Unique hobby!

[southpennrailroad]

This morning as I was going through my stored finds, I saw a google map of the highway 475 crossing the Pennsylvania Turnpike just easr of Hustontown in Dublin Twp. and a road just to the north of the bridge is named quarry road. I know the area well and no quarry (making money or large business) is in that area and it just dawned on me that it probably is actually a South Penn quarry. I guess another trip to the area is in order. let you all know with pictures as well. if it is it is the first time that a google map has introduced me to a South Penn work site. What I expect to find according to the aerial photos I looked at shows stones laying about just as other South Penn quarries I have found.



What I found several years ago.



What Sue found atop the mountain. Look at all those bricks!



An unfinished or covered over angle culvert along my railroad route.

120 years and still laying there.

[godskid]

Great photos! I'm from the Harrisburg area (Dillsburg/ Mechanicsburg actually) so I've gone over the turnpike stretches and tunnels you are discussing. I'll follow this thread to see what else you post!

Deb

[southpennrailroad]

Great then you should know that just west of Mechanicsburg is a church on Church Street that has a cemetery just to the south and west end of it. The south end should have a trestle over that end as the South Penn was to cross that area after crossing over the Dillsburg branch of the CVRR that is still showing traces left of that abandoned right of way. The letters I have say that the bodies were to be removed along the south wall for the new railroad to come through.



The main grade would follow along just south of Simpson Street. Stay tuned I will up load that tomorrow.

[southpennrailroad]

The South Pennsylvania Railroad piers on the west shore looking east across the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, Pa.120 years and never used. Just the way you see it is how it was left minus a few piers. Supposedly they were removed for the Governor's mansion foundation.

[southpennrailroad]

The actual South Penn map of the beginning of the South Pennsylvania Railroad route to where it was to cross the river.

[southpennrailroad]

I actually had a surveyor from Baltimore and he says the west shore yards were to stretch west from the river. He should know after using this letter of the survey of the proposed yards. I have no proof and say the names of the property owners listed on street signs show the grade stretching south.

[southpennrailroad]

Breezewood in 1940 when the turnpike just opened.



As it looked in 2006



A view from the west looking east through Breezewood when the turnpike was not even thought of.



A view from almost the same area looking east.

[southpennrailroad]

Above:

From the 1700' atop the Rays Hill Mountain just east of Breezewood showing the old Lincoln Highway.

Below:

Taken about two years ago. Some ground rocks can still show the old wagon ruts carved by the metal rings surrounding the wheels at this site almost in front of me.

[southpennrailroad]

I did this so you don't. It was and always is like this the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I deliberately drove the turnpike to get this view of me coming to a stop just one mile from the Bedford interchange on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was done to show that the turnpike did what it was suppose to do and that was take traffic off the back main roads such at the Lincoln Highway to our north.

This next view is me getting off and notice the traffic jamb which continues east to Breezewood 15 mile to the east of this interchange.



Notice the traffic getting on from this interchange.



On another Thanksgiving Sunday with me traveling west on the Lincoln Highway and I know this spot to be the same area as the top photo. Oh that weekend the traffic actually was backed up to Somerset but I was early enough to have already gotten off the pike. The railroad has done one thing and that was to show me alternate routes besides taking the turnpike.

[southpennrailroad]

Can you see the railroad grade in this view as the Pennsylvania Turnpike is to my right?

[southpennrailroad]

Did this help? Dead center of the picture.

The round Terra cot-ta pipe was put in to drain water from one side of the railroad grade to the other.

[southpennrailroad]

Just outside one of my railroad tunnels in a state forrest is this old CCC camp that during WWll it was also a German POW camp. Not many people know about that. The foundations and hugh fire places are all that are left.

[southpennrailroad]

Here is all three route combined in one photo.

1. The 1881-1883 South Pennsylvania Railroad just inside the woods to the left.

2. Standing on the abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike grade (now a bike trail) about to enter into the old abandoned railroad tunnel but completed by the turnpike in 1940 grade.

3. Above the tunnel along east slope of the mountain side is the present Pennsylvania Turnpike alignment opened in 1968.

[southpennrailroad]

So nobody figured out how much it cost to build a two story house in 1884. Or just didn' t think to try..

Anyway here is what it cost in South Penn days. 20' x 30' x 16' house/office

[southpennrailroad]

Here is the grand total. However I think they had down sized as the one shown above in a previous post doesn't measure out.