[PRCo] Re: an unknown Pittsburgh coal haulage trolley line?

[Edward H. Lybarger]

Bob is right, it is not.  In haste yesterday, looking at all this in between
a couple other projects, I followed the wrong sequence:  it's supposed to go
Look, Research, Speak.  I reversed the last two, unhappily, and apologize
for the confusion.
My real clue that something was wrong with this being the P&CS tunnel was in
my last message yesterday before running out the door.  That tunnel is only
1700 feet long, not a mile, and did not run east and west.  So it couldn't
be the portal next to the Knoxville Incline.

Fortunately, we have a set of those plat books in the PTM Library.  Volume
6, Plate 5 West (left) shows BOTH portals of the P&CSRR tunnels.  The tunnel
itself is basically on a north-south axis, and emerged slightly west of the
latter-day Castle Shannon Incline.  I've attached a photo from 1910 showing
both the coal incline and the passenger/freight incline operating
simultaneously, plus a better copy of that woodcut showing the face of Mt.
Washington with all the P&CSRR's facilities.

So what is that other tunnel?  Those facilities look a lot like what's on
the woodcut. The PTM Library also has original prints of those photos, so it
was possible to look at a lot more detail than the 72 ppi screen resolution
available online.  The construction and topography lead me to conclude that
no railroad cars ever operated on these tracks.  This was simply a coal mine
portal with facilities to move a lot of coal down to the street.  That it
resembles the P&CSRR's facilities may or may not be a coincidence, but it's
certainly how you would build something like this on a cliff.

I'm going to breakfast now so I can wipe the egg off my face.

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of
robert netzlof
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 3:16 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Re: an unknown Pittsburgh coal haulage trolley line?


--- "Edward H. Lybarger" <trams2 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Aha!  Then it IS the north end of the P&CSRR!

No, I think not.

I've played cut-and-paste with bits of the Pittsburg and Carnegie
quads (circa 1902-7) from historical.maptech.com.

Oops! And then I forgot to attach it.

"Too soon we get old, too late smart."



Bob Netzlof a/k/a Sweet Old Bob


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