Trains.com

Third Avenue Lightweight Streetcars

53647 views
245 replies
1 rating 2 rating 3 rating 4 rating 5 rating
  • Member since
    December 2021
  • 109 posts
Posted by Joseph Frank on Friday, July 29, 2022 4:14 PM

Hello again Dave

 

YOU alone are the ONLY person who refuses and can't see the major defects in your TARS 324 A-route car "photo edits" compared to my edited clearer version. All other viewers plainly do.

No one else here, including myself,  sees any of your self-imagined "white squares" you claim that I inserted into the sky in "your edit version"  of the TARS car 324 photo -- as I never used your "edited photo" image version of the original negative -- to make my much cleared and detailed copy.  I used solely the NEGATIVE directly.  Those white square are also NOT seen either by anyone in my clearer sharper edited version !! (except you?)

Other readers here already well know and see the improvements in my edit version image over that of yours.  I expect they can't understand WHY you "can't" and refuse to see them compared to your version.  No one else here sees any distortion you claim, except you,  in the very slight tilt in the original photo as shot by the photographer's camera, that you edited out in your edited version --- losing some important photo-perimeter details in that proccess. 

 

PS:  Very nice set of newest photos of TARS at E. 65th St & 3rd Ave., -- EXCEPT for this one which your edits (I marked them) defaced.  I assume you were 13 years old when these were taken - possibly in 1945,  or age 15 in 1947 when the Manhattan TARS line on 3rd Ave ended. And that you did not take the photos yourself. see below --

 And again, BELOW -- your same photo just as you edited it and as you posted it, but without my marking to show defects you caused:

WHERE is the EL Column base / footing that your edits washed out at bottom of the nearest left EL Column??!!  And note the now mushed-up blurred cobblestone pavement you distorted ahead of the column with its missing base-footing.  And what are those other noted edit defects you caused tampering with the original image. All viewers here will see these but you will likely ignore them in denial. WHY !!?

Dave -- do we viewers a favor - Please do SHOW US the ORIGINAL "unedited" photo itself.  Can you !??

Again, why not just show the original photo as is - in respect to/for  the photographer - with none of your edit-distorted tampering.? A pity  !!

Regards - Joe F

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Friday, July 29, 2022 8:20 AM

Some more Pictures at the East 65th Street car-house and shop where the homemade lightweights were  constructed.  123 also made it to the Bronx with trolley-poles added, but I don't think it reached Yo

 

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Friday, July 29, 2022 4:21 AM

Any one can see the tilt in your version of my photo, which to me is a bad distortion.  And the white squares that you inserted into the sky in "my version"are yours, and not in my photo.

I have zero problem with your comparison.  Do that as much as you wish.  If there is actual improvement, I'll be as happy as you.  And so will other readers.

Meanwhile, 1936 or 1937-built 192 at the E. 65th shop where built.  It was first iused on B'way-42nd Street, then transferred  to Tenth Avenue when the "Huffliners," the double-end Peter Witts 551-625 arrived in 1938.  But it went back to B'way in 1941 with wartime passenger loading increase, and curved-side convertables returned to 10th Av, staying there until buses came in November, 1946.  When B'way-42 went bus at end of 1946, 192 webnt to Third & Amsterdam ("T") but apparently was not repainted, until moving to the Bronx with trolley poles, runnuing there 'till summer 1948, and then used as a spare in Yonkers to 1952.

  • Member since
    December 2021
  • 109 posts
Posted by Joseph Frank on Tuesday, July 26, 2022 7:28 PM

Hi Dave --

I see you again repeatedly bring up that same TARS 324 Trolley scene Photo - so I added my edited version also, the top-most photo under here.

You and anyone else here can plainly see and compare your latest photo editing version (the bottom photo) to the ONE and only photo-edit version I did to the same photo seen at TOP portion of this message. Click on EACH photo to get to an enlarged version.

 

The red and yellow lines - and yellow circle I drew in to call direct attention so as to show the mushy, snowy, very grainy  and poor detail in your (5th attempt ?) editing this photo. 

