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The South Pennsylvania Railroad is the name given to two proposed, but never completed, railroads in Pennsylvania during the 19th century. Parts of the right of way for the second South Pennsylvania Railroad were reused for the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1940.
The first South Pennsylvania Railroad was originally chartered as the Duncannon, Landisburg, and Broad Top Railroad Company on May 5, 1854. [1] Its intended route began in Duncannon, passed through Landisburg and Burnt Cabins and ended on the Juniata River via the Broad Top Mountain coalfields. On May 5, 1855, it was renamed the Sherman's Valley and Broad Top Railroad Company, and the planned eastern terminus was changed from Duncannon to the mouth of Fishing Creek, in Perry County near Marysville, in order to connect with the Pennsylvania Railroad. [1] Another amendment to the charter on May 12, 1857, allowed it to connect with the Allegheny Portage Railroad and the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad. [1] Around this time, two miles of the proposed route were in fact graded. On March 31, 1859, it was given the grandiose name of Pennsylvania Pacific Railway Company, with the rights to extend into Maryland and Virginia. [1] On April 1, 1863, it was renamed as the South Pennsylvania Railroad Company. [1] Despite feverish promotion, including plans for 200 miles (322 km) of line from Marysville to West Newton (on the Youghiogheny River), no further work was completed. The two miles (3 km) of grading were sold off in 1872 and the charter became dormant on May 31, 1879.
The unused charter of the defunct South Pennsylvania Railroad was revived in the 1880s as a weapon in a growing war between the New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad: the two major Eastern railroad systems. William H. Vanderbilt, who controlled the New York Central, learned that the Pennsylvania had obtained control of the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway: a newly built railroad whose line paralleled the route of the New York Central between New York City and Buffalo. Vanderbilt viewed the West Shore project as a Pennsylvania Railroad incursion into prime New York Central territory and a threat to the Central's supremacy in the area.
To retaliate, Vanderbilt allied himself with Pittsburgh capitalists, including Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, who were anxious to break the Pennsylvania Railroad's freight monopoly in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. Vanderbilt, the Pittsburghers and other investors formed a syndicate to finance and build a new mainline railroad across the Alleghenies that would connect Pittsburgh with Harrisburg, and, working jointly with the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, would form a route to the East Coast. The group used the long-inactive charter of the South Pennsylvania Railroad as its vehicle to begin constructing the railroad. [2]
The new route for the railroad was surveyed beginning in 1881, and construction began soon after. The alignment, which had first been surveyed in the 1840s by Colonel Charles Schattler of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and then dismissed as a possible route for the Pennsylvania, crossed the spine of the Appalachians in southern Pennsylvania. It connected Harrisburg with the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, [3] a Vanderbilt subsidiary, at Port Perry. [4] [5]
The so-called "southern route" of the South Pennsylvania was a treacherous one, as it crossed six mountain ridges, required nine tunnels and involved numerous curves and steep grades. Construction continued into 1885, with considerable work done in drilling the tunnels and grading the portion of the route through the mountains. But, as expenses rose, Vanderbilt began to have second thoughts and began looking for a graceful way out that would protect the investments made by his syndicate partners. He proposed a truce and buyout by the Pennsylvania, but the Pennsylvania's president, George Roberts, refused to meet his price.
Banker J. P. Morgan, who was the New York Central's principal banker and a Vanderbilt ally, was also concerned about the financial effects of ruthless competition. He brokered an agreement in which the New York Central bought the West Shore Railroad, halted construction on the South Pennsylvania (including a bridge over the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg) and agreed to sell its right-of-way to the Pennsylvania. However, legal action prevented the Pennsylvania from taking control of the line, and the South Pennsylvania remained in limbo for almost 20 years. In the meantime, two short sections, including the Quemahoning Tunnel, were later used for local short line railroads (the Pittsburgh, Westmoreland and Somerset Railroad among them), but the majority of the line, including several unfinished tunnels, remained unused. It eventually came to be known as "Vanderbilt's Folly". [6]
In 1893, the Southern Pennsylvania Railway, a Pennsylvania Railroad subsidiary which had charter rights along the route, initiated court proceedings to take ownership of part of the South Pennsylvania grade. In 1895, it obtained title to the grade east of Mount Dallas. A little surveying and repair work was done on the route that year, but it was never used, and the grade was sold to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission in 1938.
In 1904, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bought the South Pennsylvania grade west of Mount Dallas, organizing it under the name of Fulton, Bedford and Somerset Railroad. No railroad was ever built on the right-of-way, and it was also sold to the turnpike commission.
Pittsburgh was originally a branch line until Carnegie and others intervened and persuaded Vanderbilt to discard the original alignment, which was to go to Wheeling via Connellsville and Brownsville. Maps, letters and other documents including tunnel designs are open to the public in the state archives in Harrisburg.
