Many streets in the Pittsburgh area used to have a median where the streetcars ran in a separate right-of-way: Center Avenue in West View and Brookline Boulevard in Brookline are two examples. Broadway in Dormont is the only one where the streetcars still run in the median. We could also count the Silver Line through Bethel Park as a broad instance of the same kind of development, although the streets between which the trolleys run have different names.
We have seen Ruth before, but here are all three of the ladies on Broadway in Dormont. They form a group, with Ruth facing the other two across the street. Ruth and Thea are identical; Esther is different, but matching in scale, colors, and materials.
For some reason giving small apartment buildings women’s names was popular in Dormont. If old Pa Pitt had been naming these, he would have kept to a consistent Old Testament theme. Perhaps Ruth, Esther, and Hulda?
The pictures of Ruth were taken in November of 2022. Obviously, the only way to get the sun on all three buildings is to come at two different times.
Two 4300-series CAF cars pass at Fallowfield station in Beechview.
A two-car Blue Line train comes in from Wood Street and heads out under the Allegheny to North Side; a Silver Line car departs for Wood Street. You can see the video at full resolution on its Wikimedia Commons hosting page.
The video is obviously hand-held. There are some very sophisticated video-stabilizing algorithms in our video-editing software, but the parade of identical square windows in a moving trolley makes them panic and jiggle the picture all over the screen, so we give you the video without stabilization.
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.
In Beechview, you always find a streetcar at the end of the rainbow.
