[PRCo] Re: 1936___Flood

[Fred Schneider]

My parents lived in a rented home in Oakmont at the time.   Dad took
quite a few pictures of Oakmont and Verona in the flood.  Sadly, as he
got older the mind was no longer clear.  He threw everything out without
the slightest question about their value.   There is a common picture
that the Pittsburgh Press published (the marooned photographer probably
walked out of their inbound loading dock onto the Pennsylvania Railroad
elevated) showing a streetcar on Liberty or Penn in water up to the roof
carlines (that would be something above nine feet of water on the
street).   I think I may have the newspapers but finding them in this
pit is problematic.
As I recall from the route cards, every route was shut down which
implies not that every line was under water but that the Duquesne Light
plant on Brunot's Island was inundated.   The Oakmont - Verona line was
never restored to service but that needs more research to determine if
it was flood related or not.  The actually route was mostly above flood
stage and also in paved streets in the Allegheny River valley.  If there
was any flood damage, it might have been from gullies that fed
tributaries to the Allegheny such as Sandy Creek.  I think think that
line had simply expired from an overdose of gasoline.

Note that the flood didn't just affect the Pittsburgh area.  There was
an extremely heavy snow pack covering much of the state in early March
1936, which was followed by drenching rains.  I think the Delaware River
basin escaped harm, but the Allegheny, Monongahela and Susquehanna
Rivers did not.  (Understanding I'm composing this off the top of my
head ... give me the luxury of a mistake here or there.)  The water rose
well over the tracks in the PRR station in Harrisburg ... that is
between 6 and 7 blocks away from the river.  Valley Railways lost its
access to Harrisburg because the Walnut St. Bridge was severely weakened
(Hurricane Agnes in 1972 weakened it even more so that autos were now
restricted; and the most recent flood caused several piers to
collapse).    Down the Susquehanna at Columbia, the water chose not to
follow the river around a bend (between Marietta and Columbia) and took
out the PRR's Atglen and Susquehanna Branch (called the Low-Grade and
later named that by Conrail).  Downtown Wilkes-Barre was flooded ... Ed
Miller has Mike Lavelle's negatives of a row of cars holding down the
Market St. Bridge over the Susquehanna River ... that must have been a
mad dash to get them onto the bridge which was higher than the streets a
few blocks away at the carbarn.  There the water was over the
Wilkes-Barre Connecting Railroad, which was on a bridge over Market
Street ... had the cars been left in the barn they would have been in
water above the roofs. Possibly over the trolley wire.   Sunbury &
Northumberland Railway never completely restored its entire fleet of
cars submerged in the flood. Like Pittsburgh, Johnstown had a car under
water downtown..  There may have been others dampened but I think the
carbarn at Moxham, which was on the uphill side of Central Avenue, was
OK.  But the Windber interurban line was washed out.  I have no idea how
badly it was hit; only that revenues were insufficient to justify
restoration of rail service.   The West Penn's line from Leechburg to
Apollo was devastated ... one car that was out on the line and protected
up on a hill survived (that was 204, which became third 212 and ran in
the Coike Region until 1950); the rest of the fleet at Leechburg was
destroyed.  Replacing the line would have been tantamount to building a
new line, which one didn't do in 1936. A substantial part of the line
was destroyed.   The Kittanning and Ford City operation was shut down
not because of flood damage but because of revenues insufficient to
sustain operations.  Altoona lost nothing but two years later another
flood wiped out the Tyrone interurban ... or at least the March 31 1938
date is in one of Harold Cox's earlier publications (this I did look
up).

I'm certain the "damage" to electric railways would have been much worse
had the flood occurred ten years early.   There were 89 electric
railways in the state in 1926 and 29 in 1936.  Many of those river
cities and towns with a high flood potential, such as DuBois,
Punxsutawney, Indiana, Warre, Oil City, Corry, Williamsport,
Chambersburg, ad infinitum, were already gone.

The State Department of Internal Affairs required annual reports from
every railway in the state.  One year is missing from the file.  That is
1936, which ended that summer.  I suspect the state just gave up and
exonerated the railways from trying to reconstruct data that was, by
then, in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean.


Jim Holland wrote:

> Good Morning!
>
>         Quoting from Lorant's book on pg.354:
>
>         """On St.Patrick's day in 1936 Pgh. suffered one
> of its most devastating floods.    On Monday, March 16,
> the waters rose to 21.7-feet; two days later they
> had risen to 46-feet.......       there was a fear of
> epidemic and of looting.     The Downtown section
> was placed under martial law."""
>
>         Is It Recorded as to how much was under water?
>
>         How far out Penn  --  to Butler?     This would
> also include Liberty.
>
>         Parts of Grant at least.
>
>         What about North Side?
>
>         West End would  *seem*  relatively immune except
> for RR along river.
>
>         McKeesport?
>
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
>
> Jim
>
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>