Railroads of Pennsylvania

by Treese, Lorett

  Johnstown’s Inclined Plane. CAMBRIA COUNTY TRANSIT AUTHORITY

  Johnstown from the top of its terrifying inclined plane.

  Johnstown’s inclined plane was once a kind of commuter railroad linking it with Westmont, a suburb that was built by the Cambria Iron Company on a hill above the city, out of harm’s way, and became the preferred location for the mansions of the company’s executives. With a grade of 71.9 percent, Johnstown’s inclined plane claims to hold the record as the world’s steepest.

  When we visited in 2011, we were amazed to learn that you could drive an automobile onto the incline car, and that we would be riding up with the owners of an SUV who intended to do exactly that. We were further surprised at the speed at which the incline car moved, and neither of us wanted to get too close to the little picket fence that was all that separated us from Johnstown below. At the summit, we found an observation deck and a gift shop that had a window overlooking the plane’s motor room. There was also an establishment appropriately named the City View Bar and Grill, conveniently located for those who might need a drink after the ride.

  The East Broad Top Railroad

  The East Broad Top Railroad (EBT) was constructed during the 1870s to link several coal-mining towns to the Pennsy’s main line. Locomotives hauled both freight and passengers on its narrow-gauge tracks until revenue losses forced it to reduce operations during the 1950s, culminating in the line’s abandonment in 1956. The history of this line would be completely unremarkable except that its yards and structures were abandoned with much of their equipment intact, making it possible for the modern East Broad Top Railroad to promote itself as “the most complete, authentic narrow-gauge site in North America.” In an article in American Heritage of Invention & Technology, John H. White comments, “Father Time locked the front door and walked away four decades ago, leaving behind the kind of package that industrial historians dream about finding.”

  For whatever reason, the Kovalchick Salvage Company, which acquired the railroad following its abandonment, failed to pull up its rails and knock down its buildings. During the 1960 bicentennial celebration of the town of Orbisonia, where the East Broad Top is located, the Kovalchick family even repaired some of its tracks and ran one of its old steam engines. Public response demanded that the rides be continued.

  In 2010, EBT celebrated its fiftieth anniversary as a tourist line. It continues to offer a ride to Colgate Grove through an area called the Aughwick Valley, as well as occasional dinner and special event trains. The site is popular with both families and rail fans, who routinely arrive about an hour before the first scheduled excursion so they can set up their cameras outside the old roundhouse. There they can watch as the EBT locomotive to be used that day is taken out amid great gusts of steam and loaded with coal.

  When we visited in 2011, we immediately noticed that the EBT rail yard was thronged with EBT coal cars. Staff members told us that despite appearances, the EBT was not actively hauling coal; these were just for show, and even more could be found in nearby Mount Union. The railroad offered something that had not been available during our visit a decade earlier: a shop and roundhouse tour. We met our guide at the turntable, and he introduced us to the roundhouse, where we discovered another EBT Baldwin-built locomotive behind just about every closed door. The railroad could not run these, he explained, because reconditioning them for excursion use would be extremely expensive.

  The Orbisonia station at the East Broad Top Railroad.

  The East Broad Top Railroad passenger excursion train approaches the station.

  The roundhouse at the East Broad Top Railroad contains a number of other EBT Baldwin locomotives.

  Turntable at the East Broad Top Railroad. The railroad’s shops are on the left. The farmhouse on the right predates the railroad.

  He pointed out the rail yard’s other buildings, including an old stone farmhouse that predated the railroad and a blacksmith shop that seemed to be leaning at a precarious angle, which the railroad was raising money to correct. The yard had a sand tower and a water tower supplied by the railroad’s own reservoir. The site’s premier artifact was its machine shop dating from around 1905–07. It was originally powered by steam, the individual machines driven by an overhead belt system. Some of the equipment had been electrified and put back in business. A recently disabled EBT passenger car stood inside the shop awaiting repairs.

