Pennsy Competition in Sou. Pa.

The hated Pa Turnpike?  When I lived in the Philadelphia suburbs, it was a very pleasant drive.  Renewed my acquaintance about a decade ago, and it was still quite a beautiful experience.

It was the NYC that started this line. Some parts of today's PA Turnpike, especially the eastern end, are on the actual right-of-way that would have been the railroad.

 

Had this line been completed it would have been a bear to operate. The grades on this route would likely have been over 2%, which is a tough operating obstacle for a railroad.

 

I have traveled that road many times and never took note of where the tunnel you mentioned is. Can you give me a mile marker or some other landmark so I can try to spot it when I'm headed home from York in a couple weeks?

Oh, boy....sometimes I catch it, and sometimes I don't.  It is kind of down over a hill on the north side very close to the highway....I have never thought to note the mile marker.

I, too, have driven that road a lot, more often in the past than currently.  I had read

about it somewhere, the tunnel opening, and happened to catch it, probably when the

foliage was off.  April, with no foliage, might be the best time.  I think it is west of

the four road tunnels, but am not sure.  With York the subject, I just wondered if that

was the only artifact left of that construction.  I just kind of "feel" when I get to it.

Sorry, no help at all. 

It's several miles west of Somerset Pa. If you google,  pasda, on the left side of the homepage click on elevations/topos, click on the 7th entry down in yellow (PAMAP program 3.2 digital elevation model, scroll to the bottom, click on data applications and viewers. Zoom in to Somerset pa.  Top left side set (display imagery)  on lidar hilshade,   set (display tile index) on PAMAP.  Drag West along I-76 to tile 27001580pas The tunnel is on the north edge of turnpike in the second hill East, of the West edge of this tile.  The road has a wide spot on both sides of the hill. in the next tile West  you can see the South Penn grade going off to the north. If you go east of Somerset when you come out the next tunnel you can see the grade on the South side of the road up on the bank. Just west of Breezwood is another place you can see the grade going off to the north. I think all the tunnels on the turnpike were enlargements of the RR tunnels

 

  Galon Tonell

The South Pennsylvania RR was the New York Central's response to the Pennsy building the West Shore RR. I believe the compromise that was engineered was by JP Morgan, who got the Central to stop construction in return for the West Shore being leased by the Pennsy to them.

 

Neal Schorr, a regular Forum contributor, is one of the author's of this book.

 

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...18?ean=9780738535326

 

Peter

Sure.  95 has the infamous "slow from Academy to Girard" (and I don't even travel that route, just hear it on the radio nearly every day!), Tpke has "slow Westbound form Willow Grove to Mid County tolls" (or "slow Westbound Bensalem to Fort Washington").  At least it's not as bad as the Schuylkill Expressway.  (But at least you don't have to pay for the privilege of driving the Schuylkill or 95)

 

I don't miss driving the Tpke every day.  (did it for about 4 years straight from early 2003 to 2007 and on and off for 1 1/2 years in the late 90's)

 

Interesting about the grade though.  Traveling in a car, the hills on the Bensalem (formerly Philly) to King of Prussia stretch are not drastic enough that I take too much notice.

 

-Dave

See, "The Railroad That Never Was: Vanderbilt, Morgan, and the South Pennsylvania Railroad (Railroads Past and Present)" by Herbert Harwood.

 

Many of the tunnels that were started for the the S. Penn were completed for the PA Turnpike starting with the ones near Roxbury and Fannetsburg, and Burnt Cabins, PA and then proceeding westward. 

 

There are a number of still existing tunnels, cuts, and stone culverts still remaining out in Somerset and Fulton Co.

 

I have a collection of RPPC's that show these tunnels partially completed prior to the TP construction and during that same finishing process.

Thanks, Galon.  I was hoping somebody would have good directions.  I just sort of,

sometimes, spot the location by the shape of the hill above it, if I'm paying attention.

And to mwb, for I wondered if there were more "ruins" out there than just that one

tunnel.  I thought I had read that the turnpike tunnels, at least some of them, had been started for the RR, too.  To stay awake driving the TP I have covered bridges I look for..three in the past but I only see two lately, etc. and other sights. 

Pete is right.  Neal Schorr co-authored a very good book on the Pennsylvania Turnpike a few years ago.

