Trolley Tuesday 9/22/20 - The Pittsburgh Railways

Pittsburgh has always been an important industrial hub for both steel and freight in Pennsylvania, and the gateway west into Ohio and the rest of the country. Beyond the giant steel mills and coal mines, Pittsburgh was also home to one of the largest street railways in the state with the third largest fleet of PCC streetcars in America (a devilish 666 cars). However, events conspired to all but wipe out the system through an unstable ownership, multiple bankruptcies, and failed returns that retired some of the first revenue-earning PCCs in the country for normal light rail. The long and troubled history of the Pittsburgh Railways is a story that deserves to be remembered.

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Streetcars in the Steel City

Pittsburgh in the 1890s, with an electric
streetcars surrounded by
horse-drawn carraiges.
(Perrin History)

In the late 19th century, the Pennsylvania State Legislature passed a law allowing "motor power companies" to operate rapid transit companies in any city that wanted it. The first company in Pittsburgh to capitalize on the new law was the Pittsburgh Traction Company (man, there's too many companies using "PTCo" as an acronym this month), which was incorporated in 1887 and opened in 1889. The 5.5 mile-long cable railway connected Shady, Penn, and Highland Avenues, all three of which ended up as important transit arteries for the eventual Pittsburgh Railways (PRC). Though the cable lines were obsolete in 1897, that did not stop several other miscellaneous competing railways having their lines crisscrossing all over Pittsburgh, including the original PR and the Consolidated Traction Company (CTC). The PR began as a horsecar line, while the CTC was charted in 1895 to conglomerate the Central Traction Company, Citizens Traction Company, Duquesne Traction Company, and Pittsburgh Traction Company. Confusing, right?

An early electric "summer car" trundles
down a Pittsburgh street on the East 
Pittsburgh-Homestead route
(Miller Library, PA Trolley Museum)

This mass-conglomeration coincided with the electrification of Pittsburgh's streetcars starting in 1890. The cable car lines were gone by 1897, largely due to the increased suburban sprawl aided by the new rapid transit, and the first electric line was up and running between South 13th and Carson Streets to Knoxville Borough shortly afterwards. This enormous boom in streetcar operations led to over 190 individual companies operating within Pittsburgh's city limits, which is where the mass mergers came into play. New bridges were also sprouting up connecting Pittsburgh's neighborhoods across the Ohio River and its split into the Allegheny (north) and Monongahela (south) Rivers, which eventually caused problems when it came time to refurbish them. By all accounts, Pittsburgh's rapid electrification was a "hodgepodge" of converted horsecars and confusing service coverages that not only inconvenienced the passengers, but also the companies that had to carry them

The Pittsburgh Railway Company

A 1922 Pittsburgh Railways fare coin, showing
the "Standard" streetcar design developed in 1915.
(Numista)

A 1913 view of a busy Forbes Ave., with a
horsecar surrounded by rushing trolleys. Note the 
"slab" rail design, a precursor to the "girder" or 
"channel" street rail for deeper flangeways.
(Pittsburgh Magazine)

By the turn of the 20th Century, almost all the street railways in Pittsburgh agreed to merge for the sake of smoother business and less-confusing services. After some negotiation, the Pittsburgh Railways Company was formed on January 1, 1902 as a holding company for the related Southern Traction Company (STC, which leased the West End Traction Company just two years prior). If you are confused right now, you're not alone, but Pittsburgh's operational model seemed to be this: the PRC owned the tracks and rolling stock, while the STC gained the rights to operate the services through the Consolidated Traction and United Traction of Pittsburgh (CTC and UTC). This severe disconnect meant that STC could not communicate well with PTC to fix their infrastructure, while PRC could not dictate or suggest service improvements to STC. 

