Sampling the Region’s Railroad Scene
The Allegheny Portage Railroad
Moncure Robinson was the man chosen by the Commonwealth’s canal commissioners as engineer for the proposed Allegheny Portage Railroad. Through most of the spring and summer of 1829, he worked on its original survey and came up with a proposal for a system of stationary steam engines operating inclined planes, with locomotives hauling cars along the level stretches between them. Although Robinson was no longer associated with the Allegheny Portage Railroad during the period when it was actually built, he must have been as encouraged as the rest of Pennsylvania’s citizens to hear that its construction was nearing completion.
In August 1833, according to Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, “Many of the rails are laid upon the section of the road which we visited, and preparations for laying the residue are in rapid progress.” When inclined plane number 10 was set in motion for a trial run, a letter from Hollidaysburg reprinted in Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania in March 1834 contained the following news: “The working of the ropes and machinery gave great satisfaction, not only to the officers on the road, but to a large number of spectators who had assembled to witness the first efforts of steam power upon the rugged Allegheny.” Later that month, the Pittsburgh Gazette reported, “We have today the pleasure to announce the arrival of the first lot of goods, by way of the Portage Rail Road.” The amount of time it had taken for that particular shipment to make its historic journey from Philadelphia was thirteen days, but the operators of the State Works later trimmed the length of a typical freight shipment to about four days.
For about twenty years, canal boats reaching their connection with the portage railroad were floated onto railroad cars, hauled out of the water, and sent by horse or locomotive to the first of the railroad’s inclined planes. There workers hitched them three at a time to the cables that hauled them up the inclined plane at a rate of about four miles per hour.
By the time the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased the State Works, the Allegheny Portage Railroad had already been superseded by the New Portage Railroad. The Pennsy pulled up the newer portage railroad’s iron rails for use on another line and sent the large stone sleepers that had supported the rails of the original portage railroad to Altoona, to be used in the construction of the company’s shops. A few missed sleepers were all that remained on the grassy hills as evidence of this system’s existence.
The portage railroad faded from America’s collective consciousness until a 1927 legislative act created a commission and appropriated cash to erect a monument in its memory. The monument, which is shaped like a steep pyramid and built of some of the few remaining stone sleepers, was erected at what was once the base of plane number 6, placing it only a few feet from the then busy William Penn Highway, a few miles east of Cresson. A brochure about the portage railroad published by the PRR at about that time contains a photograph of Pennsylvania’s governor John S. Fisher with a group of railroad executives at the monument’s dedication.
A broader attempt to preserve and interpret the history of the portage railroad was undertaken in 1964 by the National Park Service at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, which now occupies the summit of the Allegheny Ridge. At the heart of its historic district stands the Lemon House, built around 1832 by Samuel Lemon and his wife, Jean, when this enterprising couple learned that the Allegheny Portage Railroad would be constructed over that particular mountaintop. During the years that the railroad operated, the Lemon House served as a tavern. The National Park Service purchased the house in 1969 and furnished it to suggest life around 1840, during the railroad’s heyday.
The tavern built by Samuel Lemon at the summit of the Allegheny Ridge has been restored as part of the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site.
The Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site has a small portion of reconstructed railroad track and a reconstructed engine house at the summit of plane number 6. While the reconstructed engine house serves the practical purpose of protecting the remains of the original structure at this site, it also contains models demonstrating how the planes were operated. From a nearby observation deck, visitors can make out a skew arch bridge built in 1834 to allow a turnpike to cross over the portage railroad. At the base of this hill, just out of sight, stands the 1927 monument to the portage railroad.
The old Staple Bend Tunnel, which had been part of the Allegheny Portage Railroad system, is located more than seventeen miles away, but it is still considered part of the historic site. Built in 1831–32, it was the first railroad tunnel constructed in America. Like the remnants of the portage railroad, it remained remote and unsung for many years after it was no longer needed or used. The Pennsy’s brochure about the portage railroad published in 1930 describes the tunnel as “abandoned, isolated and reclaimed by the wilderness,” despite its being the “only Allegheny Portage Railroad structure of any consequence that has defied time and the elements for nearly a century.” The National Park Service reopened the tunnel to visitors in 2001. The staff at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site can provide directions.