Also note along the top of the stores at left, highlighted between the 2 yellow lines --- the long darker edit patch / line along the stores windows tops area down to the sidewalk,  and the above it,  a lighter grainier fuzzy appearance of the store facade from above the lower darker part, up towards the roof. 

Also note the indicated (between red lines) very fuzzy drawn in by you, trolley wires. And the red boxed area of the very grainy mushy side of the TARS streetcar -- and other grainy indistinguisable items / details marked in lines or boxes. Such as the very now grainy and washed out looking 3 story building just past the rear of the # 324 trolley. And at center right edge of photo, the parked auto and street behind it (seen clearly in my edited version) are, in your edited version, now an unrecognizable grainy mush !  Compare those items to the same ones in my edited photo at top which is far more sharper, clearer, and much more, details which stand out. 

I created my edited photo from the original very dark Film NEGATIVE image you provided here a few messages ago.  I did NOT use your first edited attempt lighter photo as the basis for creating my image editing as seen at top of this message.  

Anyone here can clearly see the difference in sharper details-quality of the, my edited,  top photo,  compared less-so to your lower edited photo.   Why can't you also see the major difference !??  Old saying ... 'if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it, or ruin it ",  Dave !

Regards - Joe F

 

 

  • Member since
    December 2021
  • 109 posts
Posted by Joseph Frank on Tuesday, July 26, 2022 6:20 PM

Dave

Your location and info is again unfortunately incorrect.

Pelhamdale Avenue does and and never becomes MAIN street in Pelhamdale !!! 

Pelhamdale Avenue runs south from its north "T" intersection ending point at 1st Avenue, Village of Pelham - and runs due south and east crossing Colonial Avenue (which is Sanford Blvd in Mt Vernon /aka E.6th St) -- and crosses US-1 which is Boston Post Road in Pelham Manor,  and heads southeast and dead ends at Shore Road which becomes Pelham Ave just N/E of the end of Pelhamdale road to it.... by "New York Athletic Club - Travers Island"  at what is called Lower Harbor at the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean.  See link to google interactive MAP of streets below;

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pelhamdale+Ave,+New+Rochelle,+NY/@40.8972364,-73.8032264,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c28d0f34cbcc1b:0xd6aa8f209d748e11!8m2!3d40.9080132!4d-73.807814?hl=en

You can follow the north start end of Pelhamdale Ave southward to where it ends at Shore Road / Pelham Ave.  So that trolley scene is no where along that (Pelhamdale) road or any of its intersections !! 

 

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Monday, July 25, 2022 10:42 AM

And a  correspondant pointed out that my correction of the original photo's tilt lost detail.  Also, the Pelham location does not requuire my own addition of a suggestion of a second diverging track, which the tilt coection and the first-thought Westchester Avenue location did require.  So here is the photo with further corrections:

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, July 24, 2022 3:00 PM

Inspection of an ERA track-map indicates this photo is at the point where Pelhamdale Avenue becomes Main Street, Pelham, within Pelham.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, July 21, 2022 11:29 AM

evised caption. 324 on the "New Rochelle - Subway A" route southbound on Pelham's Main bStreet running into Pelhamdale Avenue.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, July 20, 2022 10:08 PM

On Broadway, Washington Heights, somewhere between W. 181 and`W. 200 Streets. southbound, from the side window of a northbound, May, 1947.

 

o

167th St. Crosstown, east of Webster Ave., Autumn, 1947:

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Monday, July 18, 2022 2:37 AM

I'll probably find some more negatives to be  scanned, repaired, and posted zs positives on this thead.  I think I may have taken more photos of this type of streetcar than anyone else, anywhere.  I suspect that many of the color photos of this type of  streetcar that are circulating on the  web are also actually my photos.  Moving to Israel 26 years ago, I left a box of slides with the Electric Railroaders Association.  A CD was issued that included some or most of these slides. I have yet to receive the CD.

However, most of my good photos would not have been possible without the  assistance I received  from older ERA members when I was a teenager.  Major organizer of independent photo excursions and travel to distant fan-trips was John Stern.  Others who helped were Walter Druck, Harold Geisseheimer, Herman Rinke, Lester Barnett, and certainly John Kneiling and Everett White, the two who organized most of the New York area fan-trips and allowed me to often play switchman and trolley-pole retriever.

