Posted July 12, 200816 yr Fixed broken links and bumped Feb 3, 2011 Wooster to Pittsburgh – 1985 All Photographs Copyright © 2004 – 2011 by Robert E Pence In May 1985 I went along as a volunteer with 1944 Lima-built steam locomotive Nickel Plate 765 and a set of passenger coaches on a trip from Fort Wayne to Orrville, Ohio. We were slated to run a set of excursions between Orrville and Pittsburgh over Conrail's former Pennsylvania Railroad mainline. The trips were fund-raisers for the Mad River & NKP Railroad Historical Museum. The engine had undergone a major overhaul during the winter, and this was its first time out on the road. One of the new main rod journal bearings was running hot during the trip to Orrville, and we made frequent stops to shoot it full of grease. We hoped it would wear itself in and settle down in time for the excursions, because Conrail had stipulated that the train had to be able to maintain 70mph to avoid interfering with traffic on the busy mainline. I had planned to ride the Saturday trip to Pittsburgh, and then leave the train and spend a couple of days sightseeing before taking Amtrak back to Fort Wayne. We left Orrville approximately on time running at a good clip, but by the time we reached Massillon, the rod journal was heating up. Conrail had the steam engine taken off the train and continued the trip with a pair of their freight engines. I rode back to Orrville with the steam engine as my Pittsburgh plans started to fall apart. I phoned Greyhound and learned that I could catch a Pittsburgh bus at Wooster, so I bummed a ride in the back of a pickup truck. I took the first few pictures while cooling my heels at the Greyhound stop at Wooster. My Ride! I changed buses at Canton, and the driver of the new bus was friendly, a former railroader and something of a railfan. He recognized the logo on my shirt and asked, "Where's your steam engine?". There were only a few other passengers on the bus at that point, and that great front seat on the right side was vacant. The pretty small town is Lisbon. The Pennsylvania state line on US 30 – we rolled across open, mostly rural country for miles, and then entered a tunnel. When we emerged from the tunnel, we were on a bridge with Pittsburgh spread out in the sun dead ahead. For a first-time visitor, the sight was quite a thrill. At the Greyhound terminal in Pittsburgh, Paul, the driver, put my bags in his car and then drove me up to Mount Washington to introduce me to Pittsburgh's most spectacular vista before dropping me off at the William Penn Hotel. Some pictures from a Sunday walk about downtown I hoped to see the Sunday excursion arrive with the steam locomotive on the point, and get some pictures, so I walked up to Penn Station and picked a spot on the bridge approach where I could watch trains approach on the opposite side of the river. A couple of freight trains passed. When the excursion train arrived, there was no steam engine. Penn Station looked pretty dowdy in 1985. The Allegheny County Courthouse, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, himself, is the ultimate testament to Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. The opening of the PAT light rail subway was a few weeks away, and PCC streetcars were still running on street tracks downtown and crossing the Monongahela River on the Smithfield Street Bridge. The new PAT facility at Station Square stood ready for use. In 1985, most public fountains in the Midwest had signs prohibiting swimming or wading. It was great to see kids enjoying the beautiful fountain at the confluence of the rivers. On Sunday night I rode the Mon Incline up Mount Washington to take in the night views of downtown. On Monday I bought a day pass ($4.50, I think) and spent the remainder of my visit riding and photographing transit. The longest ride I took was the trolley to Library and back. It was wonderfully scenic, and the operator said he had run on that line since 1941, when it was an interurban line to Charleroi with speeds up to 60 mph. He was set to retire when the new subway opened.
July 12, 200816 yr The guiderails on the bridge were installed backwards (facing outward), but these have since been replaced with a jersey barrier. For several years in the 1960s, after it was constructed, this was the bridge to nowhere. The approaches on the north bank were not completed, and a car actually had driven on the bridge and went off the edge and crashed on the banks of the Allegheny! Please tell me this has been restored!