The monstrous 6000-class double-decker cars. Unlike
the "Broadway Battleships" used in New York City
and Cleveland, these were all-enclosed cars.
(Pittsburgh Magazine)

This confusing state of affairs also led to 1,100 streetcars being inherited by the PRC, from four-wheeled LaClede Car Company wood cars to the original Brill "Pay As You Enter" cars introduced in 1909. The problems with these, eventually, was the complete lack of standardization for maintenance and operation, and the high steps and narrow doors meant loading was a slow nightmare. The head of the PRC, P.N. Jones, began trials of different streetcar designs in 1912. The result was an interesting mixture of features. At one point, the company combined a low-floor design with pay-as-you enter technology to create the double-decker "6000-class" that combined easy boarding with maximum capacity. Unfortunately, they never really caught on and though the last were built in 1924, Pittsburgh's actual standard streetcar wouldn't arrive until 1915.

An elderly eight-wheel Brill streetcar working
the Southside Beat, early 1900s.
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

But new streetcars could not stop the Pittsburgh Railways from losing everything. Despite pulling in over 200 million passengers and some $10 million dollars annually over its 606 miles of city track and 99 trolley routes, the company went into bankruptcy in 1918 thanks to its unsustainable "lease and operate" model. This proved to be the peak operating year of the railway, thanks to the industrial wakeup of World War I, but the company remained bankrupt for another 6 years due to its earnings being dumped back into paying the investors of the pre-merged companies. PRC tried to remedy this by raising fares twice, first to six cents from a nickel in 1917, then to a dime in 1919. A mass walk-out by 3000 motormen and conductors over a rejected 12-cent hourly pay increase further hurt the company's coffers, and the PRC remained bankrupt until 1924.

The Pittsburgh Washington County interurban
cars, which were some of the fastest in the system.
They do look a little familiar...
(Getty Images)

One PRC division that seemed healthy enough was the often-overlooked interurban division between Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) and Washington County (Washington and Charleroi), some 30 miles southwest. The interurban originally began in 1895 as an extension of the Monongahela City Street Railway to Riverview, Black Diamond Mine, and North Charleroi, and became part of the PRC some time in the 1910s. Due to its plain routing, the company eschewed route numbers for the lines and only the destinations told them apart. When the company was rebuilding following its fall into bankruptcy, one of its first jobs was to replace the streetcars on the Washington County interurban with new high-speed trolleys that featured bucket seats and a flashy red paint scheme. The interurban division's fate was sealed through several cutbacks in mid-1953, which then closed along with the rest of the streetcar system.

 

Notable Rolling Stock

Pittsburgh Railways No. 4398, a low-floor "Standard" works its normal
beat at the PA Trolley Museum in Washington, PA, 2013.
(Kenneth Gear)

Standard cars (with Eclipse Safety Fenders fitted)
crowd the Ingram Carbarn on May 11, 1924.
The diagonally-mounted destination boards were
a unique oddity only found in Pittsburgh.
(William W. Beaudry)

Remember those new "standard" streetcars I discussed a few paragraphs up? Well, what PRC had in mind turned out to be a double-ended derivative of the Cleveland Railway's "Peter Witt" Streetcar, and 1,000 were built by the PRC shops between 1915 and 1927. The cars were a mix of plush and humble, with plan rattan seats, inlaid and carved wooden fixtures, shaded lightbulbs, and opening windows. The Jones Car Company (established by P.N. Jones to build more cars and ease work off the shops) continued producing these cars and their design philosophy soon spread to the actual Peter Witt cars, which featured lower floors and shallower steps to accommodate easier loading. The "Standards" were originally painted orange, but they quickly faded into a yellow that earned their nickname, "Yellow Trolleys". As they were a home-built design, PRC continued experimenting with different body styles, wheel profiles, and control systems to further improve it, but these this experimentation was dropped by April 1936, in favor of the best new streetcar in America. 

