Little more than a speck in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountain region, Gallitzin provides a significant draw to both railroad and history buffs. It is the very mountains surrounding it, once conquered with track, which sparked the engineering feats to be seen today.
Located midway between Altoona in the east and Johnstown in the west off of the appropriately-designated “Gallitzin” exit of US Route 22, the town itself, a borough bordered by Gallitzin Township and Tunnelhill in Cambria County, was incorporated in 1872 and took its name from the prince who founded nearby Loretto.
Developing round coal and coke production, it ranks as the tenth-highest city in the state, its topography mandating the very tunnels for which it is now known, since prohibitive grade, then beyond current engineering maturity, left little other option in the railroads’ quest for westward expansion.
Three area tunnels were ultimately bored through Gallitzin’s peaks. The first, the New Portage and located under Tunnelhill at a 2,167-foot elevation, was completed on December 10, 1852 after E. Rutter and Sons, contracted for the $500,000 project, manually attacked dirt and rock with shovels and picks with their 300-strong team. The second, the 3,605-foot-long Allegheny and located at Milepost 248, was completed in 1854, and first used on February 6. Coupled with the Gallitizin, it is considered one of the “twin tunnels.”
The latter, constructed between 1902 and 1904, was employed, along with its Allegheny brother, by the Pennsylvania Railroad. They were the highest and longest engineering feats of the time, enabling the railroad, after negotiating the Horseshoe Curve, to continue its westward travel from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.
Its use, however, was no longer needed when the $25 million Conrail Pennsylvania Clearance Improvement Project, initiated because of the progressive loss of state-circumventing rail traffic, lowered its floor to provide clearance for double-stacked cars and widened it to accommodate dual-and dual-direction-track. Employing more technologically-advanced construction means than its 19th-century crew counterpart, the 90-strong team completed the work in August of 1995, leaving the once-equal Gallitzin tunnel trackless and abandoned.
Gallitzin rail line ownership paralleled the ownership changes of the railroads themselves. The very short-lived Penn Central, formed in 1968 as a result of the merger between the almost-institutional Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central, yielded to Conrail by means of the bankruptcy process, itself created by the amalgamation of several faltering northeastern lines, such as the Erie Lackawanna, the LeHigh Valley, and the Reading. A dual purchase of Conrail by Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation in 1999 ensured that its Pennsylvania routes, plying the tunnel through Gallitzin, were maintained by Norfolk Southern’s Pittsburgh line. Most of its eastbound trains employ track one through the New Portage Tunnel, while its westbound ones use track three through the Allegheny Tunnel. The latter’s track two can be used for both.
The tunnels facilitate both passenger and freight transport. Amtrak, for instance, routes four daily trains through them. Coal cars, destined for powerplants, travel easterly and return empty for further replenishment by Pennsylvania’s coal mines, while half of its operations transfer intermodal shipments to the Midwest, particularly to Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City.
Gallitzin Tunnels Park and Museum:
The area’s railroad heritage can be experienced-in motion-at the Gallitzin Tunnels Park and Museum. Its Community Heritage Museum, sharing the center with borough offices, the library, and the police station, displays railroad memorabilia and model trains and shows the “Once Upon a Mountain” film in its 24-seat theater room.
The park, located across the street, between the museum and the actual tunnels, features a restored, 1942 Pennsylvania Railroad NSC caboose. Originally built in Juniata Shops and acquired from Conrail, the car, bearing number CR23081, features a 36-foot length, ten-foot width, 15-foot height, and 40-inch wheel width, and was restored by Pennsylvania Railroad volunteers. Its interior, alive with radio transmissions from trains using the tunnels, sports signal lights, an air brake system, sleeping quarters, a rest area, a pot bellied stove for heat and cooking, and the caboose-characteristic cupola.
An observation platform overlooks the once-identical twin tunnels-the Gallitzin, on the left, sporting its original height and width, but now trackless with only its dirt bed remaining, and the Allegheny, on the right, displaying its higher and wider “mouth” and projecting two tracks.
Frequent operations, detailed by the Norfolk Southern train schedule available in the museum and listing times, origins and destinations, and types of freight, ensure train identification, while the tunnel’s almost-echoing effects amplify their power, sending vibrations, via the ground, right to the observer’s feet.
