By 1912, the Western Maryland had extended its tracks to Connellsville, where the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad plus several other lines connected it to Pittsburgh and the Great Lakes. Three years later, it initiated luxury passenger service between Baltimore and Chicago through Pennsylvania.
Much of the Western Maryland’s western main line paralleled a route of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O), and after CSX Corporation acquired both lines, CSX chose to keep in operation the B&O line, which had fewer tunnels, abandoning much of the Western Maryland’s route in 1975 and finally closing it in 1983. Today western parts of the WM route now accommodate the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad, a tourist line operating between Cumberland and Frostburg, Maryland. Other parts have been converted into bike trails. The Western Maryland Railway Historical Society was founded in 1967 to preserve the history and artifacts of this line in its museum in Union Bridge, Maryland.
Norfolk Southern
In 1982, during a famously bleak period in the history of U.S. railroads, the Norfolk Southern was formed from a merger that made it the fourth-largest railroad in the nation. Among today’s Class I railroads, the Northern Southern (NS) definitely has the greatest presence in Pennsylvania, with more than two thousand route miles, two divisions, three classification yards, three major locomotive shops, and six intermodal terminals in the state.
The Southern Railway, one of the NS predecessors, could trace its roots to the South Carolina Canal & Rail Road, chartered in 1827, which ran a steam-powered passenger train called the Best Friend of Charleston. Various mergers expanded the system throughout the South. When the federal government created Amtrak, the Southern Railway declined to join and continued to operate its Southern Crescent train from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans.
Norfolk Southern’s other predecessor, the Norfolk & Western Railway, was established in 1838 between Petersburg, Virginia, along the James River, and a location then known as City Point. It also grew through mergers, evolving into a transporter of primarily coal from the Appalachians. In 1964, it acquired two Pennsylvania railroads: the Pittsburgh & West Virginia and the line running through northwestern Pennsylvania known as the Nickel Plate.
Norfolk Southern grew significantly in 1999, when it assumed control of fifty-eight percent of Conrail. NS nearly missed this opportunity. In 1996, its rival CSX announced a merger with Conrail, which would have created a giant with which NS could never compete. NS responded with a counteroffer, and in 1998 a deal was struck to split Conrail between NS and CSX. Norfolk Southern ended up adding seventy-two hundred miles to its system, much of it the physical remains of the old Pennsy.
Norfolk Southern mainly hauls coal from mines in coal regions in the eastern United States for both domestic use and export. Its coal pier in Norfolk, Virginia, is the largest in the Northern Hemisphere. However, much of NS’s twenty-first-century growth can be attributed to its intermodal business, or the movement of containers and trailers by rail. NS has a wholly owned subsidiary called Triple Crown Services Company, whose vehicles known as “RoadRailers” are designed to operate on both rails and highways.
Norfolk Southern is currently engaged in improving the safety, productivity, and environmental friendliness of all operations, according to Rudy Husband, vice president for Pennsylvania and New England at Norfolk Southern. NS is phasing in electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes on coal trains. This innovation, probably the most important since the invention of the air brake, employs electronic signals rather than air pressure to uniformly apply and release the brakes on cars. ECP brakes shorten braking distance and reduce wear and tear. Norfolk Southern is also looking into more efficient and less polluting locomotives, particularly those used for yard service. At intermodal terminals, the railroad is installing gate systems designed to get trucks in and out of terminals more quickly, resulting in less down time for drivers.
Over the last several years, NS has adopted what the company calls a “corridor strategy,” which involves major infrastructure improvements to let trains move faster and the railroad take on more business. The movement started with improvements to the Meridian Speedway, which is co-owned by Kansas City Southern and Norfolk Southern, between Meridian, Mississippi, and Dallas. The NS Heartland Corridor Project adapted tunnels built for coal trains to accommodate taller, double-stacked shipping containers moving between Virginia ports and the Midwest, particularly Columbus, Ohio. NS describes its Crescent Corridor as a megaproject to create an efficient intermodal freight route from New Jersey to Memphis and New Orleans. When completed, the company estimates that its Crescent Corridor will divert more than a million truckloads from road to rail each year. (Anyone who has driven I-81 in a compact car will welcome this.) In 2008, NS announced plans to join with Pan Am Railways to create the Patriot Corridor, a route between Albany and Boston.