July 12, 200816 yr Nice I love pictures with the old trolley's. I wish RTA would bring those back. I know..I know...stop living in the past MTS.
July 12, 200816 yr Please tell me this has been restored! That's Penn Station, designed by Daniel Burnham and built 1898 - 1903. It has been restored and the office tower now houses condos. Amtrak still uses the tracks, but the platforms have been changed from Burnham's original design. Nice I love pictures with the old trolley's. I wish RTA would bring those back. I know..I know...stop living in the past MTS. I think it's a testimonial to the PCC, the prototype of which was rolled out in Cleveland in 1937, that despite all the advances in mechanical and electrical/electronic technology, no one has yet built a light rail vehicle with a smoother, quieter ride than a PCC in good repair running on good track. Pittsburgh's PAT was going to keep some of theirs in service alongside the LRVs when the subway opened, but then one suffered an electrical failure that caused the electromagnetic brakes to malfunction, and it derailed coming out of the tunnel. I think it actually may have run into the Grand Concourse building. They determined that the cost of restoring the cars to a state of good repair couldn't be justified. A number of them are in the PA trolley museum at Washington PA. The ride on a PCC out to Library when the route still had wooden trestles was a trip back in time.
July 12, 200816 yr Awesome tour, Rob! I really enjoyed this thread. This is the first time I have seen it and those photos were taken two years before I was born, so I really was interested the whole time. I love it when you scan your old photos for us to see!!
July 13, 200816 yr Beautiful! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
July 21, 200816 yr All right, a SOHIO station! (For all of you not in Ohio, it was called Boron.) It looks like RUNL was $1.10-something. I miss SOHIO. FWIW I miss Amoco, too.
July 21, 200816 yr The fountains are working in Mellon Square; when's the last time anybody saw that? Taken a couple weeks ago: Great to see these pics again, Rob... and they look AMAZING! It's great to be able to look back in time with such high quality photography. I took Rt. 30 from Wooster to Pittsburgh every 2 or 3 weekends from Fall 2005 through 2006. Being a PA native, I always started to feel like I was "home" once I hit Lisbon... a charming little hamlet nestled in the emerging wooded hills. 1985 was a strange and remarkable year for Metro Pittsburgh. In many ways, it was the absolute nadir for the region economically. The early 80s vaporization of the region's steel industry pushed hundreds of thousands of people out... and 1985 was the height of the exodus. The dramatic exodus of 1985 has had lingering demographic and economic consequences to this day, despite the relative cessation of significant out-migration around 1990. Ironically, 1985 was also the year Metro Pittsburgh was named "America's Most Livable City" by PlacesRated Almanac, an honor it would receive again two decades later. This designation bestowed upon a region traditionally viewed as a hyper-polluted industrial nightmare... that was now experiencing the most severe regional economic contraction in modern American history... elicited incredulous bewilderment from many in the media. But despite the doom in the heavy industry sector, Pittsburgh strived to become a world-class city (as opposed to just a world-class industrial center) in the 80s through a campaign known as "Renaissance II" (first Renaissance was in the 50s, which reduced water and air pollution, built Point Park, etc.) Knowledge-based economic sectors emerged to avert disaster. The skyline exploded with signature towers hosting corporate headquarters. Seedy sections of Downtown were redeveloped with theatres and cultural venues. The city was greened and beautified. While I cannot even imagine the trauma of 1985 (I was 3 at the time, living in north-central PA), I believe Pittsburgh has emerged a much better city through the trials of the steel collapse and its associated negative externalities.
July 21, 200816 yr Wonderful to see the fountains back in action! That must make a huge change in the character of Mellon Square; without them it was pretty drab, and I can remember what a neat spot it was back in '85. Even in the hard times of 1985 I was very impressed with Pittsburgh's beautiful natural setting and the hospitality of its people. It's a great city that keeps getting more beautiful.