  Lorett Treese Travels

  As we waited on the platform at the Paoli train station for Amtrak No. 43, I realized that it was almost ten years to the day since we had made the same trip for the first edition of this book. Our train, called the Pennsylvanian, would transport us over a historic route: the path of the old State Works, renewed and improved by the Pennsylvania Railroad. What would be different? What would have remained the same?

  Our last trip had been in December 2001, three short months after the tragic events of 9/11. Our hotel room in Pittsburgh had overlooked the Golden Triangle, where a lone Christmas tree had been defiantly decorated in red, white, and blue lights. This time we would stay in a newer hotel overlooking Mellon Green and the tents of Occupy Pittsburgh, the local subsidiary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as the plaza outside the U.S. Steel Tower, where people were constructing a crèche the size of a three-bedroom split level.

  Another thing that had changed was the number of daily trains making this trip. Ten years ago, one had the choice of leaving in the morning or the afternoon. Now there was only one trans-Pennsylvania train, scheduled to leave Paoli at 1:12 in the afternoon, and we had been anxious not to miss it. Also ten years ago, there had been no sticker in the train window informing passengers that the car was a WiFi hot spot. I observed that roughly 75 percent of our fellow passengers spent most of their time on the train occupied with some sort of electronic device.

  By the time Mat and I had settled into our seats, we were speeding west past the backyards of residents of Malvern and Frazier. We tried to spot Duffy’s Cut, but the train was moving too quickly. We did spot the landmark caboose of the Loose Caboose Campground, which told us we were west of Gap and not far from Strasburg. I searched the horizon for puffs of steam but failed to spot those telltale signs of the operation of the Strasburg Rail Road’s steam engine. I did see a gaggle of children clad in black playing outside a tiny, isolated school, as well as more plain dark and white garments hung out to dry in the breeze.

  At Lancaster, we noticed that the renovations at the station we had seen earlier in the year were still under way. Much work had been completed at the Elizabethtown Station, which now had a spacious new platform with an elevator. There were no planes taking off or landing at the Harrisburg airport, though we did see a Delta jet take off on our way home. At Harrisburg, we got a good look at the caboose and locomotive owned by the Harrisburg Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, as well as the newly opened Harris Tower. We then passed through a very crowded Norfolk Southern rail yard as we headed for the Rockford Bridge. Once we were west of the Susquehanna, we started passing long freight trains headed in the opposite direction. I stopped counting at seven. When it grew dark and we could no longer see them, we could still hear the whoosh of oncoming locomotives.

  By the time we reached Altoona, it was after 5 p.m. and the sun had set. Although we were disappointed not to be able to get a good look at the Horseshoe Curve or wave at the waiting rail fans, we were able to spot the lights of the visitors center. A full moon reflected in the reservoir system provided just enough light for us to see our locomotive from our seats in the train’s last car. At Latrobe, we looked down at a lighted sign directing patrons to DiSalvo’s Station Restaurant. Too bad we couldn’t order takeout delivered to our train.

  Nothing much had changed at the little Pittsburgh Amtrak station, huddled behind the massive building that once had welcomed Pennsylvania Railroad passengers to Pittsburgh. We got a better look at it on our return trip while waiting to board the eastbound Pennsylvanian, which was schedu
led to depart Pittsburgh at 7:20 a.m. on a bright, sunny Sunday, November 13. We were glad we now had a chance to witness the scenery we had missed in the dark on our way west. We spotted the George Westinghouse Memorial Bridge soaring above both Turtle Creek and the route of our train. We saw the inclined plane in Johnstown, but it was not yet 9 a.m. and the cars weren’t running.

  There was a coal train parked east of Johnstown and another parked near Cresson, where we noticed an intermodal also standing still on the other side of our train. As we headed into Cresson, we slowed way down. We located the Station Inn and the train spotting platform on Front Street. Then a conductor made an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be stopping here until the dispatcher gives us permission to go forward. There was a derailment last night just ahead of us. Please be patient and do not try to get off the train.” We came to a full stop at 9:35 a.m.

