Unique hobby!

[southpennrailroad]

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Before the original bridge was torn down operating at full steam

[digimark]

This is fascinating stuff, thanks Russ. I love trains and history but I'm addicted to infrastructure and have a fascination for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, at least that section between Breezewood and New Stanton because that's the way my family would travel to and from the DC area to Columbus to visit our relatives. The Alleghany tunnel was a significant milestone in the trip. We mostly travel I-68 through Western Maryland now, but I still take the Turnpike occasionally to relive the thrill.

What Russ is doing is just like the recent efforts to explore and document abandoned city subway stations, old military missile silos and civil defense bunkers. It connects us to our predecessors and I hope your work gets published. Maybe the turnpike authority will publish it.

[southpennrailroad]

This is fascinating stuff, thanks Russ. I love trains and history but I'm addicted to infrastructure and have a fascination for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, at least that section between Breezewood and New Stanton because that's the way my family would travel to and from the DC area to Columbus to visit our relatives. The Alleghany tunnel was a significant milestone in the trip. We mostly travel I-68 through Western Maryland now, but I still take the Turnpike occasionally to relive the thrill.

What Russ is doing is just like the recent efforts to explore and document abandoned city subway stations, old military missile silos and civil defense bunkers. It connects us to our predecessors and I hope your work gets published. Maybe the turnpike authority will publish it.

As you can see the turnpike has written out a permit but that is as far as they will go. Dan Cupper does all their history. But Dan's books helped get me started because they don't really tell about the railroad.

I was just looking at the aerial photos and it is strange to be able without the actual maps in front of me, be able to place the railroad on these aerial photos showing in comparison to where the turnpike is being built in 1939. This is the entire route. It's like I goto sleep with this on my mind.

Thanks for your backing my work. I can't get this stuff published as I do get the material from the archives and they say they own the rights too it. But I think with my research I am the only one who brings it out to the general public. I sell my books at Somerset as a show to off set my cost of being off work for those two days of showings. I have calculated that if I was to show the whole route in a book it would be well over 1000 pages. As of now I keep them down to about 115 pages each for each county. Farmers in Somerset prefer to read a book then a DVD which I keep all my research on as well.

I was giving a show once about five yrs back in Altoona and I was just getting ready to close up when in a hurry a guy was huffing and puffin his way in and said where is this South Penn material. I just off a late plane from Texas and I want this book. It does a world of good to have been able to have picked out a topic that people are curious about and do something with it. I had people want it in Texas, Washington, Maryland, all over for that matter.

When you mention Breezewood here is a spot/photo to look for as you enter the west bound ramp to the turnpike main line just as you get onto the slow lane after the merge lane ends. You and million of others a day don't know it but the grade is right along side you. But I see things differently then you as a driver. Like for hundreds of years people follow a foot path and until an archeologist stumbles on a bone as he walks by does nobody know that it could be a dinosaur.

Enjoy this the next time you get to this spot.



Above: This mound is a never completed railroad grade I am standing on.



This gives you a better view of the grade with the turnpike to the right. A terra cotta culvert placed by the railroad is still seen.

[southpennrailroad]

This view is looking west where the railroad would cross just inside the tollbooth plaza. The highway traffic would have to wait as the trains would enter where booths one & two next to the building is located. No work was done here. This view shows the turnpike dropping to my right. The railroad would be exactly where I stand. The best way of explaining this site is like a football stadium. Two people standing at the same spot need to get to the opposite side and meet at the same spot over there. One (train alignment) would have to go around the same level inside the bleachers while the other (turnpike) drops into the field and then climbs back up the other side. The train is the one going around the bleachers and the turnpike us the other one going down into the field.

[southpennrailroad]

In Fulton County

Look real close and you may see what the farmer tried to get rid of but did did not get rid of all traces of the railroad grade. Look just how far we are from the turnpike as well. Think about how close the turnpike is in the last shots of Breezewood I just produced. Oh my eyesight is not real good.



I'm sorry this one is one of my favorites but the photo host makes the picture real bad. Send an e-mail if you want this. It is good.

[southpennrailroad]

I came across this hand drawn map in my collection showing where the railroad workers had stayed during their period while working on the railroad and the path they had to take to get to each work site. Here is the map and this is where it gets weird. They lived off to the east of where their work contract actual had them working. I know this site and they lived in very thin insulated buildings almost like barns. Yet especially during the winter they had to travel every day what is about 4-7 miles each way and I do suspect it was by wagon. I hope they had a good nights sleep every day. They definitely were paid only $1.25 a day and had to pay rent equal to $16.00 a month in room and board.



