[PRCo] Re: Post-Gazette photo archives

[Jerry "Matt" Matsick]

Fred - you sure make for good reading, thank you.    I was one of the many who road along East Ohio Street on the way to Etna and route 8 north, and yes it was melancholy to see the old street car tracks breaking thru the black top surfaces.	 thanks
Jerry M
----- Original Message -----
From: Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org
Sent: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 15:27:44 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Post-Gazette photo archives

Take it from this information that it was years before the highway department got around to doing what they wanted to do.   My uncle, who lived up river in Cheswick, was wearing a pin which said "I lived long enough to drive the new Route 28."   You would have to go into the PennDOT archives to find out when they actually began the construction for which they were blamed in the trolley conversion.

Interestingly, the bus garage for the Millvale and Etna bus lines was erected on the site of the carbarn along Ohio River Blvd. at the foot of Grant Street in Millvale.	If you pull up Bing maps and use the Bird's Eye view component, you will see that the expressway goes right through the old carbarn / garage property.   Therefore the new garage that was built as a component of getting rid of those offending trolleys so that expressway could be built also had to be demolished!	If you determine when the rail yard was moved to Glenwood, you will probably know when the bus garage had to be demolished.	For those who don't want to look it up … it wasn't wasn't a simple task of getting rid of the rail department and running the expressway along the back side of the bus garage because there is also a complex assortment of ramps where the carbarn / garage used to be …. entrance and exit ramps to and from the expressway to allow the citizens of Millvale to use it.   The bus g!
arage had to go to build those ramps.   I'm guessing it was done sometime in the late 1950s.   

Basically East Ohio Street from downtown to Millvale was repaved and widened to four lanes and many --- but not all --- of the homes that the streetcars used to serve along that stretch have disappeared.   It is a faster road but it's still a street and not an expressway.  From Millvale (the car house site) northeast through Etna, Aspinwall, Blawnox, Cheswick, etc., it is an entirely new road built to what passed in PennDOT's mind as expressway standards.   I'm being liberal because not all highway agencies were like Pennsylvania …. nutty enough to have on and off ramps coming into and leaving from the passing lane on the left side of the road and that was one characteristic of this expressway.   Inbound the Highland Park Bridge ramps, for example, spun off the left side.



On Aug 10, 2012, at 1:01 AM, Dwight Long wrote:

> 
> Fred
> 
> Rts 2 and 3 Crumped in 1952, toward the end of August AIR.  The stated 
> reason was the desire of the Pa. Hwy Dept to repave a part of East Ohio 
> Street without car tracks.  I take it from this information, of which I was 
> not aware at the time, that the repaving was outbound from Millvale CH?
> 
> Dwight
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Fred Schneider" 
> To: 
> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 4:26 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Post-Gazette photo archives
> 
> 
>> The track department kept their operation at Millvale for some time 
>> afterward until it was moved to Glenwood.   I remember taking a bus out to 
>> Millvale in April 1955 and photographing the work cars in the track yard.
>> 
>> 
>> On Aug 9, 2012, at 12:18 PM, Barry, Matthew R wrote:
>> 
>>> Unfortunately, a very tragic story accompanying the photo.  Wow.
>>> 
>>> My hunch is those tracks weren't removed or paved over for several years 
>>> to come.  Even in the early to mid-60s, the tracks would appear through 
>>> the asphalt, further up East Ohio, just beyond the 40th Street Bridge, 
>>> along the whole section where the Millvale car house was.   And a full 
>>> section of tracks ramping up toward Etna on East Ohio existed for years 
>>> just beyond Evergreen Road.   Always caused a little bit of melancholy 
>>> for me, I think, never having witnessed any Millvale or Etna cars in 
>>> action.	Right across the river, we were busy riding the Frankstown and 
>>> flying fraction cars a great deal.
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementix.org 
>>> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementix.org] On Behalf Of 
>>> Derrick Brashear
>>> Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2012 1:04 PM
>>> To: Pittsburgh Railways Group
>>> Subject: [PRCo] Post-Gazette photo archives
>>> 
>>> A look at some of their old photos.
>>> 
>>> The notable one for us is at the bottom of the page, when East Ohio 
>>> Street still had tracks and was not effectively a semi-limited access 
>>> highway.
>>> 
>>> http://pgdigs.tumblr.com/
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Derrick
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
>