Empire Tunnel in PA

Noob here; looks like a great forum.
Quick question; we hiked back to Empire Tunnel on the B&P southwest of Ridgeway. At Carmen, the line turns back southeast and runs along the west side of Toby Creek. There is an abandoned Pennsy line on the east side of the creek; it is now a bike trail.
In any case, we saw the piers of a high bridge running over the active line and crossing the creek in the direction of the abandoned one. The angles are such that it has to be a rr bridge; the piers run NW-SE across the fairly substantial creek.
There are also abandoned railbeds on the west side of the creek (between live line and water), and an old map shows an interchange between lines south of Carmen. The current alignment shows signs of moving the creek to reduce the curvature.
My question- anybody know what went on in that stretch? What was the bridge about?
BTW, the rails look well used and maintained on the live line, and we saw a mixed freight.
Thanks in advance,
Malley

Welcome to the Railroad.net forums, Malley.

That bridge might have been what carried the Clarion River Railway over the creek to interchange with the PRR. The 1900 PRR CT1000 lists an interchange with this railroad at about the right spot. That would also explain the third ROW that you saw between the B&P and the creek - it would have brought the CRRy to the bridge from its interchange with the BR&P at Carman.

Neither the 1945 CT1000 nor the 1943 USGS topo maps have the interchange or bridge listed (respectively).

-Nick

Nicolai3985 wrote:Welcome to the Railroad.net forums, Malley.

That bridge might have been what carried the Clarion River Railway over the creek to interchange with the PRR. The 1900 PRR CT1000 lists an interchange with this railroad at about the right spot. That would also explain the third ROW that you saw between the B&P and the creek - it would have brought the CRRy to the bridge from its interchange with the BR&P at Carman.

Neither the 1945 CT1000 nor the 1943 USGS topo maps have the interchange or bridge listed (respectively).

-Nick

Nick-
Thankee for the comback. 'Splain to me about the Clarion River Railway. There was the Pennsy and the BP; how did the other line fit in? Where was it-up on the hill relative to the live line? There is a road (of sorts) there now, tho' the grade from Carman is gradual enough to believe steel wheel on rail; beyond the brige piers it is pretty much of a roller coaster. The grade from Carman takes you to the same height as the top of the bridge piers.
Must have been a pretty impressive bridge by the look of the surviving piers...some are gone, victims of the creek or stone miners.
The roadbed between rail and water is approximately the same height as the live line. Hence my suspicion of an old alignment, but in any case it would pass under the overhead bridge. Do you suspect the grade up from Carman is only as an approach to the bridge?
Thanks again,
Malley

Malley, I think you've got it right.

The CRRy, owned by the Pittsburg Shawmut and Northern, followed the "live line" south from Carman on the west side, likely up on the hill where that road is now. It then crossed over the "live line," the creek, and also the PRR via the bridge you've mentioned. There was an interchange between the CRRy and the PRR at Croyland, and an interchange with the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh (an ancestor of the present B&P) back at Carman.

The "extra" abandoned right of way on the west side of the creek is also very likely one of the relocations done by the BR&P, as you can see from the creek relocation. Below Carman and to the west of Croyland, the old and new lines would look like a dollar sign, with the vertical strike being the new line.

HI:

I rode the little Toby Creek railtrail last year on Vacation and had the same questions. There was the Garcoii Quarry there, now long gone! One of the tracks went to it to haul rock out!

Do any of these help?

http://pavisnet.com/tcrtt/

http://www.traillink.com/TL_Active_Page ... efault.asp?
Action=DisplayDetails&ID=165&Trail=Clarion%2DLittle+Toby+Creek+Trail
&SearchQueryString=Action%3DStateSearch%26Keyword%3D%26State%
3DPA+%2D%2D+Allegheny+National+Forest%26Activity%3D%26Use
Other%3D%26AS%5FState%3D%26AS%5FCounties%3D%26AS%5
FActivities%3D%26AS%5FSurfaces%3D%26AS%5FLength%3D

[MOD EDIT: Cut and paste entire link to browser window. As it was, it made the message window reallllly wide. -Nick]

http://www.traillink.com/maps/clarion.jpg

http://historical.maptech.com/getImage. ... g&state=PA

I have pics of the tunnel and the quarry if you like them send me an email and I will send them to ya! Please title your email "tunnel pics" so as I know where it came from.

LC
[email protected]

Nick, the B&O was uncommon fond of moving rivers, so the old alignment idea is likely true.
Did the Clarion Rail Road run on West at Carman, and that was essentially the end of the line when it connected with the BR&P/BP/B&O/Pennsy? How far did it go West, and to where?
I wonder if the high bridge interchange was eliminated when it was possible to make a connection with the B&P/Pennsy at Carman? The approaches to the bridge had to be pretty steep.
I've been doing some online digging; it isn't clear to me where the CRR went or what the West shore line was...currently B&P, formerly BR&P, and one of my maps sez it's the B&O.
Anyway, again thanks.
Malley

I altered a topo map from Terraserver to illustrate what I think was going on at Carman, somewhere between 1900 and 1930 or so.