Here is another sample of me looking for evidence and comparing an old map wit a modern map (Delorme topographic maps).

[southpennrailroad]

Here is another great piece of their work. Never used still wasting away. Look at the floor of the culvert. It is lined (with cut stone) like a kitchen floor. One of my next goals is to find out where they got this supply of stone. I suspect to the south as I did find two semi large blocks just sitting to the south end of this culvert as seen in the next shot below.



This site was still not completed as about four feet of dirt still needed to be placed above this culvert and a missing mantle stone still needed to be cut and placed when work was stopped. Look just behind the tree in the foreground to see the spot where quit possibly a stone seen in the foreground was being prepared for that spot.

A lot of locals surprisingly help me by providing photos of old. This is of a local now long gone standing in front of the same culvert about 75 years ago or more.



I put these side by side. You compare! See but wait I just NOW spotted something strange as a stone is on that same spot that is now missing.

[southpennrailroad]

Some roads in Pennsylvania owe their death to the railroad indirectly. Here just south of the railroad alignment and as seen in the foreground the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The Turnpike built a bridge where a road (state highway) needed to go over their route thereby leaving a change as seen by the old highway still decaying in the low spot here on the right side of this highway. Fort Littleton Turnpike interchange is in the background.

[hotrod]

Here is another great piece of their work. Never used still wasting away. Look at the floor of the culvert. It is lined (with cut stone) like a kitchen floor. One of my next goals is to find out where they got this supply of stone. I suspect to the south as I did find two semi large blocks just sitting to the south end of this culvert as seen in the next shot below.



This site was still not completed as about four feet of dirt still needed to be placed above this culvert and a missing mantle stone still needed to be cut and placed when work was stopped. Look just behind the tree in the foreground to see the spot where quit possibly a stone seen in the foreground was being prepared for that spot.

A lot of locals surprisingly help me by providing photos of old. This is of a local now long gone standing in front of the same culvert about 75 years ago or more.



I put these side by side. You compare! See but wait I just NOW spotted something strange as a stone is on that same spot that is now missing.

looks like we have a similar engineering dept lol

[southpennrailroad]

Hotrod

That's beautiful. I love this kind of work. I am amazed how we tear down our football stadiums after just 30 years (Pittsburgh Steeler's) and these works from the 1800's still stand. Can't put this work down.

[southpennrailroad]

Eventually I want to do the whole route and GPS the structures for Geo caching purposes. It would introduce people to what I have found and for them see the route.

[southpennrailroad]

You know what that means though don't you? 213 miles of exploring it again and that is just the trunk line. .

[hotrod]

Hotrod

That's beautiful. I love this kind of work. I am amazed how we tear down our football stadiums after just 30 years (Pittsburgh Steeler's) and these works from the 1800's still stand. Can't put this work down.

yea, I know the feeling... that culvert dates from about 1871.
there are a few of them still in use and in nice condition..BUT you gotta know where to look or you will never find them! lolol
This ones history started as the northern pacific railway (now bnsf) then was once under minnesota constitutional route #2 then U.S.10N, now since about 1934 has been just a county road.. much history but overlooked.. several culverts like this still exist on the main rail line east of here that was not bypassed, still in use, still as nice as the day they were built..you dont see work like this anymore.. im suspecting our rock came from the twin cities area..

[hotrod]

You know what that means though don't you? 213 miles of exploring it again and that is just the trunk line. .

awwww....lolol sounds like an adventure to me!!

[southpennrailroad]

Hotrod

That's beautiful. I love this kind of work. I am amazed how we tear down our football stadiums after just 30 years (Pittsburgh Steeler's) and these works from the 1800's still stand. Can't put this work down.

yea, I know the feeling... that culvert dates from about 1871.
there are a few of them still in use and in nice condition..BUT you gotta know where to look or you will never find them! lolol
This ones history started as the northern pacific railway (now bnsf) then was once under minnesota constitutional route #2 then U.S.10N, now since about 1934 has been just a county road.. much history but overlooked.. several culverts like this still exist on the main rail line east of here that was not bypassed, still in use, still as nice as the day they were built..you dont see work like this anymore.. im suspecting our rock came from the twin cities area..

Can you get maps of the route and mark where they are located on the maps. That wold make for a good research book as I do.