by Allen Hazen
Before the Pennsylvania Railroad's line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh was completed, freight service on this route was provided by the "Main Line of Public Works," a combination of canals and railways: rail from Philadelphia to Columbia, boat up the Susquehanna and Juniata rivers through Harrisburg to (I think) Hollidaysburg (near Altoona), then the "Portage Railway" over the mountains to Johnstown, then boat downstream to Pittsburgh: three inter-modal transfers. One technique for minimizing the labor-intensive transshipment (think of it as analogous to containerization!) was the sectional canal boat: a canal boat designed to be disassembled into segments that could be carried on railway cars, then reassembled when water was reached. With the freight staying where it was stowed in a boat-segment from end to end.
Question: how were canalboat segments loaded onto the flat cars? Were there cranes big enough to lift them? Or were the cars heavy enough that they would stay on track running down a ramp into the water, so boat segments could be floated on and off them?
(I've known about the "Main Line" for half a century, and have visited the semi-restored site of one of the Portage Railway's "inclined planes" outside Altoona, but -- embarrassingly -- have never learned the details of the operation!)
Question: how were canalboat segments loaded onto the flat cars? Were there cranes big enough to lift them? Or were the cars heavy enough that they would stay on track running down a ramp into the water, so boat segments could be floated on and off them?
(I've known about the "Main Line" for half a century, and have visited the semi-restored site of one of the Portage Railway's "inclined planes" outside Altoona, but -- embarrassingly -- have never learned the details of the operation!)