Allegheny Portage Railroad:
Only a mile from the Gallitzin Tunnels Park and Museum is another important sight, the Allegheny Portage Railroad. Like the tunnels themselves, it was one of the 19th century’s major engineering feats.
Although the nascent United States offered significant opportunities, its sheer size and lack of infrastructure equally offered significant obstacles, particularly to most of the European immigrants who had entered the country by means of its traditional New York-Ellis Island threshold and now wished to journey westward. Roads, of any form, traced their paths along the eastern seaboard, but were separated by the imposing Appalachian Mountains, whose natural barrier was virtually impenetrable. A section of them in Pennsylvania, the Alleghenies, rose like a roadblock between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the few rudimentary trails over them-clogged, rough, and muddy-were often choked by the foot, horse, and wagon traffic laboriously inching over them.
Strung across the state and rising to thousands of feet, the mountains challenged engineers to conquer them. Technology, however–in little more of an advanced state than the country itself–was almost nonexistent.
But the Conestoga wagons braving the mountainous traverse, tackling dirt, rock, gravel, and overgrowth, took 23 days to close the gap between the east and the west under the most ideal, dry-road conditions. Something had to be done.
Waterway travel, providing faster, obstacle-free transport by canal boats, demonstrated a marked improvement in speed, ease, and comfort, but the method’s integral element-the canals themselves-were hardly in abundance, and never in the desired locations. The solution, therefore, remained to dredge them, resulting in the optimum length and direction.
During the mid-1820s, New York State did just that, creating the Erie Canal, and, by 1825, it exerted four effects:
1). It facilitated passenger and freight transport.
2). It reduced travel times.
3). It sparked an increase in trade, by means of its new route.
4). It caused a corresponding reduction in the traditionally strong trade associated with Philadelphia, as it was rerouted to western markets via the Erie Canal.
Transportation viability clearly signaled a lifeline, like an artery pumping blood, to a city, and lack of it caused it to die.
Alarmingly awakened by this reality, the Pennsylvania Legislature authorized the Mainline of Public Works to commence construction of a trans-Pennsylvania water artery, running in an easterly-westerly direction and designated the “Main Line Canal,” to connect its two major cities. But the 36.65-mile stretch through the Allegheny Mountains, needed to close the gap between either end, proved an engineering obstacle.
An initially envisioned solution–a four-mile tunnel through the base of the mountain–was costly, and experience was considered inadequate to even attempt it. Questions concerning a tunnel-contained waterway also arose. While its vision was advanced, technology was not.
Inspired by a hybrid, intermodal British transportation system, it ultimately decided to design its own combination network to link the Hollidaysburg Canal Basin in the east with the Johnstown one in the west by means of ten, mountain-negotiating, inclined planes and constant-elevation canals to serve as the full Main Line Canal’s core of connection. It was designated the “Allegheny Portage Railroad.”
Coupled with the already elaborate, state-owned canal system, which encompassed aqueducts, tunnels, reservoirs, dams, 82 miles of railroad track, and 276 miles of waterway, it would dramatically reduce the journey time of passengers and goods and restore the trade lost to the competitive Erie Canal.
The three-year construction project, completed on March 18, 1834, entailed the first rail tunnel, named Staple Bend and routed through the ridge at the top of inclined plane number one, reducing, by 2.5 miles, the distance the track would otherwise have had to cover if it had adhered to the valley’s natural route, while the plane itself was 1,608 feet long and had a corresponding, 150-foot elevation gain.
Project costs included $16.5 million for the public works system and $1.8 million for the railroad.
“Portage,” defined as “overland transport between bodies of water,” became the missing link in the waterway stretching almost 400 miles between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Although feasible and technologically successful, the water-and-rail, multiple-elevation system offered slow passage. Passengers and cargo, originating in the east and traversing the Main Line Canal in boats, were transferred from the Hollidaysburg Basin to rail cars, which were horse-drawn to the first grade. Hitched to a continuous cable, which moved over rollers between the rails, they were hoisted up the incline at a four-mph speed, propelled by one of two stationary, 35-hp steam engines installed below the engine shed’s floor at the top of the incline, often in conjunction with descending cars to achieve a counterbalance between the two. The second steam engine served as a backup.
