Empire Tunnel in PA

Nick,
Do you want all of the pics, or just the highest quailty?

Rob

That's at your discretion. In general, if they are big pics (file or screen size) or if you're on a dial up connection, just the good ones. If they are smaller pics, you have broadband, or they all have something worth showing, go ahead and post them all.

-Nick

Glad to see this continuing, and I would love to see the pics as well, Freak.
Thnx so very much for taking the time to pursue this.

Nicolai, a friend has some of the logging series and I saw a picture of what, structually, could have been the bridge, but the name was wrong.

Malley

I guess I have to have the pics on a website already, and I don't. I will email them to both of you if you just send a quick message to [email protected].

Pics hosted. For the sake of forum viewers, I scaled them down and did some selective cropping. Contact one of us for an email with the full versions (7MB total - one scan is 2000x1100).

After looking at those pictures, I'm even more curious about this bridge. There are at least five different types of bridge structure there, and the piers look equally as varied. Is it possible that these bridge portions were purchased second-hand? The Kinzua bridge was replaced around the turn of the century to handle heavier equipment - so if this was a general trend, there could have been a lot of older, lighter bridges on the market...

-Nick

Nicolai, it is a spindly looking bugger for sure. Wouldn't want to sent a big articulated out across it.
One of those thru-trusses actually looks like a Bollman with all the rod sections as well as the beams.
The odd spacing of the piers struck me at the time of my visit. Some may well be gone, victims of Toby Creek or stone harvesters.
When we visited the Patterson Creek Cutoff, we noted that the western bridge over the Potomac had a decidedly 'cobbled' look about it; like they used whatever iron was laying around the shop.
Some of the CRR's bridge may well have been 'previously owned'. Did we discuss when they scrapped it?
Malley

I haven't seen much about the line's demise, so I'm guessing probably in the scrap drives during the Second World War. I'm going to post on another forum about the practice of reusing bridges, and see if that gets us anywhere.

-Nick

Nicolai, that makes perfect sense. By the dates on the Patterson Creek bridge, it was apparently strengthened and repaired during WWII, and that may explain the unscheduled look of some of the work.
Scrap drives cleaned out a lot of old bridges, and it surprises me that some survived. I'm guessing some were just too big to tackle if the tracks were already gone.
Malley

The replies on the other forum seemed to have stopped, so I'll report what they told me. Basically, yes, bridge sections were deemed valuable material, so if a bridge was replaced, the old span was likely to find its way to a yard or other storage area in case it was needed. (One member pointed out that turntables, which are in many ways bridges, have been reused as regular bridge spans.) So it is extremely likely that the CRRR went around and bought up bridge sections that were too light for other railroads and threw them all up at Carman. This is how such a small railroad could afford such a large bridge structure, and is why it is such an odd-looking piece of work.

I'm definitely curious to see more pictures of this bridge. I think there is another copy of the Taber book in the Spec. Coll. library up here, I might go investigate some time this week.

-Nick

The CRR closed down in 1948 or 49, so it actually made it through the war. I know of at least two old non-RR bridges along the Toby Creek corridor that were scrapped in WWII, one at Carrier and one at Blue Rock. The bridge peirs are still there, and there's a swinging bridge across the pair at Blue Rock.

'freak, where relative to Carman are Carrier and Blue Rock? I presume they cross Toby Creek.

Re-reading old posts, I see I got lost mid thought (happens a lot, lately) when I was agreeing with Nick about the likely scavenged nature of the bridge sections, and observed about the odd pier spacing. It would seem likely that the builders spaced the piers to fit the bridge sections they had rather than any other engineering consideration.

BTW, 'freak, great pics and thank you.
Malley

Blue Rock is 3-4 miles south of Carman along Toby Creek and Carrier is another 2-3 miles south of Blue Rock. It's interesting to walk on the western side of the valley and see the old path of the original single-track BR&P.

The Toby Valley is peppered with logging and mining railroads. Belmouth, Laurel, Coward, Vineyard, Jenkins, Baghdad, Curry, Walburn, Mead, and Brandy Camp Runs all had standard or narrow gauge logging railroads built up them in the 1890s and early 1900s. There was a standard gauge RR just south of the Empire Tunnel that switchbacked up the hill and extended for severa miles into the woods. There was another standard gauge RR built up the hill from Carrier that extended 8 miles or so into the woods. I have been walking several miles of these railroads over the past year or so and they're in pretty good shape! You can see the tie indents in several sections on all of them, and every once in a while you'll find a spike or bridge support.

historicRRfreak wrote:Blue Rock is 3-4 miles south of Carman along Toby Creek and Carrier is another 2-3 miles south of Blue Rock. It's interesting to walk on the western side of the valley and see the old path of the original single-track BR&P.

'freak, do I recall that the swing bridge gives access to the bike trail? Seem to remember some reference to it.
Thanks again for the pictures.
Malley