I wish I remembred the name of the Irish-American Thirf Avenue operator who gave me my first taste of Heaven-on-Earth with my right hand on a K-Type controller and my left foot on the brake, "dead-man's control," line-switch, door-closing pedal.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Friday, June 24, 2022 6:46 AM

Corrected the email address,

daveklepper1@gmail.com

Apologies for the missing "p."

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, June 19, 2022 5:33 AM

Making hidden photos aailable would seem to be a higher priority for the present?

And Kalmbach does have two stories of mine in their files.   Meanwhile, please visit a website not in any way competitive with this one:

www

proaudioencyclopedia

com

and read:

David Read's biography

Manfred Schroeder's Frequuency Shifter (and a chance meeting in a railway lounge car)

And I can return email as an attachment a  manscript if you email me at

ddaveklepper1@gmail.com

  • Member since
    July 2020
  • 1,624 posts
Posted by pennytrains on Friday, June 17, 2022 5:46 PM

You do realize that we're going to have to get you to write a book for us?  You have so much knowledge and so many stories that deserve to be collected in a comprehensive survey of traction and transit.

Big Smile  Same me, different spelling!  Big Smile

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Friday, June 17, 2022 2:38 AM

Autumn, 1946, at Columbia University, view looking north, tweweked from a  screenshot. Streetcarservice ende3d at end of 1946, replaced by M104 bs,  The 1904 IRt 116th St. Station headhouse has also gone, with the subway stairs and  escalators now on the sidewalks,

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Friday, May 27, 2022 7:46 AM

After the December 1947 Blizzard, Fordham Road, then Southern Boulevard. 

See Trains Transit Forum for the Sweeper

 

 

 

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, May 8, 2022 11:06 AM

343 on its way on McLean Avenue from the Woodlawn Jerome Avenue IRT terminal to the Foot of Main Street, Yonkers, adjacent to the NYCentral Station there.  Jack May pointed out that McLean Avenue has lots of turns.  But maybe someone more familiar with Yonkers will know the exact lication by identifying the gas station.  As  shown on a previous posting, McLean terminates westward at Broadway, and north of that intersection "4" runs with 1, 2, and 3.  But it diverges about 3/4-mile south of Gettys Square to  head northeast on New Main Street and enters Gettys Square from the east.  

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, May 5, 2022 3:52 AM

Three along Warburton Avenue.  Note the trolley-wire signal-control contactor and the Nachod signal:

 

 

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, April 14, 2022 5:24 AM

Two more Yonkers photos:  (1) North end of the Warburton Avenue Line at the Hastings Town Line, and (2) Mclean and Broadway, the diverging tracks doing to Woodlawn at Jerome Avenue, uused  by the "4," and the "1" pictured cintinuing to Broadway an d 242nd Street.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, February 15, 2022 8:29 AM

333 "4" and 355 "5"

Russ Jackson:

The photo is looking into New Main Street at Getty square.  The 4 (inbound & outbound) used New Main and the 5 & 9 used New Main only outbound.  Not far along New Main the 5  & 9 switched off and ran on Nepperhan to Elm, where the 9 diverged and the 5 continued straight out on Nepperhan.  Both returned inbound along with the 6 & 7.  In theory the 9 could have returned via New Main, but the film indicates otherwise.  It also shows a derail on route 9 not shown on the ERA map. There was once a line 10 connecting the 4 and the 7 near the race track.  Don't know when it disappeared.  The 6 once ran all the way to Tuckahoe..

Jack May:

The '10' was a continuation of the Union Railway's Jerome Avenue line, which ran from 155th and Amsterdam to Yonkers Avenue (the racetrack) via Jerome Avenue, which becomes Central Park Avenue at the City Line.  The 4 McLean Avenue line crossed it at McLean Avenue and continued to via McLean Avenue to Bronx River Road/Webster Avenue, and then down to the Bronx Park Third Avenue el station.  In 1921, after the Dual Contracts, the system was rationalized, as almost all of the Jerome Avenue line's traffic went to the elevated portion of the IRT subway, and a certain amount of the Third Avenue el's traffic to Bronx Park moved to the IRT's White Plains Road line.  The Jerome Avenue streetcar line was discontinued and the 4 assumed its final routing, turning on to Central Park Avenue/Jerome Avenue, but only as far as the subway's Woodlawn terminal.  The trackage up Central Park Avenue north of McLean was abandoned as well, and that was the end of the '10.'  It is possible that the original '4' was cut back to the intersection of McLean and Webster from the Bronx Park el station before 1921--I'll have to check.