  We started and stopped several times, placing us beside another parked coal train. We finally began to move at 10:22 a.m. When we approached Gallitzin, we found several rail fans with cameras in position as we neared the tunnel. After we reemerged into daylight, we began to see trucks and maintenance vehicles on the verge of the tracks, as well as the sort of bright lights used to illuminate nocturnal roadwork.

  We could tell we were approaching the Horseshoe Curve because we could see our passenger car tilting gently downward. Then we began to pass freight containers lying on their sides on both sides of the one track that was operational. Many of them had gaping holes. We saw an idle backhoe that likely had been used to clear them from the track. We proceeded past all this and into the curve very slowly, with constant short burps of the diesel horn. Once again, the train viewing area of the curve was empty of tourists. There had been no announcement of the Horseshoe Curve on either of the trains we had ridden, but it had been dark on the westbound trip, and the eastbound conductors probably had other things to concern them. After we made a stop in Altoona, we continued east through what seemed like a tunnel of halted freight trains, apparently all waiting their turn to move west.

  Norfolk Southern does not issue press releases about derailments, but the next day, I consulted various rail fan blogs and learned that at about 8 p.m. on Saturday, a westbound intermodal had derailed on track 3, its wreckage also blocking the other two tracks. The railroad immediately halted westbound trains in Altoona and eastbound trains around Cresson. Repairs commenced as soon as possible, and by about midnight, a single track was open. This had been accomplished quickly because there was no damage to the tracks and it was just a matter of removing overturned containers. One rail fan reported seeing our Amtrak train running around that one coal train we had passed. Another posted on YouTube his footage of the backhoe working among the cars early Sunday morning.

  Despite the train wreck, we arrived back in Paoli slightly less than an hour late. Heading west, our train had been within a few minutes of the printed schedule at every station, and we had arrived in Pittsburgh a little early. Amtrak was doing a much better job of arriving on time than it had been ten years earlier, when our eastbound train had departed Pittsburgh almost an hour late, and our westbound scheduled half-hour delay in Harrisburg had stretched to an hour while our conductor awaited delivery of the routine bulletin from Norfolk Southern warning of any trouble ahead on the tracks.

  Ten years earlier, we had dined, if you can call it that, on bitter coffee and a packaged item that had no business being labeled a club sandwich. In the intervening years, we had enjoyed a rather good breakfast on the Silver Meteor while heading for Savannah, but because I’ve remained leery of Amtrak fare, for our westbound trip I had packed Swiss cheese, sopressata, sourdough rolls, chips, nuts, and two three-glass containers of red wine. When it grew dark and we could no longer see the scenery, we commenced an extended cocktail party.

  Heading east, I was encouraged to find printed café car menus at our seats, offering a variety of hot and cold sandwiches, salads, and snacks. We chose a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich and freshly brewed Green Mountain coffee for breakfast. For lunch, we might have selected a wrap sandwich or panini made with Italian cold cuts, but since we had so enjoyed our French-inspired dishes at Pittsburgh’s Terrace Room the evening before, we chose the Parisian turkey baguette. French bread was filled with thick slices of turkey and brie, with romaine lettuce and honey mustard. Though the sandwich might have been better had it not spent the morning under refrigeration, it was pretty tasty and big enough for the two of us to share. The guy sitting across the aisle had a cheeseburger that had been microwaved in its plastic wrapping. We didn’t ask his opinion, but it smelled good. The menu also indicated that the café car served cocktails. Next trip, we’ll have to see if they can mix a Manhattan.

  The Region’s Rail-Trails

  The intriguingly named Ghost Town Trail is thirty-six miles long from Ebensburg to Grafton, incorporating former railbed of the Ebensburg & Blacklick Railroad and the Cambria & Indiana Railroad. Its name commemorates Wehrum and Bracken, two coal-mining towns that were abandoned during the 1930s. The rail-trail is jointly operated by the Cambria County Conservation & Recreation Authority and Indiana County Parks & Trails.

