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The Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway
was the final piece of the grand dream of Jay Gould and his son George. The
Gould's envisioned a single corporation with an intercontinental railroad
system to move freight from ocean to ocean. For several years, the Gould's
had acquired numerous independant lines, stretching across the United States.
The key to this dream was building a connecting line through Pittsburgh,
the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway.
The story of this railroad is one
of poor planning, corporate competition, bad luck, numerous disasters and one
man's stubborn determination to forge ahead against all odds. Opened for business
in 1904 and bankrupt four years later, the legacy of the Wabash Railroad endures
to this day. It is one of Pittsburgh's hard luck stories.
An Intercontinetal System
... By Any Means Necessary
The Wabash Railroad was intended to
provide access to the great industrial hub of Pittsburgh and act as the link
between the western lines in Ohio and the seaports in Baltimore. The technical
difficulty of building a railroad into Pittsburgh where all of the good routes
had been taken, the massive costs of the construction, and the speculative
business practices of George Gould were a recipe for disaster.
Starting with investments in small
railroads in New York, Jay Gould began to amass a link of lines covering the
length of the country. The Erie Railroad in New York state, the Union Pacific,
Kansas Pacific and Missouri Pacific, among others, stretched to the far
west.
Upon his death in 1892, Gould's railroad
empire passed to his eldest son, George, who continued consolidating and building
the system. He aquired the Denver & Rio Grande and then the Western Pacific, to
compete with the Southern Pacific and gain an outlet to the sea at San Francisco.
In an example of Gould's underhanded business practices, he formed a company
to build a breakwater in San Francisco Bay, creating valuable new land in the
harbor but leaving the Southern Pacific terminal high and dry. Gould built a
track atop the breakwater for his Western Pacific, thereby usurping his rivals
access to ocean freight.
The Little Saw Mill Run
Railroad
Abraham Kirkpatrick Lewis (1815-1860)
began mining on the face of Mount Wahington about 1843. Lewis built one of the
earliest inclined planes, just west of the Duquesne Incline, for carrying coal
to the Monongahela River. He ran the first tunnel through Mount Washington, a
distance of one mile, through to the Saw Mill Run Valley. To serve his mines
along this valley, he constructed a two-mile-long horse-drawn tramway, called
the Horse Railroad, which delivered coal to a tipple at the mouth of Saw Mill
Run on the Ohio River and extended to the Little Saw Mill Run Valley. His early
railroad was eventually replaced by a new steam powered railroad.
The Little Saw Mill Run Railroad company
was incorporated July 23, 1850, and the line was opened in April 1853. From
river docks near Temperanceville (West End) on the Ohio River, it followed Saw
Mill Run upstream to Shalersville (outside the present Fort Pitt Tunnels). From
this point, also known as Banksville Junction, it turned to follow the present
course of Banksville Road along Little Saw Mill Run. The adjacent Banksville
Avenue was the regular road at that time; only short pieces of it remain open.
The line continued up Banksville Road to the coal mining town of Banksville
at Potomac Avenue.
The West Side Belt
Railway
In the 1890s, The Pennsylvania Railroad
had control over most freight shipments in and out of Pittsburgh. In a move to
raise the rates, traffic was slowed to a near standstill with shipments laying
idle throughout the area. One local industrialist decided to do something about
it. Andrew Carnegie purchased the Pittsburgh, Shenango & Lake Erie Railroad,
extended and modernized the line for heavier traffic, and created the Bessemer
& Lake Erie Railroad. He further hinted that he was intending to construct another
line southeast to Baltimore.
In 1895 Gould saw his opportunity. He
noted the Western Maryland in the east and the Wheeling and Lake Erie in Ohio
could be used as part of the intended transcontinental system. To this end,
the West Side Belt Railroad was incorporated in July, 1895, with the stated
purpose of transporting coal from Bruce, PA, along Saw Mill Run to the Ohio
River. The WSB purchased the Bruce & Clairton Railroad, which extended the line
to the Monongahela River. Merging with the Little Saw Mill Run Railroad in 1897,
the WSB had created a line which would skirt through the South Hills of
Pittsburgh, picking up valuable coal freight, and allowing a connection to
Carnegie's Union Railroad in West Mifflin and to the Western Maryland
Railroad.
Constructing the Wabash
Line
Gould's engineers quietly surveyed and
planned a route to connect westward from Pittsburgh to the Wheeling and Lake
Erie in Ohio. Construction began in 1900 on this 39.3 mile line, the Wabash
Pittsburgh Terminal Railway. On February 1, 1901, Andrew Carnegie signed tonnage
contracts for his steel operations with the Wabash.
