The Railroad That Never Was

The Railroad That Never Was tells the complete story of one of the most bizarre and infamous railroad construction projects of the late 19th century -- a 200-mile line through Pennsylvania’s most challenging mountain terrain that was to form the heart of a new trunk line from the East Coast to Pittsburgh and the Midwest. Conceived in 1881 by William H. Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and a tight group of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia industrialists, the South Pennsylvania Railroad was to break the Pennsylvania Railroad’s near-monopoly of the region. The "South Penn’s" route was the shortest line between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but was by far the most rugged, requiring, among other things, nine lengthy tunnels and heavy cut and and fill work. Nonetheless, by 1885 the line was within a year of opening, with over sixty percent of its total tunnel length and other heavy work completed. At which point J. P. Morgan brokered a peace treaty that not only aborted the project but, in the process, helped to make Morgan a primary force in the financial world. Yet the South Penn did not die; it lingered on in a comatose state for sixty years more, until, in the late 1930s it came to life again as the original section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike -- the country’s first superhighway and the predecessor of the national Interstate Highway system. This book is based on original letters, agreements, diaries, and newspaper reports which tell the story as it was lived by the people who originated and built the railroad and who tried to keep it alive afterward. A supplementary chapter describes how and where the routes of the railroad and Turnpike differed, and where a dedicated railroad archeologist can find tangible (and impressive) relics of "the railroad that never was."