[PRCo] Plummer Street Car House

Wed Sep 3 17:05:09 EDT 2014

I never made any decent photos of what he took that day.   There only one that he took at Plummer St., and that was a general view of the barn with a 1500 (I think 1562) sticking out.  But I made some mistakes in my day … one was chopping all the 35mm negatives into singles back then instead of strips of 5 or 6.     I eventually filed them in small books but never made much larger than 2 x 3 prints of most of them and many have disappeared.    Once I began taking pictures with a decent 120 camera (or relatively better camera) in 1955, I made 8x10s of the good stuff.

Ah … but in 1955 I photographed only buses on the annual spring visit to Pittsburgh and those prints all wound up in the Motor Bus Society library.

So, even though I began taking stuff when I was 13, I really don't have much before 1956 (age 16) in Pittyburg.

Maintenance?   Homewood was doing all the heavy work.   Places like Plummer St. only did the light stuff   … light bulbs, brake shoes on the yellow cars, maybe a seat cushion.   I am not sure precisely Ray how it was defined but I can state that around 1930-1932 (in that period), PRC went to a mileage based system and once a car reached that interval, it was sent to Homewood for inspection and replacement of whatever components would fail before the next inspection.  

The barn assignments were done to minimize parts that they had to stock.   I think we all know that Keating, Manchester, Millvale and Ingram were General Electric PCC barns, Homewood was mixed because the central parts room as two blocks down the street, and the others (Glenwood, Tunnel, Plummer, Carrick, Highland, Craft (did I miss anything) were Westinghouse.

The same technique was used for low floor cars.   MU cars (5000s, 5100s, 5200s) were at Ingram and Homewood, Charleroi and Tylerdale (and that included some double-end cars with HL control).  Of course things changed over the years and we would have to pick a point in time.   I'm thinking late 1940s and early 1950s.   Keating had K-control cars (5500s and 4300s).  I think you see where this is going.   You only have to stock control fingers for one type of car or one type of brake valve in a barn if you divide up cars that way.   But I doubt that any barn would have had spare motors or pinion gears or bull gears or anything that required jacking up the car … for that you ran it (or towed it) to Homewood.   

But there is a great picture that Charlie Dengler took of a failure on the street.   You may not have replace a traction motor in the barn but if it failed on the street, that picture shows that an emergency crew could jack up a car, drop an axle and motor and change them out and have the line open again in an hour or thereabouts.   

On Sep 3, 2014, at 4:38 PM, rayprco53 wrote:

> Care to share any of your Dad's photos or elaborate what type of maintenance was conducted at Plummer CH?
> 
> 
> Sent on the new Sprint Network from my Samsung Galaxy S®4.
> 
> <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: D Brashear <shadow at dementix.org> </div><div>Date:09/03/2014  3:45 PM  (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: Western PA Trolley discussion <pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org> </div><div>Subject: Re: [PRCo] Plummer Street Car House </div><div>
> </div>On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:02 PM, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> 
>> Jim,
>> 
>> The W in Fred W. Schneider stands for Windy.   :<)
>> 
>> You are bringing back memories …. very fond memories Jim.   The week
>> beginning March 28 and ending around April 6th, 1953 was my spring break
>> from 8th grade.   Monday I rode the interurban to Washington and Tuesday I
>> rode the Charleroi line.   That was back in the days when teenagers knew
>> what the limits were and could even go into stores unattended without being
>> evicted.   Don't know about your neighborhood, but I know of some malls
>> today (South Hills Village for example) that will not let kids under 18 in
>> without a parent or guardian.
>> 
> 
> "Those days" included my teen years. I routinely shopped unattended,
> including at SHV.
> 
>> 
>> OK, come Saturday … that would be April 4th, I had documents from
>> Pittsburgh Railways to let my father and me into both Plummer Street and
>> Tunnel car houses to take pictures.   My father, being a model builder and
>> an engineer, was more interested than I was.   The shop foeman at Plummer
>> Street was telling him all about the maintenance practices and he was
>> enthralled.   Me, I was doubled over in pain.
>> 
>> 
> Plummer St's Thorofare nee Giant Eagle is currently being reopened as a
> Busy Beaver home improvement center. Think a smaller Home Depot/Lowes with
> less stuff (and in some cases, not as good. they used to be better but they
> are sort of a local discount home improvement chain). There are banners up
> outside, or were when I biked past last week.
> 
> --
> Daria
> 
> 
> 
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: http://mailman.dementix.org/pipermail/pittsburgh-railways/attachments/20140903/901f1883/attachment.html 
> _______________________________________________
> Pittsburgh-railways mailing list
> Pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
> https://mailman.dementix.org/mailman/listinfo/pittsburgh-railways
> 
> 
> 
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: http://mailman.dementix.org/pipermail/pittsburgh-railways/attachments/20140903/f32a8186/attachment.html 
> _______________________________________________
> Pittsburgh-railways mailing list
> Pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
> https://mailman.dementix.org/mailman/listinfo/pittsburgh-railways