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CHAPTER 1
Switchbacks and Rattlesnakes
The Bellefonte and Snow Shoe Railroad
SETTING THE STAGE FOR COMPETITION BETWEEN THE PENNSYLVANIA and the New York Central railroads for the natural riches of Centre County and the Moshannon Valley began a half-century before the two railroads actually met head to head — in fact, before either company was established. In the 1830s, men of affairs in the county and the valley recognized commercial possibilities for the area's abundant reserves of timber, coal, and iron ore. They also knew that these reserves had no real value unless a practical way could be found to send them to market. The area was far from any navigable waterway. For several decades, small amounts of pig iron, smelted from local ore deposits, were transported to distant cities via pack mule and wagon, but that effort only underscored the gross inferiority of public roads and private turnpikes.
A system of canals might resolve the problem of geographic isolation. "Canal fever" swept across Pennsylvania in the years following the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825. The commercial benefits of that waterway, which linked New York City with the West via the Great Lakes, were immediate and abundant. Canal proponents in Pennsylvania eagerly sought a waterway linking Philadelphia with the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. In 1826 they persuaded the state legislature to finance construction of two segments: one extended from Columbia on the lower Susquehanna River 170 miles west to Hollidaysburg; the other went east from Pittsburgh 103 miles to Johnstown. The highest ridges of the Allegheny Mountains separated the two canal segments. The aptly named Allegheny Portage Railroad, using a series of inclined planes to scale the rugged slopes, was intended to close the 36-mile gap. East of the Susquehanna, the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad linked the Delaware and the Susquehanna Rivers. The entire state owned and operated route was opened in 1834 and came to be known as the Main Line of Public Works.
Calls for feeder or branch canals were heard even before construction began on the Main Line. In the spring of 1827, dirt began to fly on the Main Line canal's Susquehanna Extension from a point near Harrisburg up the river to Northumberland, while surveyors laid out a further extension along the river's West Branch to Williamsport and beyond. Business and civic leaders of Bellefonte, county seat of Centre County in the geographic center of the state, watched this activity with great interest. In 1829 a group of Bellefonte promoters commissioned one of their own, James Dunlop Harris, to make a preliminary survey for a canal linking Bellefonte with the canal being built up the West Branch and determine how much traffic might use such a waterway. Harris had supervised construction of parts of the Main Line canal, and was the son and grandson, respectively, of the cofounders of Bellefonte, James Harris and his father-in-law, James Dunlop. Between the state-owned system on the east end and the village of Milesburg in the Bald Eagle Valley, the young engineer recommended a 25-mile combination of canal and slackwater navigation in Bald Eagle Creek. For the 2.5 miles between Milesburg and Bellefonte, the canal would parallel Spring Creek through the gap that stream had cut in Bald Eagle Ridge. Harris estimated annual revenues of $11,500 against a projected cost of $100,000.
Harris's report found a forceful public advocate in Centre County judge Thomas Burnside. A native of Ireland, Burnside had read law in Philadelphia before moving to Centre County in 1804 to establish a practice. As a representative of central Pennsylvania in the state senate and then Congress, he had distinguished himself as a champion of internal improvements. Persuaded by Burnside and others, the legislature in 1833 underwrote an extension of the state-owned canal from the new town of Lock Haven on the West Branch 3.5 miles to a dam on Bald Eagle Creek. The Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation Company was organized to build on to Bellefonte using James Dunlop Harris's survey. Legislators also guaranteed 5 percent annual interest over twenty-five years on Navigation company stock. With Burnside as president, the Navigation by the end of 1838 was able to reach Dowdy's Hole, a pool in the creek just below the village of Curtin, site of a large ironworks. But the company had exhausted its funds, thanks largely to the economic depression that descended on the nation following the Panic of 1837. Dowdy's Hole remained the western terminus for another ten years as the canal eked out a meager existence hauling pig iron from Curtin.
As he tried to round up more investors, Burnside also sought additional traffic for his canal. On occasion, a boatload of coal or lumber was loaded at Dowdy's Hole. Usually such cargo came from Snow Shoe, a township high on the Allegheny Plateau in northern Centre County, a place known to be rich in natural resources yet so remote and sparsely settled that rattlesnakes were said to be the chief inhabitants. In 1839 Burnside and several members of his canal group received a charter for the Allegheny and Bald Eagle Railroad, Coal and Iron Company, authorizing them to build a railroad from Bald Eagle Creek up the mountains' eastern face — the Allegheny Front — to lands they had acquired on the plateau. Included in the group was Philadelphian Jacob Gratz, who with his brother Joseph owned more than 40,000 acres in the area that would soon become popularly styled as the Mountaintop. Attracting investment to build a railroad through the unforgiving terrain of the Front was impossible in hard economic times, and the A&BE entered a period of dormancy.