July 23, 200816 yr Thanks for taking us back. Yeah that was a strange time, the city looked great with new addition in PPG and the new Mellon tower, both adding a lot to the skyline. A few others were added as well just before these pictures, but it's still odd to me to see downtown without Fifth Ave Place. But again, the skyline boomed, as the region hit bottom in the mid 80's, though fortunately the region (mostly) moved on and improved.
July 25, 200816 yr It's really rare that you get to see a set of photos of city on the internet from back in the 1980's. I think this is just one example of what we will be seeing in the future. A month after month collection of photographed cities over time.
July 26, 200816 yr It's really rare that you get to see a set of photos of city on the internet from back in the 1980's. ... That's because there aren't that many of us old guys on the internet, at least with a bunch of hardware and a lot of old photos. I know of a few, though, who are ahead of me in the age category and do some good stuff. It's mainly in other subject-matter areas, though, like antique farm machinery and the technology relating to restoration, like turn-of-the-(20th)century ignition and fuel systems.
August 18, 200816 yr Rob what is incredible about your photos is that you were doing what many of use do now before it was so common place. While you have always had vintage photos of skylines and such, not in these detailed walking tours that you see now with the arrival of digital cameras. Well done and thanks for the photo of the Pontiac Fiero, I laughed my ass off when I saw that POS.
August 18, 200816 yr [ ... ] Well done and thanks for the photo of the Pontiac Fiero, I laughed my ass off when I saw that POS. Thanks. I'm glad people enjoy the pics; sometimes I wish I had paid closer attention and shot more photos of things I realize now were important. re the Fiero, where I used to work there was a management-type who still drove a Fiero in the late 1990s. He was fanatical about that car, and kept it looking cherry. He wasn't technically adept at all, and I often wondered how many of those things he had squirrelled away at some mechanic's place for a supply of parts. One day I pulled a job ticket to fix a problem with his computer, and when I got to his office he was out for the day. His computer was secured with a power-on password that I could have bypassed by opening the case and changing the jumper, but I took a guess and typed in "fiero" Bingo! Away we went.
August 18, 200816 yr LOL! Well nothing says 1985 like a Pontiac Fiero. Add in some hot pink shorts and a mullet jamming to Def Leopard and you are in the heart of the 1980's.
February 4, 201114 yr Excellent pictures. Looking at those pictures makes me feel really young - I was born the same year you took those. Your work is very impressive. I was scrolling through your other thread of Pittsburgh pictures. You do a good job of bringing out the vibrancy of an area, and I can see that you certainly have an eye for photography. I can't help but notice how lean people are whenever I look at pre 90s pictures. A sharp contrast from the average person of today.
March 3, 201114 yr That red, white, and gray PCC looks so worn. I would hesitate to ride that, just in case the rest of the system was in the same state of repair.
April 27, 201114 yr I'm so glad to see this incredible time capsule bumped! Much too much vintage goodness to single out here -although I have a found place in my heart for those vintage trolleys! I wish more cities with a streetcar system would revert back to this style- at least for a single line (Philadelphia, San Francisco, Tampa, and New Orleans are the only American cities I can think of that use "vintage" streetcars off the top of my head).
April 27, 201114 yr Wow! I missed this thread. Thanks to you guys for resurrecting it. How is it that 1985 has started to look like a time in which I wasn't even alive? The cars and environment look so dated now.
April 28, 201114 yr Wow! I missed this thread. Thanks to you guys for resurrecting it. How is it that 1985 has started to look like a time in which I wasn't even alive? The cars and environment look so dated now. Seriously, I was 14 when these were taken, and yet I hardly feel like I lived in that period. A friend sent me a link of some pictures of Kingston, NY, where I grew up, from around 1982. I know I walked those neighborhoods, and shopped in some of those centers, but for the life of me, I can't remember any of it looking like that. BTW, Rob, when were you going to tell us about your meeting with Michael Knight?
April 28, 201114 yr BTW, Rob, when were you going to tell us about your meeting with Michael Knight? I had to promise never to tell, and I'd be embarrassed to talk about it now. :oops:
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