Descent speeds, aided by gravity, were minimized by pulley-installed water brakes.
As many as six hourly trains could surmount the inclined plane.
Of the ten of them, the number three was the shortest, at 1,480 feet and with a corresponding 131-foot elevation gain, while the number eight was the longest, at 3,117 and 308 feet, respectively.
Threading their way through the Allegheny Portage Railroad’s 36.65-mile mountainous section, canal boats climbed 1,398 feet and descended 1,172 feet, before being refloated in the Johnstown Basin for the western portion of the Main Line Canal journey to Pittsburgh.
Several improvements, incorporating advancing technology, were progressively introduced.
Traditional, early locomotives lacked sufficient power to propel the freight-laden rail cars up the inclines, necessitating the stationary steam engines instead. But, a year after the Allegheny Portage Railroad had become operational, the horses were replaced by locomotives for level propulsion. The first, the “Boston,” performed the equivalent work of 18 horses, and 16 others subsequently joined the fleet.
The “intermodal” nature of the operation took on new meaning when sectional packet boats, each weighing about 7,000 pounds, were introduced, splitting, like huge cargo containers, and floating on to the incline plane-ascending railroad cars in either the Hollidaysburg or Johnstown basins, three hitched to the continuous cable at a time in the lower shed. The tri-section arrangement, fitted with a spring-loaded friction brake behind it to preclude runaway conditions, greatly reduced the inconvenience and transfer times inherent in the initial, repacking method, and facilitated continuous, cohesive transport from origin to destination, regardless of the water or rail mode intermittently negotiated.
The 3.5-inch hemp rope originally used for towing, subjected to persistent wear and breaking, was replaced by a stronger line made of wire.
Indeed, by 1840, the previous overland, trans-Pennsylvania journey had been reduced from 23 days to just four.
The pace of technology, soon proving itself faster than the railroad, ultimately outran it and led to its demise, as ever-more powerful locomotives and advanced, topography-taming construction techniques facilitated more comfortable, rapid, continuous-track competition, which avoided the slower interchange system.
Attempting to plug the gap-of inefficiency-between the Hollidaysburg and Johnstown Canal basins, the state of Pennsylvania began to replace the inclined plane with continuous, bed-bound track routed through a Gallitzin-proximity tunnel, designated the “New Portage Railroad,” thus relegating the original system and concept, in name, to the “Old Portage Railroad.”
Victim, itself, to technologically-outpacing competition, it was purchased on June 15, 1857 for $7.5 million by the Pennsylvania Railroad after legislature had approved the sale of its Public Works Main Line Canal, and was incorporated into its own track network. Having completed its all-rail link between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh by means of the new Horseshoe Curve and Gallitzin tunnels on February 15, it progressively siphoned off business from the slower, less-convenient, and now-antiquated system, which operated at a loss. And, after two decades, it was discontinued-a relatively short span of time, but a long one for advancement-and dismantled.
The Allegheny Portage Railroad’s success could be argued. Employing then-current technology, it was innovative for its time and based upon contemporary engineering techniques to surmount the topographical obstacles lying between the state’s two major cities. Although it failed to capture the envisioned western markets, it significantly decreased travel times, offered increased comfort, facilitated trade between the coal-producing towns in the west and the larger cities in the east, fostered westward population expansion, rekindled business temporarily lost to the Erie Canal route, provided a living laboratory for emerging transportation technologies, and aided Pennsylvania in its development as an industrial state characterized by coal, iron, steel, and rail.
A small slice of this once-innovative, intermodal, mountain-hurdling transportation system can be experienced at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site.
Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site:
Like all of the country’s national historic landmarks, that of the Allegheny Portage Railroad is a preserved pocket of history, located in present time and not between the covers of a book. When it had served its purpose, it was tucked into the annals of memory, having served as one of the steps man needed to climb during his earthly ascent.
Its Visitor Center, featuring artifacts, exhibits, and the appropriately-named “Allegheny Portage Railroad” film, displays a full-size locomotive model of the “Lafayette,” built by engineer Joseph York and having previously appeared at the Baltimore and Ohio Exhibit in Chicago in 1893 and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904.
