Wabash Bridge | |
---|---|
Coordinates | 40°26′13.51″N80°0′26.49″W / 40.4370861°N 80.0073583°W |
Crosses | Monongahela River |
Locale | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
Characteristics | |
Design | cantilever through truss (removed) piers: rusticated stone |
Material | Steel |
Total length | 1,504 feet (458 m) |
Longest span | 812 feet (247 m) |
Piers in water | 2 |
Clearance above | 46 feet (14 m) |
History | |
Opened | 1904 |
Closed | 1946 (closed to traffic) 1948 (removed) |
Location | |
The Wabash Bridge was a railroad bridge across the Monongahela River at Pittsburgh. It was constructed between 1902 and 1904 by railroad magnate George J. Gould for his Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway. [1]
The Wabash Bridge carried rail traffic from the elaborate Wabash Terminal in downtown Pittsburgh to the Wabash Tunnel through Mt. Washington. The rail cars were from the Wabash-Pittsburg Terminal Railroad, an ill-fated venture by George Jay Gould to compete with the Pennsylvania Railroad in Pittsburgh.
After less than half a century, the Wabash was considered a “hard luck” bridge, haunted by its history, and an eyesore. In 1946, a fire destroyed the terminal. The bridge had become a useless hulk, and was dismantled two years later. Some of its steel was melted down for use in the Dravosburg Bridge, which was being built in 1948.
Construction of the bridge began in 1902. The two ends of the bridge were begun from opposite banks before being joined in the middle. On October 19, 1903, during the efforts to merge the two ends of the bridge, the center of the bridge collapsed. The accident resulted in the deaths of 10 workers. [1] [2] [3] Additional problems plagued the bridge's construction site including a smallpox epidemic, bad weather, and strikes. The bridge was completed in 1904. However, the Wabash railway line was not profitable and collapsed into receivership in 1908. In 1917, the railway was absorbed into the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway which continued running trains over the Wabash bridge. After 1931, the bridge was only used for freight traffic which ran through the downtown terminal. When the terminal and warehouses were destroyed by fire in 1946, the bridge became functionally obsolete. The bridge was demolished in 1948 after years of neglect. The steel from the bridge was used in the construction of the Dravosburg Bridge in 1948. [4]
Two piers remain in place today, the only remnants of the bridge still in place at the original site.
The Wabash Tunnel, which carried the railroad through the hills south of the Monongahela River, sat abandoned for more than 50 years before reopening to one-way auto traffic in 2004.
In the 2008 video game Fallout 3 DLC The Pitt, the Wabash Bridge was reconstructed around the year 2077 in the style of the Fort Pitt Bridge.
The Monongahela Connecting Railroad or Mon Conn is a three-mile industrial railroad line in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a subsidiary of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company and a large portion of its work was for its parent company, though it also serves other industries along the line.
Downtown Pittsburgh, colloquially referred to as the Golden Triangle, and officially the Central Business District, is the urban downtown center of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River whose joining forms the Ohio River. The triangle is bounded by the two rivers.
The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, abbreviated NYC&St.L, was a railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. Commonly referred to as the "Nickel Plate Road", the railroad served parts of the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Its primary connections occurred in Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Toledo.
Union Station, also known as Pennsylvania Station and commonly called Penn Station, is a historic train station in Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was one of several passenger rail stations that served Pittsburgh during the 20th century; others included the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Station, the Baltimore and Ohio Station, and Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal, and it is the only surviving station in active use.
The Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) is a 150-mile (240 km) rail trail between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Cumberland, Maryland. Together with the C&O Canal towpath, the GAP is part of a 335 mi (539 km) route between Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., that is popular with through hikers and cyclists.
The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, 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 in the Haselton neighborhood 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 Smithfield Street Bridge is a lenticular truss bridge crossing the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
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 Panhandle Bridge carries the three lines of the Port Authority Light Rail Network across the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The name comes from Pennsylvania Railroad subsidiary Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, also known as the Panhandle Route, which operated over the bridge.
The South Tenth Street Bridge, most often called the Tenth Street Bridge, but officially dubbed the Philip Murray Bridge, is a suspension bridge that spans the Monongahela River in Downtown Pittsburgh, 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.
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.
Union Railroad is a Class III switching railroad located in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania. The company is owned by Transtar, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors, after being acquired from U.S. 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 Pittsburgh Light Rail is a 26.2-mile (42.2 km) light rail system in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and surrounding suburbs. It operates as a deep-level subway in Downtown Pittsburgh, but runs mostly at-grade in the suburbs south of the city. The system is largely linear in a north-south direction, with one terminus near Pittsburgh's central business district and two termini in the South Hills. The system is owned and operated by Pittsburgh Regional Transit. The T is one of the surviving first-generation streetcar systems in North America, with the oldest portions of the network dating back to 1903 and the Pittsburgh Railways. It is also one of only three light rail systems in the United States that continues to use the broad 5 ft 2+1⁄2 in Pennsylvania Trolley Gauge on its lines instead of the 4 ft 8+1⁄2 instandard gauge. In 2022, the system had a ridership of 2,429,500.
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 Wabash Tunnel is a former railway tunnel and presently an automobile tunnel through Mt. Washington in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Constructed early in the 20th century by railroad magnate George J. Gould for the Wabash Railroad, it was closed to trains and cars between 1946 and 2004.
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 W.D. Mansfield Memorial Bridge, commonly known as the Dravosburg Bridge, is a cantilever bridge that carries vehicular traffic across the Monongahela River between McKeesport, Pennsylvania and Dravosburg, Pennsylvania in the United States.
Port Perry was a town along the Monongahela River near Braddock, Pennsylvania and by the mouth of Turtle Creek. It disappeared by 1945, having been gradually replaced by railroad tracks serving the nearby Edgar Thomson Steel Works.
Mount Washington is a hill in Pittsburgh, on the southern banks of the Monongahela River and Ohio River.