[PRCo] Re: Historical Question

[Dwight Long]

Fred

You are going way back in time.  The Leadville train came off, as I recall, in 1937,  which was way before you were born and even before I was!  BTW, you can still ride a short piece of this line, from Leadville to Climax.  There is a tourist railway over that part of the line during the summer and early fall months.  I believe the Como roundhouse is still intact, but it gets harder and harder to find other artifacts of the South Park.

Dwight

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Fred Schneider 
  To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org 
  Sent: Sunday, 13 February, 2011 23:58
  Subject: [PRCo] Re: Historical Question


  Don't we both.

  Or how about John Bowman's trip on the Cincinnati and Lake Erie.   He started out of Toledo in the morning, dashed down to Springfield, then up the branch to Columbus, back to Springfield and then down to Cincinnati in the same day.  If you look at the timetable, that had to make one's posterior a little sore.   

  There was another trip he talked about that I think we might have all loved to have done.   I know Bill Moedinger talked John into this one because Bill's all consuming love were those slim-gauge lines in Colorado.   Can you imagine sitting up all night in a coach set on the Burlington from Chicago to Denver, after having ridding in a coach the previous day from Lancaster to Chicago.   As soon as you get to Denver, you  walk to the other platform in Union Station and board an old wooden coach for that all day ride from Denver to Como to Leadville on the Colorado & Southern.   If I remember the story correctly, lunch was in the station beanery in Como.    I think a bed in a hotel that evening in Leadville must have felt mighty good even if the floors did slope!   I wonder if when you landed in bed, you felt that the room was still moving?  

  In 1939 and 1940 the railroads of this country sold a ticket for an extravagant $100 allowing you to see both World's Fairs by route you chose.   That was the coach fare ... sleeper was extra.   If you adjust that for inflation, that would be about $1,200 today.  No big bargain.    John Bowman and Leon Franks (Leon was the NRHS Bulletin editor at the time) went from Lancaster to York, then down the Northern Central to Baltimore, and down the Pennsylvania mainline to Washington.   Then they used the Southern and Western of Alabama to New Orleans.   The Southern Pacific took them to Los Angeles.   They were supposed to go over the SD&AE from Yuma to San Diego but it was washed out so they were instead given a round trip from Los Angeles to San Diego.   While in San Diego they rode some of the PE routes.   Then up the coast to San Francisco.   John had no pictures of the fair but I know he rode Key System.   He had pictures of Sacramento Northern as far as Pittsburg.   Then he !
   used the SP to Seattle and the Milwaukee back to Chicago and the Pennsy home.   And he still had the coupon left for a round trip to New York City.   

  Jim Shuman, George Krambles, Bill Janssen made a similar trip but they had more time constraints.  They went out on the Milwaukee, rode the whole Sacramento Northern from Chico to San Francisco, and used the SP/ UP back to Chicago and the Pennsy home.   Jim remembered that they smelled a little like wild game by the time they got to San Francisco and found a Chinese laundry!    He also recalled that the wild west wasn't dead yet when they were in Butte, MT ... he was standing on one of the lesser unpaved streets with a board sidewalk in time to see someone come sailing through the swinging doors of a saloon.   So much for 1940.   I wonder if Jim got a discount ... the PRR portion would have normally been free because he was working for them at that time.   

  And every one of those friends I knew are dead.    Shuman and Moedinger passed away in 2010.   Bowman might have been six years ago.   Krambles has been gone for 12 years.   Leon Franks has been out of the picture so long I've lost track ... could be 20 years.   I think Bill Janssen passed away about 2005.   





  On Feb 13, 2011, at 11:00 PM, Herb Brannon wrote:

  > Thanks for the photo captions.
  > Even today I look back at the streetcars I have ridden in my lifetime, even
  > though limited to a few Peter Witts and lots of PCCs in many cities, this is
  > something that many younger people will never be able to do in their
  > lifetimes. Throw in a mix of Brill, St Louis Car Co, and Pullman Standard
  > trackless trolleys in several cities and that's even more which I have seen
  > and experienced that many never will. I wish I could have experienced the
  > Indiana Railroad 1931 lightweight highspeeds, especially the parlor-lounge
  > types and the route from Indianapolis to Louisville. Then too I have been
  > able to operate PCCs in Pittsburgh, something that many wish they could have
  > done.
  > 
  > On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 14:21, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>wrote:
  > 
  >> 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
  >>> 
  >>> 
  >>> 
  >> 
  >> 
  >> 
  >> 
  > 
  > 
  > -- 
  > Herb Brannon
  > In Cuyahoga Valley National Park
  > 
  > 
  >