Reconstructed tracks lead to the Engine House Interpretive Center, where visitors to the Allegheny Portage National Historic Site learn how canal boats were once hauled over the Allegheny Ridge.
Train Spotters’ Heaven at Gallitzin and Cresson
The National Park Service also provides directions to the tunnel complex at the small town of Gallitzin. Industrial development got its start in this region in the mid-nineteenth century, when the Pennsylvania Railroad located its Mountain Division here and built the highest tunnels that the Pennsy would ever construct.
After the Pennsy’s new line had reached the foot of the Allegheny Mountains in 1850, work began on the Allegheny Tunnel. The firm of E. Rutter & Sons was responsible for the job, which sometimes occupied up to five hundred men working with picks, shovels, and black powder. The double-track tunnel they constructed was more than three thousand feet long and opened to traffic in 1854. By the turn of the century, the Pennsy’s tracks across the Allegheny Mountains had become the busiest mountain line in the world, and a second parallel tunnel was added to the mountain in 1904.
These two tunnels joined a third, which the Commonwealth had already constructed at the same location as part of its New Portage Railroad, built to eliminate the inclined planes of the old one. The PRR also used this tunnel. In fact, the Pennsy widened it prior to building its second tunnel, another measure to speed traffic through the mountains. The tunnels remained unchanged until 1994–95, when Conrail took on a major enlargement project for the two of them, to improve clearance and allow higher “double-stack” trains.
What has come to be known as Gallitzin’s Tunnels Park is not very large, but it does offer benches for rail fans who want to settle in for a lengthy train-spotting session. Those inclined to remain overnight can check into a bed-and-breakfast just across the tracks, which has a deck overlooking the tunnels. A 1942 Pennsy steel caboose houses an information center, and a small museum is nearby. The overpass that spans the tracks is lined with a chain-link fence, but for the convenience of photographers, the fence has openings where they can shoot unobstructed photos of trains passing below. If you’re hungry and you also long for the real flavor of a Pennsylvania industrial town, the folks at the museum will direct you to the Midway Café, which sometimes offers homemade stuffed cabbage as a special.
Train spotters are equally, if not more, fond of the nearby town of Cresson, where trains have been rolling down a long, straight stretch of tracks since the Pennsylvania Railroad laid them. The Pennsy also graced Cresson with a resort hotel at the suggestion of Dr. Robert Montgomery Smith Jackson, who recommended the area’s springs of healthful mineral water. Pittsburgh business leaders like Andrew Carnegie constructed their private mountain retreats in Cresson in the years before the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club offered them an alternative with a water view.
The original Allegheny Tunnel, as depicted in Philadelphia and Its Environs, 1875.
A small museum and information booth are located in Gallitzin Tunnels Park.
Norfolk Southern brings a train of empty coal cars through the tunnel complex at Gallitzin.
When this illustration was made for the 1875 edition of the Pennsylvania Railroad by William B. Sipes, Cresson was a summer resort for the wealthy where cool breezes could be enjoyed on the verandas of fine hotels.
Cresson draws a different crowd now, with its train-spotting observation platform and gazebo on Front Street. The railroad hotels are gone, but Cresson still has an establishment called the Station Inn, which is popular not for its amenities, but for its proximity to the tracks. Many of its guests like to set up their camera equipment on its porch and are not the least bit bothered by the sound of freight trains passing just 150 feet from their bedroom windows during the night.
Horseshoe Curve
Spotting trains at Gallitzin or Cresson does not begin to compare with spotting trains at Horseshoe Curve, the engineering wonder that has attracted tourists since the day it opened for business on February 15, 1854. This is the place where passengers can see both ends of the train in which they are riding, and spectators outside can watch while a train bends into a U-shape as it ascends or descends the tracks that hug the sides of the mountain.
