Canal and rail tunnels under U.S. Steel Bldg.

[Donald Galt]

On 17 Dec 00, at 20:36, Bob Rathke wrote:

> 
> The 1830's canal system required 10 inclined plane railways
> to get over the Allegheny Mountains in the middle of
> Pennsylvania. At the base of each mountain, the canal boats
> were transfered to wheeled bogies running on rails, and a
> cable hauled the boats up - and then down - each mountain.

Lest there be some confusion:

Going westward, the Main Line canal ended at Hollidaysburg and 
recommenced at Johnstown. Between those points was the 
Allegheny Portage Railroad, onto which the boats were loaded as 
Bob describes and drawn, first by mule and later by steam 
locomotive. The inclined planes - five on each side of the summit 
and numbered from west to east - overcame the problem of 
crossing the mountains. Some of them can still be seen easily 
from the highway, like Plane 4 climbing east from Lilly and Plane 
10, at the top of which is situated the National Historical Site. Near 
the bottom of that incline, on Old Highway 22 four miles or so west 
of Hollidaysburg, is the hamlet named "Foot of Ten."

In the 1850s was built the New Portage Railroad, which avoided the 
inclines, in part by taking a much more circuitous route and by 
tunnelling at Gallitzen. This portion survived until recent years as 
the PRR branch from Hollidaysburg to Gallitzin, incorporating the 
"Muleshoe Curve."

But the Mainline Canal was doomed before the New Portage was 
completed, thanks to the building of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 
Two years later, in 1857, the entire Main Line was sold at a huge 
loss to the PRR, an immense boondoggle that affected state 
finances for years.

A tour of the canal and Portage Railway would have to include the 
Johnstown Flood Historical Monument sites. The dam that broke in 
1889 had originally been constructed to provide water for that 
portion of the canal, though it had long since been taken over as 
the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club, private preserve of the 
Fricks, Mellons, Carnegies and other Pittsburgh movers and 
shakers.

Don