In Pennsylvania, Norfolk Southern operates two divisions: Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. From Harrisburg, trains are dispatched over former Conrail trackage to New York, New Jersey, and Maryland. The Pennsy’s old Enola Yard, which had been essentially closed by Conrail, was computerized and reopened by Norfolk Southern. The NS Pittsburgh Division extends from Harrisburg into Ohio, incorporating the Horseshoe Curve.
The Crescent Corridor will bring major new development to south-central Pennsylvania. In 2010, Norfolk Southern broke ground in Greencastle in Franklin County for a $95 million intermodal terminal to serve the mid-Atlantic region. Norfolk Southern is also expanding its Harrisburg Intermodal Facility and its Rutherford Intermodal Yard in Dauphin County east of Harrisburg (formerly operated by Reading, then Conrail) to handle increased north-south freight traffic.
Norfolk Southern takes a coal train through the Horseshoe Curve.
Norfolk Southern’s president and CEO, Wick Moorman, appreciates the importance of railroads in American history, and Norfolk Southern has substantially supported a number of rail heritage museums, including the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. The railroad has recently instituted its twenty-first-century steam program, which will potentially make possible steam excursions throughout the Norfolk Southern system, including rides through the Horseshoe Curve. Norfolk Southern sees this as a great opportunity to educate the public about current rail innovations and future plans.
Norfolk Southern is also willing to explore with community agencies the idea of putting passenger trains on their lines. According to Husband, the railroad will consider serious proposals that are financially viable, fully covered in terms of liability, and do not disrupt freight service.
When Railway Age magazine selected Moorman as 2011 Railroader of the Year, its editor concluded that the railroad was positioned for growth and was “an example of why railroads are increasingly the mode of choice for the nation’s transportation needs.”
Rail Stories of the Region
Philadelphia or Baltimore?
In a perfect Pennsylvania, the Susquehanna River, which bisects the Commonwealth, should have been a natural transportation route, but the Susquehanna flows rapidly over large boulders and around tiny islands, with treacherous freshets in the spring and low water in the summer. Naming it the river that’s “a mile wide and a foot deep,” early settlers found much of the Susquehanna difficult to cross, challenging to navigate, and more of a hindrance than an aid to transportation. Those living in the valleys on its eastern shore generally sold their farm surpluses and purchased manufactured goods in Philadelphia. For those who settled towns west of the river, such as York, it was easier to travel south than east.
The Conewago Canal, constructed in 1797, represented one of the earliest attempts to link those living west of the Susquehanna with Philadelphia. It allowed canal boats, or “arks,” as they were called, to avoid the treacherous Conewago Falls and arrive safely at Columbia, where goods could be sent to the city via turnpike.
William Penn was among the first to envision a canal link between the Susquehanna and Philadelphia via the Schuylkill River. Work began on what would become
the Union Canal, linking Middletown on the Susquehanna with Reading on the Schuylkill, in the 1790s, but the canal was not completed until 1828, after the Commonwealth contributed financial aid. Although the Union Canal remained in operation until 1884, the locks on this early system had been designed too narrow for the passenger and freight vessels that were widely used during the nineteenth century. The Chesapeake & Delaware (C&D) Canal, which was completed in 1829 and bisected the state of Delaware, was actually more successful in bringing trade from the lower Susquehanna Valley to Philadelphia via the Chesapeake Bay.
The scene at Columbia in 1842 from the 1899 History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The straight tracks at the left are those of the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad and the curved tracks are those of the Baltimore & Susquehanna Rail Road.
