Father Pitt

Tag: Trolleys

  • Old Gateway Center Station

    You used to come down these stairs from the street to enter Gateway Center, and if you were lucky you would hear the sound of wheels squealing around the loop, indicating that you were just in time.

    The old Gateway Center station closed forever on October 30, 2009, as the new line to the North Side was under construction. These pictures were taken on the old station’s last night in service. A new Gateway (not Gateway Center) station, much larger and more pleasant, is open now, but the old Gateway Center is still there as a ghost station, almost unchanged since the day it was abandoned. If you are leaving Gateway headed for Wood Street, you can see the old station on the right side of the car.

    Approaching the platform…

    The last time old Pa Pitt glanced out the window at the ghost station, those posters on the right were still there.

    There was only one platform. Gateway Center was the end of the line, so the cars came in from the east (above), passed the station, went around a squealy loop, and came back in from the west. Watching the car pass straight through the station often gave out-of-town visitors a moment of panicked confusion.

    Here we are looking toward the loop, listening to the squealing wheels as our car comes around for us.

    At last our car enters the station. Note the lower-level platform, blocked off by this time, that was built to accommodate the old PCC cars, some of which ran in Pittsburgh until 2003. (Some of those same cars, completely rebuilt, are now running in San Francisco.) These lower-level platforms can still be seen at Steel Plaza and Wood Street. The PCC cars were also the reason for the loop: the more modern Siemens and CAF trolleys are double-ended, but PCC cars went in only one direction.

    We board our car for the very last time, knowing that we will never hear that loop squeal again.

    For some time after the new station opened, the announcements on the cars were still clearly the old recorded announcements, but truncated: the professional announcer voice said “Approaching Gateway C—” as the car rolled into the station. Those announcements have now been re-recorded, but old Pa Pitt secretly enjoyed them. Many cities have ghost stations in their subways, but Pittsburgh was the only city with a ghost sibilant.

  • Belasco Safety Island, Beechview

    Belasco stop, Beechview

    A passenger waits for a Red Line car on the Belasco safety island on Broadway, the main street of the Beechview neighborhood. His wait will not be long.

    This 4200-series car rolled up seconds after the earlier picture was taken.

    Pittsburgh used to be full of safety islands like these; wherever there was a broad street, the streetcars usually ran in the middle of it, avoiding the chaos of parking and double-parking along the edges. Broadway is the only street that has kept its safety islands, since elsewhere the streetcars mostly have their own right-of-way. (Warrington Avenue, used by the Brown Line when it is active, is narrow enough that passengers board from the curb.) There are three stops along the street trackage in Beechview; two others were eliminated a few years ago. Now Belasco is scheduled to be replaced with a platform-level station, which will be a boon to handicapped riders in Beechview. That will leave only the safety islands at Shiras and the single safety island at Hampshire (outbound passengers there board from the curb).

    Above we can see the inbound safety island on the left. Behind the outbound stop, incidentally, is a typical Pittsburgh cliff house: a house whose street entrance is on the top floor, with the rest of the house clinging to a steep slope down from the street.

  • A Ride on the Brown Line

    Although the Brown Line through Allentown is no longer in regular service, the Port Authority keeps it active for use as a detour when the Transit Tunnel under Mount Washington is closed. For several weeks in August of 2019, the tunnel was under construction, and all Red Line and Blue Line cars had to go over the Brown Line route. This is a simple record of what you see out the right-hand window on a car inbound from South Hills Junction to Steel Plaza. We go up Warrington Avenue and down Arlington Avenue, over the Panhandle Bridge, and into the subway.

    If you are not a trolley geek, this may possibly be the dullest video you have ever encountered. If you are a trolley geek, you are already panting and drooling, so go to the Wikimedia Commons hosting page..

  • Siemens Trolley in Old Livery

    For trolley geeks, here is a 4100 series Siemens car picking up passengers at the Hampshire stop on Route 42 in Beechview in 2001. This is the livery these cars were originally issued when they were put in service in the middle 1980s. Route 42 is now the Red Line, and the 4100 series cars were rebuilt as the 4200 series, with a new livery to match the newer CAF cars.

  • Mount Lebanon Station in the Fall

    A 4200 series Siemens trolley comes out of the Mount Lebanon subway tunnel into the Mount Lebanon station, and then continues on its way.

  • Inbound and Outbound

    At the Alfred Street crossing on the Red Line in Mount Lebanon. Above, an inbound Siemens trolley on a training run. Below, an outbound CAF trolley.

  • Panhandle Bridge

    An outbound Blue Line car heads toward Station Square on the Panhandle Bridge, an old railroad bridge repurposed, along with the railroad tunnel under downtown, for the subway in the 1980s.

  • End of the Line for Gateway Center

    A kind reader who signs himself “Matt” had an excellent suggestion:

    Any interest in photographing or featuring the old Gateway Center Station one last time before it closes forever this weekend?

    2009-10-30-Gateway-Center-04

    It was never a beautiful or impressive space, but of our trio of odd underground stations, Gateway Center was the oddest. It will soon be replaced by a gleaming new station that will doubtless be more convenient and more beautiful. But old Pa Pitt confesses that he was always sneakily proud of the old Gateway Center station when he brought out-of-town visitors downtown. They might come from cities with more expensive or more comprehensive subway systems, but few subway stations are as just plain weird as Gateway Center was.  Notice, for example, the low-level platform, now closed off by a rail, that was built to accommodate the old PCC cars when they still ran the Overbrook route—a feature shared by all three of the underground stations downtown.

    2009-10-30-Gateway-Center-B-02

    The weirdest aspect of Gateway Center, of course, was the loop. Visitors riding the subway for the first time were always alarmed to see the station they wanted flashing by on their left, as though the car had somehow just missed it. Then came the long squealy loop that threw everybody to the right-hand side of the car, and finally the car re-emerged into the station, this time with the platform on the right side.

    Click on the picture to enlarge it.

    We’ll see more pictures of the old Gateway Center station shortly. Meanwhile, the subway ends at Wood  Street until further notice, except for the next few weekends, when it ends at First Avenue.