At the time Gould set his sites on the
Pittsburgh region, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, the Pittsburgh & Lake
Erie and others had long since secured all of the obvious routes for railroads
into the area. These railroads exerted extreme political pressure and influence
to impede the approach of Gould's connection with the Wabash lines from the
Midwest.
Gould was no stranger to such tactics.
As the court battles and council meetings raged on, he confidently began tunneling
through Mt. Washington and building the piers for a new bridge over the
Monongahela, which would bring the line into downtown Pittsburgh. The shrewd
Gould was able to gain enabling ordinances from local officials allowing the
Wabash to complete the railroad, which had been under construction from west to
east, in 1904.
Construction of the line was completed
in three phases. In September 1902, the southern and western portions of the
line were finished. This portion required the construction of numerous small
bridges and trestles. Between the freight yards in Greentree and the new Wabash
Tunnel through Mount Washington, engineers carved out a curved course that
required the construction of three main tunnels. The first two, the Greentree
Tunnel and Bigham Tunnel were carved out of the hills in Greentree.
The second phase included the building
of the third tunnel. This was a major cut through the heart of Mount Washington,
from a southern portal near Woodruff Street to the northern portal on the downtown
side. The new Wabash Tunnel was
completed in February of 1903.
The third phase of construction included
building the railroad terminal in downtown Pittsburgh, at Liberty Avenue and
Ferry Street (Stanwix Street) and the construction of a new bridge span across
the Monongahela River to connect the elaborate terminal complex to the new
tunnel. Bridge construction was completed in February of 1904 and Gould's new
Pittsburgh railroad hub was a reality. The first train of the new Wabash
Pittsburgh Terminal Railway left Pittsburgh as a special excursion to the
World's Fair in St. Louis on July 4, 1904. The ornate terminal and office
building opened in 1905.
One Disaster After
Another
The Wabash Railroad seems as though
it was doomed from the start. The shady dealings of owner George Gould had
mobilized the other railroads against him, and they did whatever they could
to deny him access to their markets. Lucrative freight contracts signed in
1901 never materialized, and the grand railroad never earned a
profit.
Business failures aside, the railroad
was also plagued with a string of disasters that earned it the title of
"Pittsburgh's Hard Luck Railroad" before the line ever went into
operation.
During construction of the line through
Greentree, the wooden interior of the Bigham Tunnel caught fire. The collapsed
debris were removed and the passage rebuilt as an open cut. This setback paled
in comparison to the events of October 20, 1903.
This was the day that the final piece
of the bridge was to be set in place over the river. Both ends jutted out from
the banks, and as a crane hoisted the final girders into place, disaster struck.
The crane came loose and sent steel, wood and several helpless workers plunging
into the river below. The disaster took the lives of ten workers.
Additional distractions like a smallpox
epidemic among the workers, strikes, riots and flooding caused further
hardships.
Bankrupt in Four
Years
When the Wabash Railroad was totally
completed in 1905, its Pittsburgh facilities included Wabash Terminal, an
ornate 11-story building, the Wabash Tunnel through Mt Washington, a stone
skew arch over Saw Mill Run near Woodruff Street, and another stone arch
which serves as a tunnel for Greentree Rd near Chartiers Creek. The nine-track
elevated yard was covered by a trainshed which extended from Forbes Avenue to
Second Street (Blvd of the Allies). A switching trestle extended across the
Triangle to a location just short of Duquesne Way (Fort Duquesne
Boulevard).
Although the Wabash Railroad opened
with gala fanfare and high expectations, Gould's dream of a railroad empire
soon came crumbling down around him in a sea of red ink.
The cost of construction, over
$1,000,000 per mile, and the failure of promised freight to materialize kept
the Wabash railway from being profitable. The only part of the railway to
operate at a profit was the West Side Beltway, due largely to its mining
connections. The rest of the railway floundered and soon the Wabash went
into bankruptcy.
In 1908, the West Side Beltway was among
the first parts of the system to enter receivership. The Beltway was one of the
few tangible assets the Wabash had to offer in its attempts to re-organize and
stay in business. These recovery attempts failed and George Gould lost both
his railroad empire and his fortune.
Pittsburgh and West Virginia
Railroad
Soon afterward, there was a burst of
modernization along the West Side Belt. The Wabash properties in Pittsburgh,
including the West Side Belt Railroad, were acquired by the Pittsburgh & West
Virginia Railroad in 1917.
Though the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal
Railroad ended operations in 1908, the railroads which were built around
Pittsburgh continued on under new ownership. The Pittsburgh and West Virginia
Railroad operated most of the lines constructed by Gould. Later they were
acquired by the Norfolk & Western, which subsequently sold them off in the
formation of the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad, which operates the former Wabash
and West Side Belt lines today.
