i use Elements 4 to convert to grayscale, and after advice received on here have started to increase the contrast to prevent the washed out appearance.
Thing is I scanned these from Negative on my scanner, then had to shrink them down to an acceptable size for computer. Hence they look a little grainy. I adjusted the contrast as much as I could but its the negative on scanner which hasn't done to well. Scanner I think not upto it!, the prints themselves are fine.
The problem is that you have no black points, you have good dynamic range but need to set the black point.
Open up the images in PSE4 and then create a new layer and select "levels" when the dialog box pops up slide the left slider (or the black point) over towards the right. What this does is to tell you computer which pixels in the image should be black. Anything to the left of the left slider will be black and anything to the right will be some shade lighter than black.
The pixels are represented by the histogram which you will see when the levels dialog pops up.
If you don't understand give me permission to download these and I will show you what I mean.
As requested, here's a PS attempt - basically as Wally has said, I've moved the black point in levels and done a 30%, 1px, 0lev USM, but that is all on the pictures. It improves them a lot!