Prosperity had returned by 1846, when the Philadelphia-headquartered Pennsylvania Railroad received a charter to build an all-rail line from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, more or less paralleling the Main Line canal and the cumbersome inclined planes over the mountains. Under the leadership of chief engineer and later president J. Edgar Thomson, the PRR built its line between 1847 and 1854, surmounting the Allegheny Front by means of the Horseshoe Curve west of Altoona and a 3,600-foot tunnel under the summit near Gallitzin. Meanwhile, construction resumed on the Bald Eagle Navigation, which reached Bellefonte in 1848 and finally gave ironworks there a low-cost outlet for their products.
The Allegheny and Bald Eagle Railroad stirred to life in 1855, when the Gratz lands were purchased by William A. Thomas, who had been making iron in the Bellefonte area with members of the Valentine family — successors to founding ironmasters Dunlop and Harris — for thirty years. By the 1850s, most of the Valentine family had retired from the iron business, leaving management of the firm to Thomas. The firm of Valentines and Thomas had been bringing small quantities of coal and timber down the mountain for their iron furnace and forge for decades. Using his firsthand knowledge of the Mountaintop resources, Thomas now opened the door to outside investors in exploiting those resources. At least 50 percent of the Allegheny and Bald Eagle's stock was purchased by Philadelphians. With Thomas as president, the A&BE at last had sufficient cash to start construction. The board of directors was a close-knit mix of Bellefonte investors and Philadelphians who had connections with the Valentine or Thomas families. (Thomas Burnside was out of the picture, having died in 1851.) Director Wistar Morris of Philadelphia, for example, married Mary Harris (cousin of canal engineer James Dunlop Harris) who, orphaned at a young age, came under the guardianship of William Thomas. Morris was also a director of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
One of the board's first actions was to retain William Harris, brother of canal engineer James Dunlop Harris, to lay out a 19-mile line from the floor of the Bald Eagle Valley up the mountain to Snow Shoe. William Harris was an experienced engineer; he had worked on the Bald Eagle Navigation survey of 1835 and was the canal company's chief engineer following his brother's death in 1842. Testament to his technical skill was the fact that the Allegheny and Bald Eagle Railroad was fully built and equipped for $269,000, far under the company's $600,000 capitalization, thus giving it great distinction among early area rail projects, which typically were dogged by large cost overruns. The total cost was even more remarkable because it included completion of an additional 4 miles not initially contemplated.
The extra mileage came about in complicated fashion. The Allegheny and Bald Eagle's terminus in the valley was to be at Snow Shoe Intersection. The "intersection" described a projected junction with the Lock Haven and Tyrone Railroad, which was to run the length of the valley with a 2-mile branch to Bellefonte. But the financially hard-pressed LH&T was only partially graded and had laid no track. In 1857 the company was reorganized as the Tyrone and Lock Haven Railroad. The following year the T&LH reached an accord with the A&BE whereby the latter road built 4 miles of line between Snow Shoe Intersection and Bellefonte on Tyrone and Lock Haven right-of-way, then leased it for one dollar for 999 years. The Allegheny and Bald Eagle used its remaining capital to establish mines and sawmills, erect company houses for employees, build the spacious Mountain House hotel at Snow Shoe, and purchase additional lands. The majority of the acreage was held by the railroad's owners in the name of the Snow Shoe Land Association.
William Harris faced the problem of building a serviceable railroad up one of the steepest parts of the Allegheny Front, with a change in elevation of about 1,000 feet from the valley floor. His choice of a ladder of four switchbacks to accomplish the task was hardly a novel solution, even in central Pennsylvania — the Clinton Coal Company Railroad near Eagleton in adjacent Clinton County was then using a six-tail switchback. Harris designed his railroad with great acuity, so that one locomotive could haul back from Snow Shoe the same number of loaded cars that it had previously brought empty up the switchbacks. This was an honored principle of coal-road engineering, dating back to England's Stockton and Darlington Railway of 1825 and imitated worldwide.
Grades against empty coal cars on the scenic ascent of the Allegheny Front were as steep as 2.84 percent (that is, a rise of 2.84 feet for every 100 feet of horizontal distance). Trains leaving Snow Shoe faced a 1.09 percent ruling grade leading to the 1,736-foot summit at a location soon named Rhoads before descending to the switchbacks. With their laborious back-and-forth train movements, switchbacks were practicable only on lightly traveled lines.