The Curse of the Wabash
Some said that the Wabash was cursed,
and maybe they were right. The railroad line had certainly seen its share of
tragedies over the years. This misfortune continued, as if the rails themselves
were under a dark spell. In November of 1925, a landslide blocked the city-side
portal of the Wabash Tunnel and severely damaged the first approach span to the
Wabash Bridge. Due to a lack of ridership, passenger service into downtown ended
on October 31, 1931.
The elaborate terminal facilities stretching
the width of the Golden Triangle at Stanwix St continued to be used for freight
transfers. Then on March 6, 1946, a warehouse building caught fire. The flames soon
spread to the railroad trestle and parts of the old Wabash terminal building.
$200,000 in damage was sustained.
Two weeks later, another blaze consumed
the Wabash Terminal and the trestle, spreading to and gutting eleven warehouses.
The Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railroad was officially out of business in the
downtown area. The Wabash Bridge was dismantled and melted down as scrap metal
in 1948. The terminal buildings were razed in 1955 to make room for the new
Gateway Center. The curse was brought to an end, at least for the time
being.
The only remaining signs of the Wabash
Railroad in downtown Pittsburgh are the old Wabash Tunnel on Mount Washington and
the two bridge piers standing idly along the banks of the Monongahela River. The
piers and the empty tunnel stand as monuments to the hard-luck legacy of George
Gould and the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway.
What Does the Future
Hold in Store for the Old Wabash Relics?
Although the Wabash Railroad ceased
operation in 1908, it's legacy has endured. Nearly a century later, the
Wabash Tunnel and the Wabash Bridge piers keep coming up in plans for new
Pittsburgh transportation ideas, becoming what many Pittsburghers consider
a huge money pit. That's what George Gould learned 100 years ago.
The abused and often unused Wabash Tunnel
became a lure for other doomed transportation projects. In 1931, Allegheny County
bought the tunnel for $3,000,000 with the intention of using it as a traffic tunnel
to relieve some of the growing congestion at the Liberty Tubes. A $5000 feasibility
study was commissioned in 1933 to determine whether the tunnel was suitable for
automobiles. Old stories say that railroaders had to lay low when passing
through the unventilated tunnel. The problem of ventilation and the cost of
addressing the issue were enough to scrap that project.
The tunnel remained dormant from 1947
until the Port Authority purchased the property in 1970. In 1971 the transit
authority began a $6 million project to ready the tunnel for "Skybus," an
ill-fated rubber-tired automated people mover system. A demonstration project
of the Skybus system was built in South Park. If successful,
a bridge would have been built across the Monongehela using the original Wabash
Bridge piers to get the system into downtown. In the end, cost and politics
doomed the project in Pittsburgh.
Between 1994 and 1997, an additional
$8 million in renovations were made to the tunnel by the Port Authority, this
time in conjunction with plans for a major busway to serve the western
suburbs and the Greater Pittsburgh Airport. As with Skybus, this project
envisions the construction of a new bridge across the Monongahela River,
possibly using the old piers from the Wabash bridge.
In 1996, a $3.1 million contract was
awarded to demolish the Skybus runway system and install new paving and drainage
inside the Wabash Tunnel. In 1998, a new portal building was constructed at the
west end of the tunnel and the existing portal building on the city side,
visible from downtown on the face of Mt. Washington, was rebuilt. Ventilation,
electrical and communication services were also updated.
By the end of the 20th century, with
millions of dollars of renovations again performed in anticipation of the
tunnel's rebirth, no final decisions had been made on the new Airport Busway
project. Ideas were still being submitted, debated and challenged in court.
Only one thing seemed certain, and that was that as long as the Wabash Tunnel
occupied a space in the Pittsburgh landscape, it would draw the attention
of those with grand schemes and grand dreams. It had become one of Pittsburgh's
biggest money pits.
Finally
... The Rebirth of the Wabash Tunnel!
In 2000, plans to link the Wabash
Tunnels to the new Port Authority's $275 million West Busway were dropped.
The Money Pit had claimed another victim. All of the tax dollars spent on
planning and related construction had been wasted. As the Wabash waited
patiently for it's next victim, plans were introduced to open the tunnel
to vehicular traffic during rush hours as a HOV accessway into and out of
downtown Pittsburgh to relieve congestion at the Liberty and Fort Pitt
Tunnels.
In 2003, the Port Authority awarded
an $11 million bid to build ramps to link the tunnel to Carson Street across
from Station Square and to Route 51 at the southern end. As Pittsburghers
patiently awaited the inevitable bad news that the project would be somehow
abandoned, the unthinkable actually happened! |