 

Parts of the abandoned turnpike are visible from the north side of the highway between the summit of Sideling Hill and Breezewood (going west).  I, too, can't recall the exact mile markers.  Winter is the best time to see it, though.

 

Also, going east, just shy of the 174 milemarker is a big area on right side of the road.  That is where the old road joined the existing turnpike.  This is just past the exit to the Sideling Hill service plaza.

 

I have been fortunate enough to have driven on the abandoned turnpike its entire length, entering near Breezewood and passing through the tunnels at Ray's Hill and Sideling Hill.  This last tunnel was, until its closing in 1968, the longest tunnel on the highway.  In fact when you get to the middle (because of its elevation), you can't see either opening!  The tunnels were equipped with doors that could be closed so that they could be used as bomb shelters.

 

http://www.briantroutman.com/h...paturnpike/trip.html

 

I worked for a company that built toll collection systems and led one of the three major projects that (among other things) put E-ZPass on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  I consider that to be one of the crowning achievements of my career.

 

George

 

There is also a good portion of this discussed in the Triumph series books about the PRR. I have a couple & forget which volume it's in, but I do recall reading it

If I remember correctly, I think Neal Schorr (PRRMiddleDivision) once built a "what-if" HO version of the South Penn in the Conrail era. I have the article somewhere in my magazine collection. Until then I never knew about the SPRR.

You're correct about Neal's South Penn RR, Mike. I believe that piece was in Model Railroader in the late 80s. It was the 1st time I had seen any of his work and have been following his publications ever since. I was very pleased when I met him in person at York around 2000.

 

His Pennsylvania Middle Division RR is one of the finest pikes I have ever seen in print.

 

Peter

 

Coincidentally, I just discovered another book on the TP history, but of the highway, not

the RR.  "The Pennsylvania Turnpike", a History, Dan Cupper.  Applied Arts Publishers,

2100 State Road, Lancaster, Pa.

http://www.abandonedturnpike.com/

 

The principal participants in the South Penn were the NYC and the Philadelphia & Reading. The P&R's most controversial and colorful president, Franklin B. Gowen, financed the South Penn to serve Andrew Carnegie's steel mills in Pittsburgh. Had the line been completed, it would have resembled the New York, Ontario & Western rather than the NYC.

 

The two best places to see evidence of the South Penn from comfortable seats in an auto are the I-83 bridge across the Susquehanna at Harrisburg (an exit on the west shore leads to the Amtrak/Pennsy station) and the PA Turnpike between Tuscarora Tunnel and the Fort Littleton Exit (Route 522 to the East Broad Top).

 

From the I-83 bridge, look north to the concrete arch bridge built by the Reading and used by the NS. Approaching the west shore (Lemoyne), tan stone piers are visible through the arches of the bridge. They were built to support 23 iron deck trusses. They converged at the eastern shore to reach the Reading.

 

The East Broad Top began to construct the Shade Gap Branch to the west portal of Tuscarora Tunnel and graded a site for a yard. Burnt Cabins was to be an interchange, like Mount Union, where freight and passengers transferred between narrow gauge and standard gauge. Today, Route 522 generally follows this line. PennDot stores equipment at the yard site. There, the South Penn grade diverges to the south and east of the Turnpike and swings back west to cross the road east of Burnt Cabins. A viaduct was to cross the South Branch of the Aughwick Creek. The grade crosses the Turnpike again and follows a fairly straight course east of the Turnpike along the west slope of Brush Ridge. Numerous cuts, fills, and culverts mark the right-of-way to a point west of the Fort Littleton Exit, though access to this wild area (like most of the South Penn) is difficult. The grade meets the Turnpike for several miles to Hustontown. Then it swings south.

 

Author Herbert H. Harwood, Jr., offers a poignant conclusion, as follows:

 

From the restored 1901 Pittsburgh & Lake Erie station and headquarters building, some creative visualizer can look down from the bridge and imagine the "Philadelphia - Pittsburgh Express" arriving in, say, 1925, behind a heavy South Penn Pacific and watch its  through Cleveland and Chicago cars beings switched out to continue west over the Erie-P&LE-New York Central route (p. 148).

 

 

Here's a little photograph that's in my collection of such items.

 

Family out for the day at the South Penn Tunnel at Roxbury ~1900