The route was revived during the Great Depression, when plans were made to build a superhighway across Pennsylvania. In 1937, the new Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission bought the old line from the two railroads and, in 1938, construction began between Carlisle and Irwin. Two of the workers from the South Pennsylvania Railroad project (one contractor and one laborer) also worked on the Turnpike despite the 54-year time difference in construction.
The turnpike's original route was opened in October 1940, using six of the railroad's nine tunnels (subsequent route re-alignments have caused some of these tunnels to be abandoned), while the original Allegheny Mountain Tunnel wasn't used due to structural concerns and the Quemahoning Tunnel and Negro Mountain Tunnel were bypassed because advances in engineering since the 1880s allowed for bypasses. The highway engineers did not use most of the railroad's other grading, however, since they could afford steeper grades and shorter alignments. Because of this, relics of the "ghost railroad" may still be found all across the Alleghenies.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike, sometimes shortened to Penna Turnpike or PA Turnpike, is a controlled-access toll road that is operated by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States. It runs for 360 miles (580 km) across the state, connecting Pittsburgh in Western Pennsylvania with Philadelphia in eastern Pennsylvania, and passes through four tunnels as it crosses the Appalachian Mountains in central Pennsylvania.
The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, established in 1833, and sometimes referred to as the Lake Shore, was a major part of the New York Central Railroad's Water Level Route from Buffalo, New York, to Chicago, Illinois, primarily along the south shore of Lake Erie and across northern Indiana. The line's trackage remains a major rail transportation corridor used by Amtrak passenger trains and several freight lines; in 1998, its ownership was split at Cleveland, Ohio, between CSX Transportation to the east and Norfolk Southern Railway in the west.
Sideling Hill, also Side Long Hill, is a long, steep, narrow mountain ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains, located in Washington County in western Maryland and adjacent West Virginia and Pennsylvania, USA. The highest point on the ridge is Fisher Point, at 2,310 feet (700 m) in Fulton County, Pennsylvania.
Interstate 76 (I-76) is an east–west Interstate Highway in the Eastern United States. The highway runs approximately 435.66 miles (701.13 km) from an interchange with I-71 west of Akron, Ohio, east to I-295 in Bellmawr, New Jersey. This route is not contiguous with I-76 in Colorado and Nebraska.
The Western Maryland Railway was an American Class I railroad (1852–1983) that operated in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It was primarily a coal hauling and freight railroad, with a small passenger train operation.
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Sideling Hill Tunnel is one of three original Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnels abandoned after two massive realignment projects. The others are nearby Rays Hill Tunnel, and farther west, the Laurel Hill Tunnel. It was less expensive to realign the Turnpike than to bore a second tube for four lane traffic. Sideling Hill Tunnel is 6,782 feet (2,067 m) long.
Rays Hill Tunnel is one of three original Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnels that were abandoned after two massive realignment projects. The others included the Sideling Hill Tunnel, and farther west, the Laurel Hill Tunnel.
The Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway was a railroad in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Wheeling, West Virginia, areas. Originally built as the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, a Pittsburgh extension of George J. Gould's Wabash Railroad, the venture entered receivership in 1908, and the line was cut loose. An extension completed in 1931 connected it to the Western Maryland Railway at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, forming part of the Alphabet Route, a coalition of independent lines between the Northeastern United States and the Midwest. It was leased by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1964 in conjunction with the N&W acquiring several other sections of the former Alphabet Route but was leased to the new spinoff Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway in 1990, just months before the N&W was merged into the Norfolk Southern Railway.
The Allegheny Mountain Tunnel is a vehicular tunnel carrying the Pennsylvania Turnpike through the Allegheny Mountains. At this point, the Turnpike carries Interstates 70 and 76. When the tunnel was built, it was considered an "engineering marvel."
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A large metropolitan area that is surrounded by rivers and hills, Pittsburgh has an infrastructure system that has been built out over the years to include roads, tunnels, bridges, railroads, inclines, bike paths, and stairways; however, the hills and rivers still form many barriers to transportation within the city.
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The Quemahoning Tunnel was a tunnel that was constructed for use on the stillborn South Pennsylvania Railroad. The tunnel was located in Somerset County, Pennsylvania near the 106.3 milemarker of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The Negro Mountain Tunnel is a tunnel located in Negro Mountain in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It was built by New York Central Railroad as part of the proposed but never completed South Pennsylvania Railroad, which over time became known as "Vanderbilt's Folly". The tunnel is located near milepost 116.7 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike where it is ten miles east of the Quemahoning Tunnel, 16 miles east of the Laurel Hill Tunnel, and seven miles west of the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel currently used by the Turnpike.
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