Pennsylvania Trolley Museum
July 29, 2013

by Dave Ingles

On the day after the excursion, Rick went off north to the Beaver Valley to photograph depots he needed for his archive. Chuck picked up John Arbuckle off a bus from his motel near the airport, came out to Monroeville to get me, and we 3 headed south to Washington, Pa., to visit the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (aka "Arden"), new to me but not to them. (Rick wound up stopping by here in the afternoon, a repeat visit for him.)

This is an excellent museum. They show you a 10-minute video with good history of trolleys in general, and there is an excellent historical display between the entrance/gift shop area and the video theater. I am presenting a few interior photos. We then took the 1110 am trolley ride, which first goes north on a 0.9-mile line to a loop; this is on the r-o-w of a former PRR mine branch. After stopping back at the main loading point by the big display building/shop, the car heads east for a mile or so to the museum's very long, 4-track car barn, where you disembark for a tour inside.

The track is Pennsylvania Broad Gauge (5-foot-2) and, east of the main loading point, parallels the still-extant former PRR branch into Washington (to the west), now run by short line Pittsburgh & Ohio Central, part of the Ohio Central group and since 2008 all owned by Genesee & Wyoming.

After our visit inside, we boarded PCC car 1711 for the ride north, then back and then east, and return. This car was one of the group built for service on this Pittsburgh Railways line to Washington, Pa., among the last true interurban cars built -- see a photo of 1701 and the explanation in the "Fast Mail" reader letters column of the current Fall 2013 CLASSIC TRAINS. We had a pretty good crowd on board, with several families.

Ads in the cars reflect the glory days era of operations.

We have made the run to the east and are returning off the loop to stop at a shelter for the carbarn tour.

The passengers troop up to the carbarn.

The intro lecture is given next to a cemetery car from Pittsburgh.

The tour went halfway down the lines of cars, then across 2 tracks, and back. My knees wouldn't take all that walking so I listened to the intro, snapped a few pictures at the front (east) end, and sat on a bench to wait for the tour to conclude. The front cars beyond the cemetery car 101 are New Orleans car 832 and Philly Red Arrow car 14. I can't recall if there are two different gauges for the tracks or if the NOLA car was re-gauged.

Our car 1711 awaits our return from the carbarn tour.

Three non-trolley items are displayed by the main loading point, where we disembarked to wait to get an action shot of the next run.

Since I don't walk well on ballast anymore, I contented myself with shady-side snapshots of the Westinghouse unit, Armco B-73 from Butler, PA and the little center-cab Porter from Pennsylvania Transportation Technologies.

There is a historic trolley shelter at the loading point.

Soon the next run of the 1711 came by.

Just before we'd left the main building to board the car, we'd heard a diesel horn, which turned out to be a light engine on the P&OC going by to switch their main (and only) customer in Washington, a plastics plant. After we finished at the museum, we drove over to see it, but it was busy switching in an inaccessible position, unfortunately. It was ex-IC GP11 rebuild (a guess from road number 8702), painted in OC's maroon and gray with big yellow letters.

Before leaving the museum, we saw an open car, 1758, out on the line, apparently being run by a woman volunteer for her father, who was visiting.

We grabbed a late lunch in Washington and then headed south to begin our second portion of the day's plan, to photo the 4 depots we'd seen on Sunday's excursion. The first one was NS's current office in Waynesburg. 

The second one was at Jefferson, apparently an old MGA building.

As we drove along the Mon River, we spotted the Fredericktown ferry making a quick return with one vehicle, after going east across the river "light ferry." I had not spotted this operation from the train. Alas, we felt we didn't have time to take a quick ride over and back (and didn't know the toll, as the main road goes over the ferry-slip access road), and still get John Arbuckle to the airport in time.

The prize of the four depots was at California, Pa., preserved by I think the Chamber of Commerce as an office, with an ex-Wabash caboose on display (hey, it's in the NS family!).

The last depot was this one at Monongahela ("Mon City").

We then doubled back to I-70, west to I-79, and north to the highway to the Pittsburgh airport, to drop off John. Chuck and I then endured rush-hour traffic into the city to go to the ballgame. He dropped me off at the park, went a block to park in a parking structure, returned, and we went into the ballpark, my first MLB game since the last year of the Cardinals' former stadium in St. Louis in 2005 (my knees can hardly take the requisite walking anymore). I had last been to a Pittsburgh game in their 1992 playoff against Atlanta, flying over to attend a game at Chuck's invitation. Chuck (who pulls for the Pirates but grew up a Cubs fan in Chicago's north suburbs) snapped two photos with his iPhone from our seats during the game, at dusk and after dark (below). The Pirates won, beginning a string of 4 straight wins to take over the NL Central lead, which extended St. Louis' losing streak to 7 games before they won the finale of the 5-game series on Thursday to say 2 1/2 games out of first place. It was a gorgeous sunny and warm (but not too warm) evening, though, and a very enjoyable experience. After the game he dropped me at the motel, from where Rick and I would begin the 2-day trek home.

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