![]() ![]() The PRR opened its stone West Philadelphia Station in 1864, and the giant ten-story, gothic-fringed Broad Street Station, which served as company headquarters as well as a passenger depot, in 1881. Abraham Lincoln rode a special train from Washington, D.C., through Hanover Junction en route to delivering his famous Gettysburg Address, then traveled along that same line just two years later as a train carried his coffin on the president's final journey to his resting place in Springfield, Illinois. Train journeys were also the stuff of legends. Pennsylvania suffered its share of horrible train wrecks, including the head-on collision that killed sixty Sunday school picnickers near Fort Washington on July 17, 1856, the infamous Pike County Civil War Prison Train wreck of 1864, and the September 6, 1943, derailment of the Congressional Limited, which killed seventy-eight passengers and a dining-car employee. The danger of train travel, and the great crashes that, over time, killed hundreds of people, both fascinated and horrified the American public. One of the nation's oldest coal lines, the Switchback Railroad, was reborn as a scenic railroad for tourists visiting the beautiful mountains of Carbon County, "The Switzerland of America." The breathtaking Kinzua Viaduct in McKean County, a monument of railroad engineering, attracted tourists until its collapse into the gorge below in 2003. Indeed, railroads often promoted such parks in order to build Sunday, holiday, and vacation ridership. By the 1870s, Pennsylvania rail lines were running excursion trains to Niagara Falls, Atlantic City, Pocono resorts, and other leisure destinations, including Williams Grove picnic park near Carlisle, site of the Pennsylvania Grange's annual fair. As railroad travel became more accepted and more convenient, passengers began to use them for all kinds of travel - business, personal, and leisure. Like other great railroad hotels, Altoona's Logan House, built by the Pennsylvania Railroad, served as host for presidents and kings. of Philadelphia, which built streamlined passenger cars in the twentieth century.Īs tracks lengthened, so did the journey times, which created a need for restaurants, hotels, and taverns, which often doubled as train stations. Pennsylvania passenger-car builders included Billmeyer and Small, which for decades manufactured passenger and freight cars for narrow-gauge railroads in York American Car and Foundry of Berwick and the Budd Co. In 1838, Cumberland Valley Railroad director Philip Berlin commissioned the construction of the nation's first sleeping car, built by Philip Imlay of Philadelphia.Īdvertisement for the "Famous Switch-back Railroad," Mauch Chunk, PA, circa. The growth of passenger travel created a need for more comfortable cars that were created specifically for railroad use. But Americans loved speed, and even the crudest trains pulled by the most basic steam engines could roll along at a lively thirty miles an hour. This type of construction always posed the threat of "snake-heads," which occurred when the end of an iron strap under tension broke loose from the wood stringer and suddenly burst through the car floor, causing injury or even death. ![]() The crude suspension systems of early railroad cars did little to cushion the unevenness of equally crude tracks, which were usually made of iron straps fastened atop wooden stringers. Early railcars were stagecoach-like vehicles, or Spartan boxy cars like the Pennsylvania Coal Co. So it was no wonder that, with its dense population and location as a crossroads between major cities, Pennsylvania became a leader in passenger railroading.īillmeyer and Small advertisement At first a novelty and a curiosity, rail travel in the 1830s and 1840s was uncomfortable and, at times, dangerous. Within a decade, Pennsylvanians could - by taking connecting trains - travel to almost any spot in the state within a single day's time. In 1854, the coming of the all-rail Pennsylvania Railroad route shredded that time to thirteen hours and also cut the fare from $9.50 to $8.00. The construction of canals and a handful of paved roads, the first of which was Pennsylvania's own Lancaster Turnpike, were tremendous improvements.Īfter completion of the state-funded and owned Main Line of Public Works in 1834, an enormously expensive combination of canals and crude railroads, travelers could journey between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half days. Travel across Pennsylvania -especially its many mountains - was slow, especially when winter snows, spring rains, and other inclement weather made dirt roads and woodland trails all but impassable. Before the arrival of railroads, people moved no faster than their feet or a horse could carry them.
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