The Mon Line is an 85-mile long [2] Norfolk Southern rail line which runs along the Monongahela River for most of its route. [3]
The predecessor of this line is the Pittsburgh, Virginia and Charleston Railway. The northern portion (Pittsburgh to West Brownsville) of the line is the former main line of the Monongahela Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the southern portion (West Brownsville to Waynesburg) was once part of the Monongahela Railway's Waynesburg Southern Branch.
Its northern terminus was formerly at the junction with the Panhandle Route at the Panhandle Bridge in Pittsburgh, and its southern terminus was near Brownsville, Pennsylvania where it had a connection to the Monongahela Railway.
Conrail transferred the West Brownsville to Waynesburg trackage from the Waynesburg Southern Branch to the former main line of the PRR Monongahela Division and it became the new Mon Line.
In the 1990s, the northern section of the Mon Line began to be used, together with the Port Perry Branch, as a high-clearance route for double-stack container trains. [4] [5]
In 2016, a landslide occurred on the Mon Line at the foot of Mount Washington, on part of the line used for double-stack trains. [6] Due to the landslide, Norfolk Southern sought funding in 2017 in order to create an alternative double-stack route through Pittsburgh, using the Pittsburgh Line and the Fort Wayne Line. [7] [8]
On August 5, 2018, a train running on the Mon Line derailed east of Pittsburgh's Station Square complex and blocked the tracks, forcing freight service to be suspended. The derailed cars fell down the hillside and onto the tracks below at the "T" light rail system's Station Square station and damaged 1,600 feet (490 m) of light rail tracks; 4,000 feet (1,200 m) of overhead electrical wires; and some concrete on the Panhandle Bridge. The derailment caused no injuries as it occurred 2 minutes after a light rail train departed the station. During cleanup and inspections of the area, the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel was closed and "T" trains were rerouted via the former Brown Line through Allentown. The outbound light rail tracks were opened on August 23, while inbound light rail service resumed on August 25 after repairs were completed. A preliminary report by the Federal Railroad Administration's investigation team found that a fractured track caused the derailment. Norfolk Southern filed a lawsuit in December 2018 seeking $1.1 million in reimbursements from the city for the incident, claiming that they had neglected to maintain the hillside.
The line begins at CP-BELL, at a junction with the Fort Wayne Line, [1] and then crosses the Ohio River on the Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge, and proceeds along the southern side of the Ohio and Monongahela rivers. The Port Perry Branch joins the line at the PRR Port Perry Bridge near Duquesne, Pennsylvania. There is a section of on-street running track in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania. The line ends near Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. [1]
The Mon Line is used for high-clearance double stack container trains between the Fort Wayne Line and the Port Perry Branch, [4] [5] which continues on to join the Pittsburgh Line to points further east. This bypasses the easternmost portion of the Fort Wayne Line and the westernmost part of the Pittsburgh Line, [3] which have clearance issues for double-stack trains as of 2016.
The line also serves coal mines south of Pittsburgh, including the Bailey Mine. [9]
The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States. With headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, the company operates 19,420 route miles in 22 eastern states, the District of Columbia, and has rights in Canada over the Albany to Montréal route of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and previously on CN from Buffalo to St. Thomas. NS is responsible for maintaining 28,400 miles (45,700 km), with the remainder being operated under trackage rights from other parties responsible for maintenance. The most common commodity hauled on the railway is coal from mines in Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The railway also offers the largest intermodal network in eastern North America. Norfolk Southern was formed in 1982, following the Norfolk and Western railroad being merged into the Southern railroad.
The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad was a U.S. Class 1 railroad that connected Buffalo, New York, and Hoboken, New Jersey, a distance of about 400 miles (640 km). Incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1853 primarily for the purpose of providing a connection between the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania's Coal Region and the large markets for coal in New York City, the railroad gradually expanded both East and West, eventually linking Buffalo with New York City. Like most coal-focused railroads in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the DL&W was profitable during the first half of the twentieth century, but its margins were gradually hurt by declining Pennsylvania coal traffic, especially following the 1959 Knox Mine Disaster and competition from trucks following the expansion of the Interstate Highway System in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1960, the DL&W merged with rival Erie Railroad to form the Erie Lackawanna Railroad that would be taken over by Conrail in 1976.
NJ Transit Rail Operations is the rail division of NJ Transit. It operates commuter rail service in New Jersey, with most service centered on transportation to and from New York City, Hoboken, and Newark. NJ Transit also operates rail service in Orange and Rockland counties in New York under contract to Metro-North Railroad. The commuter rail lines had an average weekday ridership of 306,892 from June 1, 2015, to June 30, 2016, making it the second-busiest commuter railroad in North America as well as the longest by route length. This does not include NJ Transit's light rail operations.
The Monongahela Railway was a coal-hauling short line railroad in Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the United States. It was jointly controlled originally by the Pennsylvania Railroad, New York Central subsidiary Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, with NYC and PRR later succeeded by Penn Central Transportation. The company operated its own line until it was merged into Conrail on May 1, 1993.
