1959 - Adieu!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bcitUsO0lM&feature=related

Edmonton Trolley Coaches in Toronto.  ---  Something of which I was blissfully unaware, i.e. that TTC leased some trackless coaches from Edmonton and then found out in 1992 that they couldn't break the lease.   The restored Bay to electric operation until the lease ran out in 1993.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22K5mfK-rAM

Toronto TTC 1980s Streetcar and Trackless Trolley Video.    Unless there are two Kevin A. Muellers who are railfans, the chap who made this film is a R. C. priest living in the Baltimore area who also collects large toys.   He is also a member of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum.   When I asked him what made him enter the priesthood, Kevin smiled and said, "I was out of work and hungry and they offered to train me free of charge.   They also are good about assigning me to parishes with large garages to store my antique cars and buses."   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXiT2LSk7ek&feature=related

Peter Folger
P.O.Box 1741
Biddeford, ME 04005-1741
transitman at maine.rr.com