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  • A Rail Equivalent of Interstate 80

  • This forum is for discussion of "Fallen Flag" roads not otherwise provided with a specific forum. Fallen Flags are roads that no longer operate, went bankrupt, or were acquired or merged out of existence.
This forum is for discussion of "Fallen Flag" roads not otherwise provided with a specific forum. Fallen Flags are roads that no longer operate, went bankrupt, or were acquired or merged out of existence.

Moderator: Nicolai3985

 #713656  by 2nd trick op
 
A lot of the present-day railfan community isn't aware just how important the sparsely-settled, but resource-rich area of Northwestern Pennsylvania was in the first half of the Twentieth Century. New York Central, for example, founded a separate subsidiary, designated the Beech Creek Railway, to tap the soft-coal veins of Clearfield and adjoining counties.

A Trains issue from the late 1940's describes a visit to the crossing of PRR's Low Grade (Driftwood-Brady's Bend) Branch and B&O's Buffalo line (the former Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh), at Falls Creek, Penna, a few miles north and west of DuBois and within sight of the present I-80, with additional moves from NYC (using PRR trackage rights) and Erie (on B&O). A few miles on the other side of DuBois, at C&M Junction, a B&O line diverged northward to reach the tanneries of Steuben and Tioga counties. When the line was washed out by the flooding of 1942, the uppermost portion survived for many years as the short line Wellsviille, Addison and Galeton.

As pointed out in my first post, the Low Grade line, now owned by regional Buffalo and Pittsburgh, and still operated primarily for a near-daily unit coal move between a mine in northern Cambria County and a PP&L plant near Watsontown, represents the lowest crossing of the Eastern Continental Divide, and requires no helper service; the B&O line cited above used the same gateway. At one time, NYC service diverged from its trackage rights at Brookville and continued west to Youngstown via Stoneboro, Penna.

Few of us, i think, would be naive enough to envision a major revival of interest in the revival of these routes any time soon, but the fact remains that fuel efficiency is the single largest factor driving rail operating decisions today. Very few of us anticipated the re-route of a major freight move over E-L's Bloomsburg Branch in the 1960's, or CNJ's Greenwood Lake Branch a few years later, but it came to pass.

Some fresh food for thought.
 #1598988  by 2nd trick op
 
I recently invested a few bucks in an online Trains subscription, which includes access to a complete archive going back to the magazine's founding in 1940. The June, 1943 issue features an article on a stillborn new trunk line christened the New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago. and apparently the brainchild of D&H President L. F. Loree,(Unfortunately, the link will work only for Trains-online subscribers).

https://www.trains.com/trn/magazine/arc ... june-1943/

But at any rate, the line's developers insisted upon no grade crossings, and envisioned 100-MPH passenger service -- New York to Chicago in less than 10 hours; how well this would have meshed with Loree's preference for drag freight service with maximum tonnage and at very low speeds, is not addressed. Nor is the possibility of terminating the proposed line at Youngstown rather than Pittsburgh, in flat country and with more possible connections.