PAWESTMO-L Archives

Archiver > PAWESTMO > 2002-04 > 1019673333


From: "Marc Stauffer" <>
Subject: Re: [PAWESTMO-L] Re: Greensburg a great place !
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 14:38:30 -0400


Dear Dottie:

Thanks for the note. The trains were great then. My best memory of
Greensburg was my mother taking me to Greensburg to catch a train to
Altoona with my Grandmother Stauffer. A birthday trip! While waiting for
the train I was so excited when a local freight pulled by a steam
locomotive came by headed east. I remember thinking that the Greensburg
Station was big time and I was taking along trip. (To me as a 6 or 7 year
old I might as well have been on the Broadway Limited headed for New York.)
Those were the days when you could catch a train to West Newton or
Connellsville from McKeesport on the old B&O, or go to the station in
Pittsburgh and take a train to St. Louis, or Cleveland or Buffalo or
Chicago or even all the way to San Francisco. Nothing beat Pennsy steam.
Where I lived on Jack's Run Road (Rt 48) I could hear the locomotives on
foggy spring nights and learned to tell the difference in locomotives by
the sound - if they were pulling the long grade from Pitcairn Yards toward
Greensburg, or a B&O or P&LE locomotive pulling the grade toward
Connellsville. Also a different sound if they were basicly coasting down
those grades. By the speed and duration of sound could tell if it was a
long freight or a thru all varnish queen of the rails.

What memories. By day reading all the exotic railroad names - Nickel Plate
Road, B&O, Pennsylvania with that maroon and gold paint jobs, P&LE, At&SF,
Burlington, Great Northern. My fun was to see which train might have the
most different railroads in its consist. I also remember after getting my
drivers license in Greensburg on a 1948 Pontiac occasionally driving out to
the tracks to see one of the name trains go through at night with all the
lights.

Marc

This thread: