Main line-eastern: Conrail and Norfolk Southern on the east end of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne, & Chicago, 1988-2009
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The Pennsylvania Railroad’s four-track main line east from Pittsburgh is justifiably one of, if not the, most famous and photographed pieces of railroad in North America. Less well known, but just as fascinating, are the “Lines West” main lines from Pittsburgh to Chicago and St. Louis. In this program I’ll focus on the eastern end of the former, which was built as the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago and became the PRR’s Eastern Division between Pittsburgh and Crestline, OH. We’ll examine this piece of the railroad beginning around giant Conway Yard northwest of Pittsburgh and extending to Alliance, OH, where (in NS’s routing of traffic) nearly all trains turn north towards Cleveland and the former NYC mainline.
The Pennsylvania Railroad’s four-track main line east from Pittsburgh is justifiably one of, if not the, most famous and photographed pieces of railroad in North America. Less well known, but just as fascinating, are the “Lines West” main lines from Pittsburgh to Chicago and St. Louis. In this program I’ll focus on the eastern end of the former, which was built as the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago and became the PRR’s Eastern Division between Pittsburgh and Crestline, OH. We’ll examine this piece of the railroad beginning around giant Conway Yard northwest of Pittsburgh and extending to Alliance, OH, where (in NS’s routing of traffic) nearly all trains turn north towards Cleveland and the former NYC mainline.
These 60 miles of railroad, even in the modern era, give a wonderful sampling of the PRR west of Pittsburgh: physical plant ranging from heavy-duty four-track to the classic Lines West double-track; topography both hilly and flat; and more freight traffic on this segment than even in PRR days. The appeal of this stretch of the PRR has long been heightened for me by the fact that nearly all the remainder of the railroad west of Pittsburgh has been chopped to pieces, much of it reduced to semi-local operations or simply gone.
With an eye towards the history of the railroad, we’ll see lots of action from the last ten years of Conrail and NS of recent years- big trains in great scenic main line settings, with lots of PRR position light signals, in all seasons and weather. Anyone with an interest in the PRR and its successors, or who just enjoys contemporary big-time railroading, won’t be disappointed.
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At the 4-track interlocking at Smithville, OH (MP 129.5 from Pittsburgh on PRR’s Pittsburgh-Chicago main line), we see two scenes, taken two years apart. In April 1958, coming out of the sunrise and facing the camera, is the westbound New York-Chicago “Admiral”, a maid-of-all-work schedule with significant head-end traffic as well as coaches, a diner, and sleepers, right on schedule at 7:48 AM. A pair of E-8′s (which the PRR calls EP-22′s) is the power.
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