
Above, the First Avenue subway station (which is an elevated station, but it’s on the part of the line we call the “subway”) from First Avenue. Below, a CAF 4300-series Blue Line car comes in from the Panhandle Bridge.



The interior of a 4200-series Siemens car. These were the “LRVs” (for “light-rail vehicles,” which is better than “trolleys” or “streetcars” because it has three more syllables) that were ordered in the 1980s when the subway was built, and then refurbished to match the new 4300-series cars from CAF.
Architect Rob Pfaffman gave us just about the most whimsical subway entrance old Pa Pitt has ever seen, and he has been places and seen things. The whole station is unique, above and below the ground. There are no right angles, or at least very few. Yet from a practical point of view, nothing is confusing, and the station works very well for its intended purpose, which is to get us into a trolley quickly.
Steel Plaza was designed in the 1980s, and its architecture is an interesting combination of Brutalist and Postmodern styles—the two most prominent materials are raw concrete and polished granite. It was built as a junction station, where the main subway line met the spur to Penn Station, which is not in regular service these days. In the picture below, the main line is on the left, and the spur is on the right.
The Fallowfield station on the Red Line in Beechview is a kind of parasite on the Fallowfield viaduct. The Fallowfield Avenue end is at street level; the other end of the station is about five storeys above street level. Stations on the Red Line are currently getting a little bit of renovation.
The Fallowfield viaduct is one of three major viaducts, along with a bridge and a tunnel, that are necessary to bring the streetcars from downtown into central Beechview.
The viaduct is as important to pedestrians as it is to streetcars—so important, in fact, that, when the walkway was closed for repairs for a while a few years ago, the Port Authority gave free rides between Fallowfield and Westfield at the other end of the viaduct.
Outbound streetcars approach the viaduct from a curve.