PRC PCC No. 1474 (a second-generation car)
leads "Standard" 5523 on the 22-Crosstown
Route in the mid-1940s. The advertisement
is due to a shortage of manpower during WWII.
(Miller Library/PA Trolley Museum)

On April 6, 1936, St. Louis Car Company Order No. 1603 was delivered to Pittsburgh as the new PRC No. 100. This was the culmination of four years of development by the President's Conference Committee, and as PRC was part of the committee, they were chosen to be the guinea pig for the first PCC car in revenue service. After a successful trial period of two months on the 50-Carson Street Route, St. Louis delivered another 100 cars (1000-1099) on June 18, 1936. Each car cost $15,715, or the price of three 1930 Cadillac V16 roadsters,  and by the eve of World War II in 1941, PRC now operated 400 streetcars plus the original No. 100. In 1944, PRC also hosted the original "all-electric" PCC, No. 1600, which cost a hefty $20,000. As mentioned before, the all-electric PCCs featured electric doors and brakes (previously these were air operated) with battery power as a redundancy should the pole fly off the wire. As the PCC fleet grew, PRC displaced plenty of old Osgood-Bradley, McGuire-Cummings, Cincinnati and St. Louis-built cars, until finally by the Korean War in Summer 1953, it was all PCCs from here on out.

Third-generation PCC No. 1711 recreates the above photo with "Standard" 4398
at the PA Trolley Museum.
(Port Authority and Pittsburgh Railways/PA Trolley Museum)

A Bankruptcy You Can't Escape

In 1972, freshly-repainted PCC follows a grubbier 1730
across the Smithfield Steel bridge. The mountain behind
them is home to the famous Monongahela Incline.
(Jon Bell)

Unfortunately, PRC's intense investment in the PCCs came at a hefty price. In 1938, the company went into bankruptcy again and this time, even through the ridership boom in WWII due to Pittsburgh's importance in the war production effort, and would not emerge from it until 1951. The biggest reason for this was because PRC faced constant pressure to improve equipment, but the city balked at a higher fare and attempts at cutting workers wages made for constant walkouts. After the interurban lines were cut off in 1953 to the outer fringes of Allegheny County, bridgework over the Ohio River caused several line cut-offs as the city and the transit company disagreed over who was responsible for maintaining the road and tracks on them. As PRC was the leading transit company in Pittsburgh, responsibility for road maintenance fell on them, and it was much cheaper for them to run bus lines rather than streetcar lines. 

A modern map of the Pittsburgh Railways, circa 1954.
(Fifty Three Studios)

The original Point Bridge at left, featuring its own
dedicated streetcar line, in 1927.
(Brookline Connection)

This culture of closure culminated in the complete abandonment of the West End lines on June 21, 1959. PRC was in the middle of a length court battle suing the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PPUC, don't spell it out loud) over failure to provide streetcar tracks for the new Fort Pitt Bridge replacing the original Point Bridge. PPUC fought back that it was the PRC's responsibility to source new rails, not the state public works and by the end of litigation, the only option for the transit company was abandonment. 27 miles of streetcar track were left in situ and the PRC was awarded $300,000 in compensation. Over the 1960s, 90 percent of the network was soon abandoned and the PRC began looking to diversify its business beyond the money-drain that was public transit. One company they bought was the G. Barr & Co. (an aerosol can company) in 1962 and Alarm Device Manufacturing Company (Ademco) in 1963. After divesting control of the PRC to the Port Authority in 1964, Ademco was renamed the Pittway Corporation in 1967. Today, the Pittway Corporation is owned by the Honeywell Company and continues to make professional fire and burglar alarms.

A promotional image for the PATransit 4000-series PCC cars in 1981.
The car has both a trolley pole and a modern pantograph, along with air-conditioning.
(Antique Motor Coach Association of Pennsylvania) 

Former PATransit PCC No. 4001, on static display at
the South Hills Village light rail station in 2004.
(ScillyStuff)