The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad (P&LE), also known as the "Little Giant", was formed on May 11, 1875. Company headquarters were located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The line connected Pittsburgh in the east with Youngstown, Ohio at nearby Haselton, Ohio in the west and Connellsville, Pennsylvania to the east. It did not reach Lake Erie until the formation of Conrail in 1976. The P&LE was known as the "Little Giant" since the tonnage that it moved was out of proportion to its route mileage. While it operated around one tenth of one percent of the nation's railroad miles, it hauled around one percent of its tonnage. This was largely because the P&LE served the steel mills of the greater Pittsburgh area, which consumed and shipped vast amounts of materials. It was a specialized railroad deriving much of its revenue from coal, coke, iron ore, limestone, and steel. The eventual closure of the steel mills led to the end of the P&LE as an independent line in 1992.
The Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway was a major part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system, extending the PRR west from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, via Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Chicago, Illinois. It included the current Norfolk Southern-owned Fort Wayne Line east of Crestline, Ohio, to Pittsburgh, and the Fort Wayne Secondary, owned by CSX, from Crestline west to Tolleston in Gary, Indiana. CSX leased its entire portion in 2004 to the Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad (CFE). The remaining portion of the line from Tolleston into Chicago is now part of the Norfolk Southern's Chicago District, with a small portion of the original PFW&C trackage abandoned in favor of the parallel lines of former competitors which are now part of the modern NS system.
The Buffalo and Pittsburgh Railroad is a Class II railroad operating in New York and Pennsylvania.
The Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge is a steel bridge which crosses the Ohio River at Brunot's Island at the west end of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It consists of two major through truss spans over the main and back channels of the river, of 508 feet (155 m) and 406 feet (124 m) respectively, with deck truss approaches.
Pittsburgh, surrounded by rivers and hills, has a unique transportation infrastructure that includes roads, tunnels, bridges, railroads, inclines, bike paths, and stairways.
The Union Railroad is a Class III switching railroad located in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania. The company is owned by Transtar, Inc., which is itself a subsidiary of Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors, after being purchased from United States Steel in 2021. The railroad's primary customers are the three plants of the USS Mon Valley Works, the USS Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the USS Irvin Works and the USS Clairton Works.
The Port Perry Branch is a rail line owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The line runs from the Pittsburgh Line in North Versailles Township southwest through the Port Perry Tunnel and across the Monongahela River on the PRR Port Perry Bridge to the Mon Line in Duquesne along a former Pennsylvania Railroad line.
The Fort Wayne Line and Fort Wayne Secondary is a rail line owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad (CFE), and CSX Transportation in the U.S. states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. The line runs from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, west via Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Gary, Indiana, along what was once the Pennsylvania Railroad's Pittsburgh to Chicago main line.
Station Square is a transit station on the Port Authority of Allegheny County's light rail network. It is the last Transit station on the south side of the Monongahela River.
The Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad is a short-line railroad that operates freight trains in Western New York and Northwest Pennsylvania, United States. The company is controlled by the Livonia, Avon and Lakeville Railroad, with which it does not connect. It started operations in 2001 on the Southern Tier Extension, a former Erie Railroad line between Hornell, NY and Corry, PA, owned by the public Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Allegany and Steuben Southern Tier Extension Railroad Authority (STERA). Through acquisitions and leases, the line was extended from Corry to Meadville, PA in 2002 and to Oil City, PA in 2006. In 2007, the WNY&P leased and sub-leased portions of the north-south Buffalo Line, a former Pennsylvania Railroad line mostly built by a predecessor of the defunct Western New York and Pennsylvania Railway. The two lines cross at Olean, NY.
The Pittsburgh, Virginia and Charleston Railway was a predecessor of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. By 1905, when it was merged into the Pennsylvania, it owned a main line along the left (west) side of the Monongahela River, to Pittsburgh's South Side from West Brownsville. Branches connected to the South-West Pennsylvania Railway in Uniontown via Redstone Creek and to numerous coal mines.
The PPR Port Perry Bridge is a truss bridge that carries the Port Perry Branch of the Norfolk Southern Railway across the Monongahela River between the Pennsylvania towns of North Versailles Township, and Duquesne. The bridge was built to serve the Pennsylvania Railroad, to provide better access to industrial sites, and to help through trains bypass downtown Pittsburgh. Today, the bridge and corresponding route serve a similar purpose and are used to allow high-level loads, especially double-stacked container cars, to avoid the narrower routes through Pittsburgh.
The West Brownsville Junction Bridge carries the Norfolk Southern Railway across the Monongahela River from Brownsville Township to West Brownsville in the state of Pennsylvania. The main span is a 401-foot (122 m) Pennsylvania (Petit) truss. The structure was originally designed by the Pennsylvania Railroad as a low-level connector between its mainline and Waynesburg Branch. Today, the bridge continues to serve the same purpose that it has since its inception, carrying coal trains between mines and power plants or other industrial sites.
The Pittsburgh Line is the Norfolk Southern Railway's primary east–west artery in its Pittsburgh Division and Harrisburg Division across the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and is part of the Keystone Corridor, Amtrak-Norfolk Southern's combined rail corridor.
The Trenton Cutoff is a 48-mile (77 km) rail corridor in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania that runs from Morrisville to Glenloch. Today used by Norfolk Southern, it consists of two rail lines: the Morrisville Line, which runs between Morrisville and Ernest, and the Dale Secondary between Ernest and Glenloch.
The Cleveland Line is a railroad line owned and operated by Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), in the U.S. states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The line runs from Rochester, Pennsylvania to Cleveland, Ohio along a former Pennsylvania Railroad line.
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