Entrepreneurs in the growing city of Baltimore attempted to maintain or increase their share of Susquehanna Valley trade with a canal the length of the lower Susquehanna that would connect with Havre de Grace, Maryland. Philadelphia politicians objected on the grounds that traffic on the expensive State Works system would be diverted to a “foreign” city. Only after the C&D opened did Philadelphia realize that the two canals would effectively form an all-water route between Columbia and Philadelphia. The Susquehanna & Tidewater Canal opened in 1840. It was later acquired by the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, which continued to operate it until 1894.
As railroads gained favor over canals in public opinion, Maryland’s legislature incorporated the Baltimore & Susquehanna Rail Road in 1828, another attempt to achieve the same result. Construction began in 1829, and three years later, carriages were running between Baltimore and Owings Mills, Maryland, over what would eventually become part of the Western Maryland Railway.
Many residents of the lower Susquehanna Valley, particularly those on the western shore, were ready to welcome and assist this project. In 1831, a number of Adams County residents met at the county courthouse, where they resolved to petition the Commonwealth’s legislature for a railroad running from Gettysburg to the Maryland state line, where it would intercept the Baltimore & Susquehanna. At around the same time, according to their report to the Pennsylvania legislature, residents of York, who also wanted to build tracks to the state line, encountered opposition from Philadelphians. At a meeting reported in the January 1832 issue of Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphians contended that Maryland businessmen were really behind this project and insisted that “under no circumstances whatever, should it be authorized until the line of communication between the eastern and western parts of the state [i.e., the State Works] had been completed and its practical effects have been fully developed.”
Nevertheless, legislation was passed creating the York & Maryland Line Railroad, which in 1837 was granted the right to use the Wrightsville, York & Gettysburg Railroad to connect York with the Susquehanna River. By 1838, this second system was being operated in conjunction with the Baltimore & Susquehanna Rail Road. However, Baltimore’s businessmen were no longer satisfied with the flour and other food products of the lower Susquehanna Valley, since the coal being mined a little farther north promised to be more profitable. Little by little, the Baltimore & Susquehanna constructed its tracks up the Susquehanna Valley to Sunbury, but this effort overextended the railroad, parts of which were later absorbed by the Northern Central Railway and the Western Maryland Railway.
York in 1852 from the 1899 History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. A train passes through town in the middle distance.
In the meantime, many little railroads that eventually were absorbed in the larger system sprang up in this region to address the pressing concern of local residents that the railroad revolution would leave their towns behind.
The Cumberland Valley Railroad
Residents of the Cumberland Valley wanted a railroad to transport to market the flour, iron, and whiskey produced in Cumberland, Franklin, and Perry Counties. In 1828, the state board of canal commissioners authorized a survey for a railroad connecting Chambersburg with the Susquehanna River as a component of the State Works. Engineer William R. Hopkins proposed a route from Harrisburg to Chambersburg, and the Cumberland Valley Railroad (CV) was chartered in 1831, its construction funded by local citizens and Philadelphia capitalists. The railroad opened in 1837, though a bridge spanning the Susquehanna was not completed for two more years.
In the 1846 History and Topography of Dauphin, Cumberland, Franklin, Bedford, Adams, and Perry Counties, Pennsylvania, I. Daniel Rupp lists the railroad under “Public Improvements,” writing, “The Cumberland Valley Railroad passes through the center of a finely cultivated part of the country.” At that time, the railroad extended for fifty-one miles west of Harrisburg, where it connected with the Franklin Railroad, providing a link with Hagerstown, Maryland. This second railroad had been organized about a year after the Cumberland Valley was incorporated, but problems accommodating steam locomotives made it less than successful until the CV took it over and made repairs in 1859, the same year the CV itself came under the control of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Cumberland Valley was finally merged with the Pennsy in 1919.
A bridge spanning the Susquehanna originally built by the Cumberland Valley Railroad in 1839. The illustration appeared in History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.