The Port Authority of Allegheny County inherited 283 PCCs and 219 buses in March 1964, and by 1968, rampant bus route conversions left the streetcar system spanning only 58 miles. Many abandoned rails were left, still dug into the road, and carbarns around the city closed due to redundancies and mass layoffs. In 1972, only 95 PCCs were left in service in the South Hills. The Port Authority tried to remedy this with a new 1700-class refurbishment program in 1981, spurned on by the bicentennial trolley preservation boom that swallowed up cities like Seattle, WA and Fort Collins, CO. This was attempted before with cars 1784 and 1778, but with 45 new frames being constructed along with both old and new parts, new pantographs, and new A/C systems, the project was nothing less than expensive. A sobering rebuild cost of $100,000 per streetcar led to only 12 ever being completed at a total cost of $763,000 over the course of seven years. Due to the opening of the Downtown Subway in 1985, the trolleys had really nowhere to go, and all but four were eventually taken out of service on August 1, 1988 due to deteriorating wire system-wide. The final three (plus one for spares), numbers 4004, 4408, and 4009, were pulled from service in 1999, running on the 47D - Drake Shuttle line. 

Does Anything Remain?

A modern LRV painted in classic PCC colors for the Port Authority's 50th anniversary celebration.
(Brookline Connection)

Philadelphian and Pittsburgh Streetcars all gather
to continue the legacy of Pennsylvania's trolley history.
(PA Trolley Museum)

In the aftermath, the Port Authority replaced its heritage trolley fleet with new LRVs that had high-platform boarding capabilities and articulation to accommodate safer and easier boarding. 28 cars of the former Pittsburgh Railways are preserved in varying conditions around the United States, with the largest collection belonging to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA, a former interurban town. Included in the 17-strong collection are several PCCs including refurbished PCC No. 4004, a "Standard Car" constructed by the Osgood Bradley Company numbered 3756, and a converted "Pay Car" numbered M1 which was built by the Pullman Company in 1890.

Mr. Rogers poses on the center steps of a "Standard"
car at the PA Trolley Museum, with his own trolley
seated on his lap.
(The Allegheny Front)

The museum also appeared on TV through Mister Roger's Neighborhood, where Pittsburgh native Fred Rogers got the opportunity to drive a streetcar. Growing up seeing the "yellow cars" in action, he was eventually inspired to put a representative in his television show, and used the streetcar as a tool to transport his audience between reality and "Make Believe". As he explained:

Transitions give children a middle ground – space and time to settle in while they get ready for what’s ahead. They also help make the change smoother by connecting what children were doing to what’s next.

MUNI 1062 is sighted outside the Muni Metro East
(MME) carbarn in 2017, wearing the red and cream proudly.
(Kevin Mueller)

Other surviving PCC cars have traveled elsewhere all over the United States, with refurbished PCC 4002 preserved at the Pikes Peak Trolley Museum and cars 4008 and 4009 under the care of  the San Francisco MUNI's F Market & Wharves line run by the Market Street Railway. Due tot he car's non-standard features, the museum has elected, for now, not to restore them. Instead, ex-Philadelphia PCC no. 1062 wears the red and cream in tribute. PCC No. 1440 is now at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine, while the Port Authority has left car No. 4001 on static display outside the South Hills Village Rail Center. Today, it can still be seen watching the light rail vehicles trawl the rails it used to run on. Even as far into 2008, abandoned rails all over Pittsburgh were still in place. So goes one of the greatest streetcar companies in Pennsylvania, and a true juggernaut of the streetcar roster.

A selection of the colorful and wacky "Mod" schemes employed by PATransit in the 1970s, along with
the modified-front PCC on the 42 - Mt. Lebanon Line.
(All photos Brookline Connection)

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Thank you for reading today's trolley post, and watch your step as you disembark. Today's information primarily came from an old Pittsburgh Post Gazette timeline of the PRC, the gallery provided by Brookline Collection, the Canadian Public Transit Discussion Board wiki page on the PRC, and the Market Street Railway's page on their Pittsburgh PCCs. Museum shout-outs go to Market Street Railway as well as the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA, and the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, ME. On Thursday, we look at a sweet treat with the Hershey Transit Company! Until then, you can find myself or my editor on twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble store, or purchase my editor's board game here. Until then, ride safe!