Ken wrote:
I do know that, at one time, there was a proposed homer, cherry tree and susquehanna railroad planned that would have run along this grade and hooked up with the former cherry tree and dixonville railroad, i think around heilwood (?) and then hooked up with the clearfield cluster... this line was never completed... but may have been started from the homer city end.
The proposed rail line would have been part of the New York Central Railroad's "back door" route into Pittsburgh in order to be more competitive with the rival Pennsylvania Railroad. From Homer City it would have continued down towards Blairsville, running through Greensburg, and entering Pittsburgh via McKeesport or something like that. The overall war plan was scuttled when the New Haven's J.P. Morgan got the Central and Pennsy to have a sit-down chit-chat aboard his yacht, the Corsair. The Corsair Agreements, totally illegal today, basically established territories and prohibited encroachment into another carrier's domain. Existing lines stayed the way they were, but planned and uncompleted extensions (the South Penn Railroad, now part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike) were abandoned.
The line in question would have connected with the Cherry Tree & Dixonville at Sample Run Junction, just west of Western Junction in Clymer. What remained, once the Corsair Agreements were signed off on, was the single-track line
sans any junction from Clymer to the Sample Run Mine. This is why the junction in Clymer going to the Sample Run Mine is called Western Junction, since it was here that the Western Branch veered off from the main line. Further down where Pa. Route 286 curves right (heading westward), Sample Run Junction was where the Sample Run Branch connected with the Western Branch (and continued to be identified as such in official railroad documents). Clymer's passenger station was located on the Western Branch.
Was the line "started" in Homer City, or was it "started" on the eastern end? For that question to be answered, we need to know who started construction on the Yellow Creek Branch and when. What is known is that the line was surveyed, and part of the Western Branch was built, although the Western Branch construction may have been part of the original CT&D agreement. Both Western and Sample Run branches were opened for operation in October 1906. The original CT&D line, from Cherry Tree to Wandin, was opened in December 1904, with the line from Wandin to Idamar in December 1906. Since the Western Branch opened in October of that year, we know that the tracks got as far as Clymer by then, too. Beyond took just a little bit longer.
Oh, in addition to the Western Branch continuing down Yellow Creek Valley, there also existed a planned Penn Run Branch off of it, also never built.