I recall reading somewhere that only one car was assigned to the 9 and it may returned over via the 6 and 7 to avoid the steep downhill grade. 

 

"4" 333, Henry Raudenbush:

The picture of #333 is on Central Park Avenue, where the two tracks were widely separated.   The gas station does not show in a “now” view on GSV.  It may have been swept away when Central Park Ave was widened into an expressway.  Sometime after the end of trolley operation.
  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Monday, February 14, 2022 8:05 AM

Two more in Yonkers.  A '4" Mclean Avenue car from Woodlawn-Jerome avenue headed to the Foot-of-Main Street at the Central's Yonkers Station, and a "5" headd from their to Neperhan and Tomkins Avenues, both east of Gettys Square on New Main Stret.  Then a northbound McLean Avenue "4" on Cntral Park Avenue, where the tracks were apart, leaving the two passing lanes between them. 

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, February 13, 2022 4:01 AM

372 I think on Neperhan Avenue between Elm Street, north of Yonkers Avenue and Gettys Square. (I can be correctd),, and 384 on Neperhan Avenue looking north from the intersection with Yonkers Avenue, tracks for the 7 on thee right, bottom of the photograph.

The location of 384 was confirmd by both Henry Raudenbush and Russel  Jackson.  What is unusual is that 384  sports a "3" sign, but south bound on the "5" line.  I surmise that this may have been a sprcial servic, possibly at factory closing time, for the factoris at Lake Street, heading to 242nd St. & Broadway (IRT Subway Terminal) anf thus displaying the 3 sign for its southbound run.  It may have even gone north on "6" anf used the Lake Street connecting track to run south on 5.

 

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, January 26, 2022 3:10 AM

Four Yonkers Gettys Square pictures:

 

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, January 25, 2022 3:46 AM

About a half-mile north of Main Street, end of double track on Warburton Avenue:

 The junction on Main Street with both Warburton avenues to the right, (1 line), double-track, and Riverdale Avenue (8), left. 

Palisades, across the Hudson, in shadow, in the background.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, January 18, 2022 3:43 AM

Thanks!    Two on the northern oasrt of Warburton Avenue, the first of which may have already been posted much earlier.

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Monday, January 17, 2022 11:12 AM

Just a guess but it looks like the station name was Dunwoodie (MP 8.09).

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Monday, January 17, 2022 4:19 AM

And one more Riverdale Avenue:

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, January 16, 2022 7:33 AM

Note caption correction for preceding photo.

Here, the north end of the Tuskahoe Road Line at the New York Central Putnam Division station at the intersection of Tuckahoe Road and Railroad Avenue.  Anyone knoiw the name of the station?

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Friday, January 14, 2022 2:13 AM

Same location, south terminal nof Yonkers' Riverdale Avenue Line at the New York City Line, as the photo of regular "8" car 354 ear;ier.  At the north end of the line-up, looking south, fan-trip cars  371 and 327, with regular car 354 at the rear:

On the "6" Tuckahoe Road Line on Walnut Street just north of Yonkers Avenue, with Pond Road entering from the left.  Formerly, end of double track from Yonkers Avenue at this point.

 

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, January 12, 2022 11:38 AM

Corrections made to previous captions from tnformation from Henry Raudenbush

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Monday, January 10, 2022 11:23 AM

The name of that organization was Metro Transit Club.  The upper photo is (I think) southbound on Neperhan Avenue, the "5" Line.  I thought the lower one was in New Rochelle on the loop cicling the downtown area, with a stop at the eralroad station, but I may be mistaken, and  it may be another Yonkers photograph.

 

SUBSCRIBER & MEMBER LOGIN

Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!

FREE NEWSLETTER SIGNUP

Get the Classic Trains twice-monthly newsletter