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.
In Beechview, you always find a streetcar at the end of the rainbow.
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.
A 4200-series Red Line trolley arrives in the Gateway subway station.
Pittsburgh neighborhoods used to be full of little corner groceries. Most disappeared when big chain supermarkets took over the grocery trade. But occasionally a neighborhood store succeeds; this one in Beechview moved into a storefront that was vacant for some time and seems to be making a go of it.
Of course it used to be that your average corner grocery was only four or five steps from a streetcar line. That is no longer true in most places, but it is still true in Beechview.
Dormont Junction ceased to be a junction in the 1960s, but the Pittsburgh trolley system is crusty with tradition, and the name has never been changed—in spite of occasional attempts by the Port Authority to call the station “Dormont.” The current station was designed in the 1980s, and like most of the stations put up then it is utilitarian to the point of ugliness. Above, two Red Line cars pass; below, a closer view, showing the 1980s-vintage T-in-a-circle sign at the entrance.
Dormont Junction is at the north end of the Mount Lebanon subway tunnel, which is never called a “subway” by real Pittsburghers, to whom “subway” means the section of four underground stations, one ground-level station, and two elevated stations from Station Square to Allegheny.
The Station Square subway station was built in the 1980s, when the streetcars were diverted from the Smithfield Street Bridge to the Panhandle Bridge and into the subway downtown.
Even though it’s clearly above the ground, this is the end of the section of combined trolley lines that Pittsburghers call the “subway.” From here the outbound streetcars go underground into the Mount Washington tunnel, but that’s not a subway. That’s just trolleys running underground. You need to be a Pittsburgh native to follow the logic.
This old school is now a community center for Bethel Park. In front is a Pittsburgh PCC car, the ideal Art Deco streetcar that dominated Pittsburgh transit for a generation, restored to its Pittsburgh Street Railways livery. (It was one of the last PCC cars to run in Pittsburgh, and had been repainted in the 1980s Port Authority livery.) Yes, we do have quite a few pictures of it, because old Pa Pitt is an unashamed fan of PCC cars, which always look to him like trolleys that would run on the planet Mongo in the old Flash Gordon serials. More modern, but less futuristic, trolleys still run on the Silver Line just a block away.
