[PRCo] Regent Square memories

Dwight Long dwightlong at verizon.net
Sun Dec 8 16:40:58 EST 2013 

Fred

No doubt he got his ideas of big lumbering trolley cars blocking the streets from the memoirs of the late Anne X Alpern.

You might check the 1959 (or was it 1958) PERC map against the ca 1947 ERA map of PRC (drawn, AIR, by the "Professional Iconoclast").  In some respects the latter is more helpful.  It might show what you are describing.  I am not near these maps at the moment or I would research it for you.

Dwight
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Fred Schneider 
  To: Western PA Trolley discussion 
  Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 1:47 PM
  Subject: Re: [PRCo] Regent Square memories


  Dennis, Ed and anyone else who cares…

  Ah, yes.   Can we imagine a modern writer interpreting George Washington's trip to New York City for his inauguration?   How long did it take Thomas Jefferson to journey from Monticello to the capitol of the British Colony of Viriginia in Williamsburg?   Or what Emperor Claudius' journey from Rome to Londium in the early years of the first century AD might have been like?  Or jam ups at canal tunnels in Britain in the19th century?    Yes, I will admit that he doesn't interpret well.   Ed, you should send him some pictures of cars stuck in the November 1950 snowstorm or the 1936 flood.

  So Mccloskey or McCloskey didn't identify where it located.   

  If you go to Google maps, and find the intersection of South Braddock Avenue and Allenby Avenue in Swissvale, Pa., then move the little orange man over to Allenby Avenue on the map and you will get a street picture that shows double track.  Now align it to face south and walk the man down the street until you get to the same woods that appears in the newspaper picture.   If you never used Google maps, you can walk the man by clicking the mouse beyond where it is on the image that has been pulled up.   To go back, rotate the image and do the same.   If you wish to slowly advance from one picture to the next, use the arrows imbedded in the street … click on them.   

  The Pittsburgh Electric Railway Club map shows a loop somewhere in that area near the Parkway East.   However, that would not be double track in a brick street.   My hunch is that Allenby today is the old connection from Braddock Avenue to Monongahela before the parkway was built and that neither the PERC map (1958) or the Pittsburgh Railways official map (1955) were ever corrected to show track moved over to the new Braddock Avenue and the new Monongahela Avenue.   I guess that would have happened in 1951-1953 unless there was a long bridge on the old route over the ravine where the parkway was and that does not seem possible because Allenby Avenue is sloping downhill at the same rate as Braddock Avenue does … it would have had to go under the parkway if it used the old alignment until 1967.   

  I photographed cars in Rankin on Sunday morning with Jim Shuman and Norm Vutz but I have no recollection whether we drove down Braddock Avenue or Edgewood Avenue.

  Well, the storm has hit.   White stuff coming own at about 1/2 inch an hour.

  To end on the same note on which I began, one of the best interpretive speeches I ever enjoyed was given by a docent at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia.   He began by asking where everyone was from.   And he acknowledged that he knew of all those places … Philadelphia, Richmond, Lancaster, Baltimore.   They were all familiar to him.   Until someone said Chicago.   Then asked, "Where is this place called Chicago."   The lady said, "In the state of Illinois."   The docent said, "State, the is not state called Illinois.  Only British colonies."   He brought everybody back to the 1770s.  There was nothing west of mountains but fur trappers and indians.   

  fws


  On Dec 8, 2013, at 10:38 AM, Edward H. Lybarger wrote:

  > The writer is not doing the finest job of interpreting history in its own
  > time, is he?
  > 
  > -----Original Message-----
  > From: pittsburgh-railways-bounces at mailman.dementix.org
  > [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounces at mailman.dementix.org] On Behalf Of DF
  > Cramer
  > Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 7:12 AM
  > To: pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
  > Subject: [PRCo] Regent Square memories
  > 
  > http://triblive.com/opinion/featuredcommentary/5150950-74/pittsburgh-streetc
  > ars-trolleys#axzz2mstNqj9b
  > The paper must have been looking for filler.
  > 
  > Dennis F. Cramer 
  > http://home.windstream.net/dfc1/      
  > 
  > 
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