Engineer Herman Haupt assisted chief engineer J. Edgar Thomson in designing this feature, which solved an important problem on the route of the Pennsylvania Railroad between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. The enormous curve, which is 1,800 feet across, allowed trains to negotiate the Allegheny Ridge at a lower grade than elsewhere by following the valley of Burgoon Run, a stream that it crosses. The western end of the curve is 122 feet higher than its eastern end, and with a grade of 1.8 percent, passengers on a long train can easily see how much higher or lower the front or rear of their train is as it ascends or descends.
The Horseshoe Curve, a tourist attraction since it opened in 1854, as it appeared in Philadelphia and Its Environs.
During World War II, Horseshoe Curve became so important in America’s east-west transportation and national defense that it was among the targets of eight Nazi spies armed with explosives who sneaked into the United States via submarine in 1942. When the FBI foiled their plot, the eight spies were arrested and tried by a military court; six of them were executed.
There had long been a public park at the curve, and passenger trains sometimes stopped there, but a paved road to the site built in 1932 made the curve a lot more accessible. In 1992, America’s Industrial Heritage Project funded a number of visitor amenities, including a visitors center and an inclined plane connecting the center with the park at trackside. The Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum took over management, staffing, and maintenance. Once visitors get off the inclined plane, they can appreciate a magnificent vista of Altoona’s reservoir system and the road that winds back to town. The trees at the curve have been trimmed back to some extent to make the view better, as well as make it easier to watch for approaching trains.
Visitors to Horseshoe Curve see a watchman’s shanty dating from around 1900 and a GP9 general-purpose diesel freight locomotive. The diesel is a rather ironic exhibit, since it was the Pennsy’s evolution to lower-maintenance diesel power that so adversely affected the economic life of Altoona. This particular locomotive took the place of an Altoona-built steam passenger locomotive, Class K4s Number 1361, which had been at the curve since 1957 but was removed by Conrail in 1985 to be restored to operating condition.
More than a hundred thousand visitors per year mount the plane or the stairs to the curve, many of them toting sophisticated camera equipment. When we visited in 2011, one couple had brought folding chairs, a cooler, and enough reading material to keep them occupied between trains for an entire day. Everyone waits quietly for the sound of an approaching train. The faint echo of a horn causes visitors to glance east and west, trying to determine the direction of the sound. Excitement mounts as a faint rumble grows louder and finally a locomotive appears. Those not snapping photographs wave to the train or lift their children up for a better look. Some cover their ears because the sharp curve causes the train’s wheels to make a screeching din on the rails, called flange squeal. As the train passes from view, visitors smile and nod at each other, feeling that they’ve shared a very special experience. Then most of them settle down to wait for just one more train.
An inclined plane delivers visitors to the trackside park at the Horseshoe Curve.
Altoona and Its Railroaders Memorial Museum
In 1849, several years before Pennsy trains could proceed by rail all the way from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania Railroad chose the site for Altoona. In Altoona and the Pennsylvania Railroad, Betty Wagner Loeb mentions that the land had been purchased discreetly in the name of a Philadelphia merchant who donated it to the railroad. Loeb suggests that the name “Altoona” was derived from either a Cherokee word meaning “high lands of great value” or a railway center in Germany called Altona.
In 1850, construction began on the town’s first roundhouse and repair facilities, and the city grew quickly, its population rising to more than ten thousand by 1870. Altoona’s skilled workers, many of whom were immigrants, built and repaired not only locomotives, but everything needed to run the railroad. By the 1920s, more than fifteen thousand workers labored in Altoona’s shops, their lives regulated by the factory whistles that summoned them to work and announced their breaks and quitting times. Just as the Pennsy was known as the standard railroad of the world, Altoona was then the nation’s standard for a railroad town.
The railroad shops of Altoona, as depicted in Eli Bowen’s 1852 Pictorial Sketch-book of Pennsylvania.
The Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum.
The Pennsy began converting from steam to diesel and electric power, resulting in a reduction of the workforce. Programs were shut down during the 1950s, and older shop buildings were sold or demolished after the Pennsy’s merger with the New York Central in 1968. As railroad jobs were disappearing from Altoona, citizens intent upon creating the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum issued a statement of purpose declaring their intention to “honor the railroad workers and their significant contributions to the culture and development of the railroad industry and to preserve this rich heritage for the education, enjoyment, and enrichment of present and future generations.” During the 1990s, PRR’s former Master Mechanics Building, built in 1882 and among the oldest of the town’s remaining machine shops, having most recently housed Conrail’s Allegheny Division offices, was converted to hold the new museum’s exhibits, a theater, a library, and administrative offices.
Hard-core rail fans who like museums with lots of locomotives and rolling stock, where they can absorb tons of technical information, may be disappointed in the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum, but the key to understanding and appreciating the place is in its name. This is a railroaders’ museum, not a railroad museum. The focus is not on how a railroad worked, but on how people worked on the railroad.
As visitors move from one exhibit space to the next, they activate a series of sound, light, and video performances in which various railroad characters share information about working in this company-dominated town between 1920 and 1940. A newsboy appears at a newsstand to welcome them to town. An executive in a carpeted corporate office discusses the business of railroading as if they were important stockholders. At Kelly’s, visitors take a seat at the bar to eavesdrop on the after-hours conversation of blue-collar workers in a setting that could be made more realistic only if the mannequin representing Kelly really served drinks.
Equipment in the yard at the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum. There are plans to build a roundhouse.
Other interactive exhibits introduce visitors to the skills used in the shops and yards. They can even open drawers and inspect the tools that various kinds of workers used. Still other exhibits
recall local history. On a replica of the Twelfth Street Bridge, which connected the shops with residential areas, a mannequin reminds them that when crossing the windy bridge, country girls grabbed their skirts while city girls hung on to their hats. Another exhibit recalls the wreck of a circus train during the 1890s, an event still remembered in Altoona because of the excitement that ensued when wild and exotic animals got loose.
In the autumn of 2001, officials of the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum inaugurated the construction of a roundhouse to exhibit some prize rolling stock. Instead of using shovels to break ground, the officials drove in railroad spikes. Construction moved slowly but was gaining momentum in 2005 when the museum purchased a turntable. The Commonwealth provided additional funding in 2007. When we visited in 2011, a site plan for the roundhouse was posted near the turntable where the museum’s collected rolling stock could be observed.
Visitors to Altoona may also want to check out the Alto Model Train Museum Association in town, which hosts several open houses and may be open by appointment.
Artifacts of the Johnstown Flood
Johnstown recovered from its devastating 1889 flood, and this industrial community continued to grow as the Cambria Iron Company evolved into the Cambria Steel Company, which was purchased by Bethlehem Steel in 1923, until setbacks in the steel industry finally forced the community to seek growth in other areas. Today Johnstown is recovering, thanks to its new high-tech industries and industrial heritage tourism. The town’s two main tourist attractions are the Johnstown Flood Museum and an inclined plane built in 1891. Both were inspired by the flood, and both make Johnstown an interesting detour for rail fans exploring the Altoona area.
The Johnstown Flood Museum, operated by the Johnstown Area Heritage Association downtown in a former Carnegie library, uses objects to tell the story of the flood and the area’s railroad history in the main exhibit area. The entire rear wall of this space supports a bas-relief representing the debris that got stuck and burned at Johnstown’s railroad bridge, in which the largest identifiable object is a steam locomotive. A multimedia map illustrates the path of the flood. The theater at the museum runs a film that was made on the hundredth anniversary of the flood in 1989 and won an Academy Award for best documentary short subject. Without too many special effects, the film, recently transferred to a high-definition digital format, captures the suddenness and shock of the disaster and the scope of its devastation and depicts a scene at Johnstown that deeply affected Americans.
Railroads of Pennsylvania Page 28