Adapted, in 1832, from Edward Bury’s British locomotive design, the 29,630-pound “Lafayette,” with a 12.5-inch cylinder diameter, 20-inch stroke, and 13-inch stack diameter, had a 4-2-0-wheel configuration and was ideally suited to the Allegheny Portage Railroad. By 1840, the type pulled almost two-thirds of all US trains.
A boardwalk leads from the Visitor Center to inclined plane number six through a chipmunk-inhabited forest and a stone quarry. Although no bonafide pit was ever found, archaeologists uncovered both abundant broken stone and stone-cutting needed for the railroad’s culverts, bridges, viaducts, engine house foundations, and stone sleepers. Holes created by hand-held drills ensured that the break in the stone would be straight.
The boardwalk terminates at the inclined plane, which was 2,713 feet long and had a corresponding, 267-foot elevation gain, resulting in a 9.7-percent grade. A reconstruction, it features the hill-ascending tracks, whose ropes were supported by idler pulleys installed at 24-foot intervals, leading to the mountain’s summit and therefore served as either the last plane during ascent or the first one during descent, depending upon the direction of travel.
At the foot of the incline, a “hitcher” appendaged the westbound rail cars to the main rope while a second one disconnected them at the top in the engine house, after the short climb, allowing them to be horse-pulled across the summit level. The plane’s hemp rope was 2.23 inches thick here, although this had later been replaced with the wire type.
Despite the fact that the engine house exhibit itself is a reconstruction, it nevertheless serves to protect the original’s foundation and represents one of ten such structures located along the intermodal rail line. With the exception of the boilers, most of the machinery used to raise and lower the trains was located below the ground level, the hauling rope itself just above the surface so that they could pass over it in the engine house.
The machinery itself included the weight pit, a two-cylinder steam engine located on either side of the drive sheaves, three brick-encased boilers originally installed on the engine house’s side, and the sheaves, ropes, and gear, the latter of which actually pulled the train-connected rope. Fired boilers provided the two engines’ steam.
Attendants hitched and unhitched the rail cars, tended the engines and their boilers, and lubricated the gear and the bearings.
Also within the building is a full-size steam engine model.
Cresson Summit marks the point where trains first crossed the Allegheny Portage Railroad in 1834.
The stone, two-story Lemon House, located along the level track, represents one of many such inns established because of the railroad in order to satisfy enroute passenger need for beverages, meals, and overnight accommodation.
Born in 1793 in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, Samuel Lemon himself purchased his first 268 acres of land in 1826, constructing a two-story log tavern east of the Allegheny mountains’ summit on Northern Turnpike and succeeded it with the current stone structure in 1832. One of many entrepreneurs who had the foresight to anticipate passengers’ needs and apply his business savvy to meet them, he also used the tavern and inn as his own home.
Subjected to several restorations, including south and east porch renovations, the removal of the garage, reinforced framing, front entrance restoration, and repointed exterior walls, the Lemon House, reopened in 1997, sports a furnished first floor, which represents its summer 1840 appearance.
Following the provided trail or the grassed incline in the opposite direction, today’s visitor can access the Skew Arch Bridge. The only road bridge purposefully built for the Allegheny Portage Railroad, it was stipulated as “a stone bridge which will be required for the passage of the turnpike over the Rail Way on section number 36 for the Portage” by its original contract, although its specifications were modified in 1833 to facilitate a bend in the Huntington, Cambria, and Indiana Turnpike.
Rising to a 22.2-foot height and constructed of broken stone and stone sleepers from a section of the actual railroad–hand-laid in a diagonal pattern without mortar adhesion–it features arches whose imposts were offset and installed directly across form one another, producing, respectively, its 54.11- and 60.5-foot long north and south elevations. Contrary to its name, it does not have a tilted top.
The 901-foot-long Staple Bend Tunnel, also within the park and created by Irish and Welsh workers between 1831 and 1833, is the country’s oldest such railroad tunnel, and was used until 1854, when the Pennsylvania Railroad routed its track elsewhere. Today, it invites hikers through its detailed stonework entrance and features sandstone arched lines.
