The Pennsylvania Railroad: A Brief Look in Time

By Eugene Weiser

Entire libraries could be written on the Pennsylvania Railroad ranging from its history to the different businesses it owned, far too much to cover here which is a mere brief history of the railroad. The Pennsy was an institution to the City of Philadelphia and State of Pennsylvania. For over 100 years, the keystone represented the PRR as much as it did the State of Pennsylvania itself. For history’s sake, you cannot really speak of the Pennsy without also mentioning the New York Central (and vice versa). It is quite amazing how similar both were outside of their operational practices. Both were institutions, two of the largest railroads in the country, and the class of the industry for decades.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eugene Weiser
• Release date: Jan 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301430970

Eugene Weiser

Golf Course Superintendent. Love growing grass. Enjoying the outdoors is the best part of the job. Seeing other people enjoy the course is the best feeling in the world.

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Introduction

Entire libraries could be written on the Pennsylvania Railroad ranging from its history to the different businesses it owned, far too much to cover here which is a mere brief history of the railroad. The Pennsy was an institution to the City of Philadelphia and State of Pennsylvania. For over 100 years, the keystone represented the PRR as much as it did the State of Pennsylvania itself. For history’s sake, you cannot really speak of the Pennsy without also mentioning the New York Central (and vice versa). It is quite amazing how similar both were outside of their operational practices. Both were institutions, two of the largest railroads in the country, and the class of the industry for decades.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was an American Class I railroad, founded in 1846. Commonly referred to as the Pennsy, the PRR was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The PRR was the largest railroad by traffic and revenue in the U.S. for the first half of the twentieth century and was at one time the largest publicly traded corporation in the world. At the end of 1925, it operated 10,515 miles of rail line; in the 1920s it carried about three times, the traffic (measured by ton-miles of freight) as other railroads of comparable length, such as Union Pacific or Santa Fe. The only rival was New York Central, which carried around three-quarters of PRR's ton-miles.

During its history, the PRR merged with or had an interest in at least 800 other rail lines and companies. The corporation still holds the record for the longest continuous dividend history: it paid out annual dividends to shareholders for more than 100 years in a row. At one point, the budget for the PRR was larger than that of the U.S. government; at its peak, it employed about 250,000 workers.

In 1968, the Pennsylvania Railroad merged with its rival, the New York Central Railroad, to form the Penn Central Transportation Company. The Interstate Commerce Commission required that the ailing New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad be added in 1969. A series of events including inflation, poor management, abnormally harsh weather and the withdrawal of a government-guaranteed $200-million operating loan forced the Penn Central to file for bankruptcy protection on June 21, 1970. The viable parts of the Penn Central system were transferred in 1976 to Conrail, which began earning a profit in 1981. The Norfolk Southern Railway and CSX Transportation acquired Conrail in approximately equal portions in 1999, with Norfolk Southern now owning most of the former Pennsylvania Railroad, including the Harrisburg to Pittsburgh segment of the old Pennsy Main Line across Pennsylvania. Amtrak owns the segment east of Harrisburg.

The Pennsylvania Railroad's corporate symbol was the keystone, which is Pennsylvania's state symbol, with the letters PRR intertwined inside. When colored, it was bright red with a silver-grey inline and lettering.

The Early Years

Background

With the opening of the Erie Canal (1825) and the beginnings of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (1828), Philadelphia business interests became concerned that the port of Philadelphia would lose traffic. The state legislature was pressed to build a canal across Pennsylvania and thus the Main Line of Public Works was commissioned in 1826. It soon became evident that a single canal would not be practical and a series of railroads, incline planes, and canals was proposed. The route consisting of the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, canals up the Susquehanna and Juniata rivers, an inclined plane railroad and tunnel across the Allegheny Mountains, and canals down the Conemaugh and Allegheny rivers to Pittsburgh on the Ohio River was completed in 1834. Because freight and passengers had to change cars several times along the route and canals froze during the winter, it soon became apparent that the system was cumbersome and a better way was needed.

Early history

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania granted a charter to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1846 to build a private rail line that would connect Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. The Directors chose John Edgar Thomson, an engineer from the Georgia Railroad, to survey and construct the line. He chose a route that followed the west bank of the Susquehanna River northward to the confluence with the Juniata River, following its banks until the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains were reached at a point that would become Altoona, Pennsylvania. In order to traverse the mountains, the line climbed a moderate grade for 10 miles until it reached a split of two mountain ravines which were cleverly crossed by building a fill and having the tracks ascend a 220-degree curve that limited the grade to less than 2 percent. The crest of the mountain was penetrated by the 3,612-foot Gallitzin Tunnels and then descended by a more moderate grade to Johnstown.

The western end of the line was simultaneously built from Pittsburgh east along the banks of the Allegheny and Conemaugh rivers to Johnstown. PRR was granted trackage rights over the Philadelphia and Columbia and gained control of the three short lines connecting Lancaster and Harrisburg, instituting an all-rail link between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh by 1854. In 1857, the PRR purchased the Main Line of Public Works from the state of Pennsylvania, and abandoned most of its canals and inclined planes. The line was double track from its inception and by the end of the century, a third and fourth track were added. Over the next 50 years, PRR would expand by gaining control of other railroads by stock purchases and 999-year leases. This line is still an important cross-state corridor, carrying Amtrak's Philadelphia to Harrisburg Main Line and the Norfolk Southern Railway's Pittsburgh Line.

John Edgar Thomson (1808–1874) was the entrepreneur who led the PRR from 1852 to his death in 1874, making it the largest business enterprise in the world and an excellent model for technological and managerial innovation. He served as PRR's first Chief Engineer and third President. Thomson's sober, technical, methodical, and non-ideological personality had an important influence on the Pennsylvania Railroad, which in the mid-19th century was on the technical cutting edge of rail development, while nonetheless reflecting Thomson's personality in its conservatism and its steady growth while avoiding financial risks. His Pennsylvania Railroad was in his day the largest railroad in the world, with 6,000 miles of track, and was famous for steady financial dividends, high quality construction, constantly improving equipment, technological advances (such as replacing wood with coal), and innovation in management techniques for a large complex organization.

Early Construction

Altoona and the Horseshoe Curve

The Horseshoe Curve IS the Pennsylvania Railroad. -Headline, Altoona Tribune, August 18, 1932.

To the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), the city of Altoona has many meanings. It was the place where the company founded its system-wide locomotive and car building and repair shops. This was the largest compound of its kind in the world. The PRR's striking Logan House hotel, where passengers disembarked for food and rest, is found here. In addition, it was the point for the PRR's own line over the Alleghenies when the time came to end its dependence on the state's Allegheny Portage Railroad. Nevertheless, for the traveling public, it will probably always be known as the site of Horseshoe Curve, one of the earliest and most lasting engineering landmarks in American railroad history.

The Horseshoe Curve began because of a race for Pittsburgh’s prosperous business; by 1842, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had reached 178 miles west to Cumberland, MD (about as far west as Altoona), and was driving for the Gateway City. Philadelphia had to find a faster, easier, cheaper way to transport goods and passengers to and from Pittsburgh in order to keep their business relations with the city, and they had to do it before the B&O Railroad got there. The Main Line and APRR just was not doing the job fast enough. A bill authorizing the construction of a Philadelphia-Pittsburgh railroad was quickly signed into law by Governor Francis R. Shunk on April 13, 1846, and the Pennsylvania Railroad