The Railroad That Never Was

Herbert H. Harwood Jr.

Description

A battle of titans over the building of a railroad

Herbert H. Harwood, Jr., tells the story of one of the most infamous railroad construction projects of the late 19th century. This 200-mile line through Pennsylvania's most challenging mountain terrain was intended to form the heart of a new trunk line from the East Coast to Pittsburgh and the Midwest. Conceived in 1881 by William H. Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and a group of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia industrialists, the South Pennsylvania Railroad was intended to break the Pennsylvania Railroad's near-monopoly in the region. The line was within a year of opening when J. P. Morgan brokered a peace treaty that aborted the project and helped bolster his position in the world of finance. The railroad right of way and its tunnels sat idle for 60 years before coming to life in the late 1930s as the original section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Based on original letters, documents, diaries, and newspaper reports, The Railroad That Never Was uncovers the truth behind this mysterious railway.

Contents
Sources and Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Prelude: The Omnipotent Pennsylvania Railroad
2. The Back Story
3. Why?
4. Vanderbilt Takes Charge
5. The Spoilers
6. The Syndicate Forms
7. A Rugged Route
8. Building a Mountain Railroad
9. The Second Front
10. Cooler Heads and Colder Feet Emerge
11. A Summer Cruise on the Hudson
12. Not Quite Dead
13. The End
14. Railroad to Superhighway, More or Less . . .
15. Epilogue: Ghost Hunting along the South Penn

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Railroads
• Transportation
• Rail transport
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253001559
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

THE RAILROAD THAT NEVER WAS
THE RAILROAD THAT NEVER WAS
VANDERBILT, MORGAN, AND THE HERBERT H. HARWOOD, JR. SOUTH PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD
RAILROADS PAST PRESENT George M. Smerk, editor
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
www.iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
Orders by e-mail [e-mail]
2010 by Herbert H. Harwood, Jr.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harwood, Herbert H.
The railroad that never was : Vanderbilt, Morgan, and the South Pennsylvania Railroad / Herbert H. Harwood, Jr.
p. cm. - (Railroads past and present)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-35548-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1.
South Pennsylvania Railroad. 2. Railroads-
Design and construction. I. Title.
TF25.S67H392 2010
385.09748-dc22
2010010147
1 2 3 4 5 15 14 13 12 11 10
To PAUL J. WESTHAEFFER (1916-93)
Whose friendship and whose unfulfilled hope to complete his own South Pennsylvania history directly inspired this work
CONTENTS
SOURCES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION

1 PRELUDE: THE OMNIPOTENT PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD
2 THE BACK STORY
3 WHY?
4 VANDERBILT TAKES CHARGE
5 THE SPOILERS
6 THE SYNDICATE FORMS
7 A RUGGED ROUTE
8 BUILDING A MOUNTAIN RAILROAD
9 THE SECOND FRONT
10 COOLER HEADS AND COLDER FEET EMERGE
11 A SUMMER CRUISE ON THE HUDSON
12 NOT QUITE DEAD
13 THE END
14 RAILROAD TO SUPERHIGHWAY, MORE OR LESS
15 EPILOGUE: GHOST HUNTING ALONG THE SOUTH PENN
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
SOURCES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As will be noted from the source notes, much of the material in this book came from original documents that at one time had been in the files of the corporate secretary of the Baltimore Ohio Railroad, which inherited the records of the South Pennsylvania Syndicate, South Pennsylvania Railroad, and American Construction Company when it bought the property in 1904. But therein lies a mysterious tale. Much of this material was subsequently turned over to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission by both the B O and Pennsylvania Railroad (which in turn had inherited a portion from the B O) and is presently preserved in the State Archives in Harrisburg. The Turnpike Commission was primarily interested in the records directly relating to the railroad s surveys, property, and construction; as a result, a residue of invaluable corporate material and correspondence remained in Baltimore until at least 1988. It was during an inventory of the stored B O corporate secretary s office files, then in temporary storage at the B O Railroad Museum, that this South Penn material came to light.
Once the inventory was completed, however, all the office files were removed to CSX headquarters in Jacksonville. Much was subsequently returned to the museum, but somewhere in the process all of the South Penn-related material disappeared. An optimistic scenario is that it remains in some cob-webbed corner in Jacksonville. But in any event, I have donated photocopies of all the documents noted here, plus others, to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, where they are, or will be, accessible.
Otherwise, two people deserve special mention for their enormous help-Christopher T. Baer of the Hagley Library in Wilmington, Delaware, and Russell Love of Plum, Pennsylvania. To say that Chris Baer was helpful is like saying that engines are helpful in getting a jetliner off the ground and keeping it airborne. The custodian of numerous corporate records at the Hagley, and with a bottomless personal knowledge of eastern railroad history, he was essential in putting more factual meat on this book s bones, making sense out of what were often behind-the-scenes corporate maneuverings and decisions, and putting it all in perspective. Helpful indeed!
Russ Love s passion is the physical part of the South Penn-its route, both built and only projected, and its visible remains. To that end he has dug endlessly into the original railroad surveys in the Pennsylvania State Archives files, correlated them to present-day maps and aerial photographs, and almost literally has trooped over every foot of the ghost railroad s route. He has generously shared his work through his web site and two CDs illustrating his innumerable findings. As noted in the text, all of chapter 15 as well as some material on the line s surveys and construction in this book came out of Russ s work.
A special kind of thanks goes to the late Paul J. Westhaeffer, a highly competent and serious historian whose published works include the definitive history of the Cumberland Valley Railroad. Following that effort he began work on his own South Penn book and, in the process, shared some of his information with me. Ironically, toward the end of his life he asked me to carry on and finish the project, which he felt unable to do-but, sadly, in 1989 the time was not right. With this work, I hope I have come somewhere near to what Paul intended, although I suspect that he would have done better.
Others who provided materials, photos, and other sorts of help include Sharon Beischer; Kurt Bell and Nicholas Zmijewski of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania; Carrie Blough of the Historical and Genealogical Society of Somerset County, Pennsylvania; Ken Bradford; Ava Bretzik, director of the Asa Packer Mansion and Museum in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania; Mitchell E. Dakelman, researcher, collector, and author of the pictorial book The Pennsylvania Turnpike (Arcadia Publishing Co., 2004); Gerald Francis of the Lower Merion Historical Society; Gerald Kuncio; John Maranto, archivist for the B O Railroad Museum; Kevin Martin at the Hagley Library, Edward H. Weber, and Thomas T. Taber III. Roberta Poling of Thunder Grafix in Columbia, Maryland, is responsible for many of the maps
Thanks, too, to those who pulled this mess together and made a book out of it: Sponsoring Editor Linda Oblack, who had the faith, if not good sense, to commit to the project, and her assistant, Peter Froehlich; Brian Herrmann, project editor; Elaine Otto, copy editor supreme; Miki Bird, managing editor; Chandra Mevis, editorial assistant; and the book s designer, Jamison Cockerham. Elise Meyer-Bothling did her usual meticulous job of indexing.
Herbert H. Harwood, Jr.
THE RAILROAD THAT NEVER WAS
INTRODUCTION
Drive the Pennsylvania Turnpike through the Alleghenies, and you will be touched by a ghost the entire way. You will catch it briefly in the remaining tunnels, but elsewhere along the highway it hides well, showing itself only fleetingly and then only if you know when and where to look. It is always close by, though, usually lurking beneath the trees and undergrowth. It is a phantom, to be sure, but one with solid form-high earth embankments and deep cuts through the forbidding terrain, and small stone bridges and culverts lost in deep backwoods. Now mostly engulfed by nature or intermittently paved over, these are the tangible remains of what was once heralded as one of the boldest and most daring railroad projects of its time: a 208-mile-long mainline railroad that would blast its way through the Alleghenies over a route that earlier surveyors and engineers had despaired of, producing the shortest line between Pittsburgh and the East Coast. It is also a ghost with the best of breeding, fathered in the early 1880s by a distinguished roster of capitalists with names like William H. Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Clay Frick. It was designed and built by some of the best engineers in the business and finally put to an uneasy rest by J. Pierpont Morgan in one of the more legendary episodes of Gilded Age finance.
Its formal name was the South Pennsylvania Railroad, usually simply shortened to the South Penn. But mention the South Penn today, even to many serious railroad historians, and the best you may get is a noncommittal mumble or a quizzical stare. Even the few who do connect usually think of it only as the foundation for the country s first long-distance superhighway and know little more. Yet this impossible railroad, which was to form a new trunk line between Pittsburgh and the East, came close to overcoming its innumerable obstacles. And even after it was declared dead, it continued breathing at least a quarter of a century longer.
Although the South Penn s genesis dated to the late 1830s, and its corporate identity to the mid-i85os, its real life began in 1881. That year Vanderbilt s agents acquired the charter and corporate shell of a moribund company with a misbegotten past and seemingly no future. Vanderbilt then promptly dispatched surveyors through Pennsylvania s rugged southern tier to plot the path of a double-track main line connecting Pittsburgh with Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, forming a bridge between the Midwest and the large industrial and population centers in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New Yo