  Hikers of the Ghost Town Trail pass by the remains of the Eliza Furnace complex of dwellings and commercial and industrial buildings, which operated between 1846 and 1849. Today the furnace is considered one of the most well-preserved hot-blast iron furnaces in Pennsylvania. The Ghost Town Trail also lies adjacent to the Blacklock Valley Natural Area. At Dilltown, the Dillweed Bed and Breakfast and trailside shop cater to trail users.

  The Lower Trail (“Lower” is pronounced to rhyme with “power”) connects Williamsburg in Blair County with Alexandria in Huntington County along the Frankstown Branch of the Juniata River. This seventeen-mile-long trail covers ground that was once part of both the State Works canal system and the Petersburg branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It meanders past canal artifacts, such as the remains of locks and a lock tender’s house, as well as railroad bridges.

  The Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site includes two short trails: one along the original railbed of an inclined plane, passing the site’s engine house and restored Lemon House tavern, the other winding through the forest to the Staple Bend Tunnel.

  The Path of the Flood Trail is currently under development. When completed, it will extend west to Johnstown from the new Johnstown Flood National Memorial, overlooking what were once the dam and lake of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, passing through the towns of South Fork, Mineral Point, East Conemaugh, and Woodvale and ending at the Johnstown Stone Bridge. Along the way will be interpretive wayside exhibits explaining what happened that tragic day in 1889. There are also plans to extend the trail to the Staple Bend Tunnel.

  Other rail-trails in this region include the Bells Gap Rail Trail and Jim Mayer Riverwalk.

  SECTION SEVEN

  Pittsburgh and Its Countryside

  Great and Growing Railways of the Region

  The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie

  The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad (P&LE) was chartered in 1875, somewhat later than the other major lines in Pennsylvania’s railroad history. It was the brainchild of Pittsburgh businessman William McCreery, who stated his intention to affiliate the P&LE with the B&O, which had gained entry into Pittsburgh in 1871, hoping that these allied railroads would give the Pennsy some serious competition.

  Construction started in May 1877, and that fall William H. Vanderbilt purchased $300,000 worth of P&LE stock. While the capital was a welcome boost, it also portended that this line would become affiliated with the New York Central system, not the B&O. The P&LE’s initial line was built from Pittsburgh to Youngstown, Ohio, a town that was already connected to Vanderbilt’s Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway via its Mahoning Coal Railroad, running from Youngstown to Ashtabula on Lake Erie.

  The P&LE general office and passenger station were located on the south bank of the Monongahela River, opposite downtown Pittsbu
rgh. Operations began in February 1879 without fanfare or festivities shortly after tracks were laid under the Monongahela suspension bridge, which linked the P&LE’s South Side facilities with Pittsburgh. P&LE trains ran at water level on the banks of the Monongahela, Ohio, Beaver, and Mahoning Rivers, serving many of the heavy industries located in this area. Eventually the P&LE, nicknamed the “Little Giant,” operated two hundred miles of railroad in six Pennsylvania counties as well as the few miles from the Ohio border to Youngstown.

  It was easy to predict that P&LE business would benefit by an extension to the region south of Pittsburgh, where coal was roasted into coke in ovens near the mines. Vanderbilt advanced the funds to construct what would become an important feeder, a line called the Pittsburgh, McKeesport & Youghiogheny Railroad. This railroad opened in 1883, connecting Pittsburgh to Connellsville along the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Rivers. It subsequently gave the P&LE a connection to Baltimore when the Western Maryland Railway built a line from Cumberland to Connellsville.

  In The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, Harold H. McLean suggests that Vanderbilt had plans to make both these railroads important links in his proposed South Penn system. To ensure cooperation from the P&LE, around this time Vanderbilt bought enough additional stock to control the railroad and make it a permanent part of the New York Central system, though it would always operate as a separate corporation.