The Harrisburg & Lancaster Railroad
The Portsmouth & Lancaster Railroad was chartered in 1832 to link Portsmouth (now Middletown) to Lancaster, a city that was served by the Commonwealth’s railroad. The original plan may have been to cross the river at Middletown and continue to Chambersburg, but both the railroad’s charter and name were changed the following year to the Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mountjoy & Lancaster Railroad, indicating that by then this line was intended to join Harrisburg and Lancaster, two growing inland cities surrounded by prosperous farmland and with promising transportation connections of their own. Its original board included two prominent Lancaster citizens: James Buchanan, future president of the United States, and Simon Cameron, future secretary of war in the Lincoln administration.
Despite all the streams and valleys that such a route necessarily had to traverse, this line was put into service in 1838 and connected with the Cumberland Valley Railroad in 1839. The railroad attracted many loyal customers, and according to the history of the Pennsy by George H. Burgess and Miles C. Kennedy, “By the time the Pennsylvania came to negotiate for operating rights, in 1848, the Harrisburg & Lancaster was able to dictate profitable terms.”
The Reading & Columbia Railroad
The Reading & Columbia Railroad was the brainchild of Joseph Konigmacher, who owned the Ephrata Mountain Springs Hotel and wanted a railroad to bring visitors to his establishment and to develop communities in northern Lancaster County, such as Manheim and Lititz, perhaps even stretching into Berks County and Pennsylvania’s coal regions. The Reading & Columbia Railroad was created in 1857 by a charter that also enabled it to purchase the bridge over the Susquehanna at Columbia. Construction began in 1861 despite the shortage of manpower and material caused by the Civil War.
The Reading & Columbia suddenly captured national attention the following year, when the Confederacy’s ironclad vessels first appeared. These shallow-draft, armored, steam-driven craft were designed for coastal waters, where they could disrupt shipping for the Union or even fire upon and destroy railroads located too close to the shoreline. Union military leaders thought the Reading & Columbia could form the nucleus of a route between New York and Washington located more securely inland.
After the Union was able to defend its coasts with its own ironclads, hopes for a government subsidy to complete the Reading & Columbia faded, and the line was prevented from acquiring the Columbia Bridge, which the citizens of Columbia had burned to prevent Robert E. Lee’s soldiers from entering Lancaster County. Nevertheless, trains began running between Columbia and Ephrata in June 1863, just a few days before the battle of Gettysburg.
Perhaps the major stockhold
ers feared that the Civil War would depress returns, for they offered their shares to the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad in 1864. The Reading & Columbia Railroad became the Reading & Columbia Division of the Philadelphia & Reading, a division that eventually included a number of other local lines in the Susquehanna Valley. The division was officially merged with the Reading system in 1945 and continued to serve industries located along its route.
Railroads and the Civil War
In a 1953 book titled Victory Rode the Rails, George Edgar Turner provides a comprehensive picture of the role railroads played in the Civil War. “Great battles had been won or lost by virtue of rail transportation or the lack of it,” Turner writes. “The order of many campaigns had been determined by the courses followed by the railroads. Time and again major strategy had hinged on the question of available rail transportation.”
Southern railroads had been constructed for the local convenience of sending cotton from farms to port cities, while in the North, competition for the trade of entire large regions had led to the development of trans-Allegheny railroads. Railroad expertise generally resided in the North in terms of men who knew how to build and repair locomotives and rolling stock. The Union’s War Department was also able to call upon men with management experience on its larger rail systems, in particular Thomas A. Scott and Herman Haupt of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The Historical Lincoln and Trains
Thomas A. Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, anxiously reconnected Harrisburg’s telegraph lines and waited for an important message from Washington, D.C. It finally arrived in cipher: “Plums delivered nuts safely.” Scott knew it meant that president-elect Abraham Lincoln had reached Washington secretly, foiling the assassins who were purportedly waiting for him in Baltimore.
Railroads of Pennsylvania Page 9