[PRCo] Re: Pennsylvania Turnpike

[Schneider Fred]

There are two bores that are still very easy to see.

Several miles west of Somerset ... Quemahoming Tunnel is right on the  
north side of the present highway ... you can spit into it from a  
passing car but it is slightly lower than the highway and most people  
would not recognize it.   This is the only one that was actually used  
as a completed railroad tunnel ... it was the line from Somerset to  
Ligonier that fell into the control of the B&O which is probably how  
it came to be that the whole Vanderbilt South Penn Railway project  
was in B&O hands when sold to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission  
circa 1937.

Allegheny Mountain tunnel was realigned.   The west end is on the  
railroad alignment.   The east end railroad tunnel is slightly above  
and to the north of the highway tunnel.   If you park your car at the  
east end of the tunnel and walk up the dirt road to the ventilating  
shaft (or even drive up), the original tunnel is just to right.

Negro Mountain tunnel  (just west of the state police barracks, west  
of Somerset) is actually under the turnpike.   They may have caved it  
in.   I don't know for sure.   The railroad crossed the highway  
alignment at about a 15 to 20 degree angle here and about 15 to 20  
feet lower than the highway cut.   You can see the tree line trending  
slightly northwest of the roadway east of Negro Mountain cut, and  
slightly southwest on the east side of the cut .... that's the  
railroad right of way.

Chick Siebert, the chap who built those beautiful O-gauge models and  
wrote the Valley Railways and Northwestern Pennsylvania Railway  
books, went into some of those tunnels in the middle to late 1930s  
with a young friend of his.   He had or has negatives of them ... not  
sure if they wound up at Arden with some of his other negatives or  
where they went.
But I've seen his views of Blue Mountain and Kittatinny before the  
PTC began to expand it for the highway.


On Feb 19, 2009, at 11:49 AM, Dennis Fred Cramer wrote:

> My dad also used the turnpike before it was finished and opened to the
> public.  It was the most convenient way to get from Fort Indiantown  
> Gap and
> little Washington when he was in the Army.
>
> he also claims to have seen some of the original bores in Somerset  
> County
> when he was in the CCC during the 30's as a teenager.
> Dennis F. Cramer
>       Trombone
>
>
>
>