MAP

The red line is the PRR line.

The blue dotted line was the [approximate] original line of the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh (or one of its predecessors - I found this data from a map on the BR&P Yahoo Group).

The solid blue line is the present B&P trackage, probably laid out in 1907. (This was the year the BR&P realigned itself to eliminate curves and to double track. The BR&P was taken over by the B&O in 1930 or so.)

The pinkish line is the [approximate] location of the CRRy. Its interchange with the PRR was at about the same location as the PRR station/stop at Croyland. From Carman, it followed the Clarion River west to Hallton, where it met up with a narrow gauge.

(The two items above are from Paul Pietrak's book on the BR&P and Mike Walker's RR Atlas.)

There is a picture on the BR&P Yahoo Group of the CRRy interchange at Carman. You can see a switch leading to a track that disappears into the weeds heading southwest-or-so, which could very possibly be the approach to the bridge. The photo is from the 1930s.


The CRRy was owned by the PS&N, which was abandoned in 1947. Since the PRR line through that valley wasn't extremely important, and considering maintaining that bridge was a big red mark in the ledger books, it was probably removed and sold for scrap in the late 1930s/early 1940s.

Nick, I am both pleased and dazzled. If that isn't the most comprehensive online response ever, it is in the top 5. Thank you!
As you are being both patient and helpful, let me pose some other thoughts:
-Was the Empire Tunnel built/enlarged for the '07 realignment, or did the line follow the river initially?
-Why was the connection not made at grade? Was the BR&P uncooperative, or was there enough business on the BR&P and/or Pennsy to demand a 'fly over' type interchange? Perhaps building a high bridge isn't too much harder than a low one, but a low one would have avoided what had to be challenging approaches.
ProCycle was out there on the ground on the Pennsy side; maybe he can tell us if the ramping necessary to get up to the bridge is still visible. I hope to bike it myself this summer.

Nick, what you propose is consistient with what I saw as far as old roadbeds. Your map will be a huge help when I go back up.
Best,
Malley

First, the Empire Tunnel was built during the realignment. This tunnel replaced a line along the river, which included a bad curve and traversed a swampy section (according to the 1996 topo map). One of the aerial photographs on Terraserver shows this:

Terraserver map

The black area is the swamp (I don't know why its black...).

As far as the interchange/bridge goes, I have no knowledge of anything about the CRRy (besides the PS&N owning it). But we'll try to logic our way through this. The CRRy probably would have wanted an interchange with both the PRR and BR&P at Carman, to ensure rates stayed reasonable and to ensure good service to customers. Now, to connect to the PRR, some crossing of Toby Creek would have to occur. The BR&P probably would not have let the CRRy have trackage rights to the "Carman Transfer," a PRR/BR&P interchange downstream from Carman. So the CRRy would have to construct their own, hence the bridge.

Like you said, it's not much harder building a low fly over than a higher one, and the masonry was cheap. The big railroads might have demanded a higher bridge in case they had a oversize load. The CRRy probably didn't have huge trains, but even so, it's only an extra mile or so from the BR&P to the PRR interchange over the bridge, and a locomotive could easily make 2 or 3 trips.

-Nick

Nick-
AMAZING! I can't believe how clear the old grade is after a century. Now I wish we had known to look for it on the ground.
It may well be that there was enough traffic on the BR&P that a flyover was required. If the rr was busy enough to demand double tracking, then fouling both tracks with a freight crossing over to another rr was something they wouldn't abide. Still, for the very small CRR, the bridge had to be their entire m-o-w budget forever.
Malley

Pro Cycle-
Sent you an E-mail couple days ago about the pictures.

BTW, if you have been following this, and have ridden the bike trail, what did you see on the East shore? Was the approach to the old bridge visible on that side? It is my impression, perhaps incorrectly, that things are a little flatter or that the flood plain is a little wider over there.

I'm going to fool with Nick's Terraserver image and see what I can see.
Best,
Malley

Malley -

I posed this question on a Yahoo Group that I'm a member of. I got two replies thus far, which I'll cut and paste here sometime tomorrow if I remember.

One of the guys told me that one of the volumes of the Taber logging books has a picture of your big bridge in it. There are copies of the book here in the library at PSU, so I'll make an effort to stop by sometime this week and scan it. If you have access to any of the books, it's the 10th in the series I think...

-Nick

Negatory on the Taber logging books. Some friends have the Kline series.
Thnx for the continued research.
Malley

I was doing a search on the Clarion River Railway and a portion of your discussion came up. I live in Brockway, PA and am a member of the Brockway Area Historical Society. I have several pictures of the CRR bridge that connected Carman and Croyland, and several pictures of other sections of the CRR, along with some locomotives and cars. I know your discussion occurred several months ago, but I wanted to provide more info or pics if you are interested.

Absolutely! Considering the traffic in this forum, bumping old threads is not out of the question.

I was wanting to post a picture of that bridge, but the book I mentioned earlier has been constantly checked out of the library here since I mentioned it, and will be out till July. So your picture is more than welcomed!

edit:(welcome to the railroad.net forums, by the way)

-Nick