Harris sliced construction of the line into two divisions with their boundary near the summit. Contracts for grading were let on March 31, 1858. Crossties were cut locally, while most of the iron rail — a total of 1,727 tons at 45 pounds to the yard — came from the Yardley Iron Works in Pottsville and arrived in Bellefonte by way of the canal. Bellefonte's Central Press reported that the first shipment, consisting of six boats, each laden with 50 tons of iron, tied up at the Bellefonte canal basin on May 2, 1859. Freight houses were erected at Snow Shoe and Bellefonte. Thomas Burnside Jr.'s shoe store on the west bank of Spring Creek accommodated passengers in downtown Bellefonte until a wood-frame station could be erected north of High Street near the freight house. A short distance south of the station, railroad-owned trackage gave way to a short segment constructed by Valentines and Thomas to reach their iron-making operation. The area's other large iron manufacturer, McCoy and Linn, was conveniently located adjacent to the railroad in the gap between Bellefonte and Milesburg. While grading was still underway, the railroad contracted with James I. Nutting of Pine Grove, Schuylkill County, for forty four-wheel coal cars, ten eight-wheel coal cars, and forty four-wheel lumber cars, all of which arrived in the county seat by canal.
The railroad's board also directed Morris to contract with the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia for a 25-ton, 0-8-0 locomotive. Christened Snow Shoe, it was a flexible-beam design that was already outmoded when it was built. The flexible-beam truck, pioneered by company founder Mathias W. Baldwin in 1842, was a complicated affair that enabled a locomotive's two forward axles to move laterally but remain parallel. This arrangement eliminated the long, rigid frame typical of a locomotive having eight driving wheels. It permitted locomotives to negotiate sharp curves, undoubtedly a key attraction to B&SS management, but worked efficiently only at low speeds, hence its declining popularity as railroads ran faster trains.
Snow Shoe was a fitting name for the engine in more ways than one. Effective March 24, 1859, the Allegheny and Bald Eagle Railroad, Coal and Iron Company changed its name to the Bellefonte and Snow Shoe Railroad, which was more descriptive of the intent of the enterprise. Snow Shoe also caught the public's fancy, judging by the enthusiastic reception the engine received when it arrived partially assembled at the Thomas wharf in Bellefonte on Friday May 27, 1859. It had come by rail as far as Williamsport and was transported the remaining distance by canal boat. It was placed on a temporary track adjacent to the wharf amid general rejoicing. "Bonfires were kindled on the canal wharf, and throats were strained with huzzas of welcome to the iron horse," reported Bellefonte's Central Press. "His whistle will soon awaken the echoes of these old hills." The whistle surely awakened a good portion of the local population on June 18, when the locomotive made its first trial run. Three days later the railroad operated its first excursion. President Thomas and the board of directors had eleven freight cars outfitted with seats for about 300 invited guests and the Bellefonte Brass Band, who traveled from the county seat to the end of serviceable track at the first switchback, about 2 miles beyond the hamlet of Gum Stump. Passengers were reported to have been "delighted with their ride."
Regular train service began on June 27, 1859, under the supervision of conductor R. J. Downing. He collected $0.25 for the roundtrip, though the train could not go through to Snow Shoe pending completion of a large wooden trestle over the South Fork of Beech Creek. Once the trestle was finished, service to Snow Shoe was still delayed, first by a walkout by track workers unhappy with wages, then by a disagreement with William Fearon in interpreting his contract for the eastern division. Snow Shoe finally pulled the first official train into Snow Shoe from Bellefonte on November 9, 1859. A new eight-wheel passenger car went into service in December. The car was simply attached to the freight train, which normally made a daily trip from Bellefonte to Snow Shoe and return.
On a railroad with only one locomotive, isolated from the larger rail network, what to do when any of the rolling stock needed repairs posed an awkward problem. The board foresaw this predicament as early as June 1859, when it authorized the purchase of the necessary fixtures for a blacksmith shop to keep the locomotive and cars in running order. Snow Shoe soon needed extra attention, after derailing near Rhoads and chewing up a segment of track in the process. Smiths and mechanics kept the locomotive running more or less daily until April i860, when the railroad ordered four new driving wheels from Baldwin. Until they arrived (by canal boat), Snow Shoe was restricted to running every other day. Baldwin shipped the wheels and also dispatched a traveling engineer to supervise repair work to the locomotive's tender. Such ready support from Baldwin, experienced by hundreds of other customers, helped to make the company America's largest locomotive builder and kept the B&SS safely in the Baldwin camp when the need for additional motive power arose.
The railroad may have deleted "coal" from its corporate name, but it was very much in the business of mining coal. It opened its first mine — a drift, or lateral, tunnel into a hillside outcropping of the Mountaintop's prime coal seam, the 6-foot-thick Upper Kittanning — in April 1859, a little south of what was becoming the settlement of Snow Shoe. To reach the mine, workers built a short branch from the main line and laid it with strap-iron on wood rail. A similarly crude branch connected the company's steam-powered sawmill with the main line. Horses and mules served as motive power on both branches, which were cheaply constructed and sharply graded.
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Excerpted from "Branch Line Empires"
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Copyright © 2017 Michael Bezilla.
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