This is a story of friendship and time travel. Recently, Kevin Scanlon (one of my best friends) and I decided to attend the Center for Railroad Photography &Art (CRP&A) conference at Lake Forest College in Illinois. We’ve done this six times before and usually drive west on a route that avoids interstates for as long as we can. Our journey normally takes us up to Cleveland, then along the lake as far as we can go. It’s an easy drive and Kevin always fills his iPhone with incredible and insanely varied music.
This year, we had planned a visit to an auto plant for a tour but found that they don’t do that on Thursdays. What to do? Well, back to that original route via Cleveland! Kevin offered to drive, and we arrived in Cleveland mid-morning. We are both industrial geeks and the big steel mill (actually two mills now merged into one) along the Cuyahoga River is always a draw for us.
The latter part of the 1800s was the era that made Western Pennsylvania a leader in steel production. Several events added up to enable that growth. In 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed. This spurred growth of all railroads. 1872 saw the invention of George Westinghouse’s automatic air brake. In 1873 the automatic coupler was patented. This all meant that trains would be longer, heavier, faster and with bigger locomotives. The existing railroad bridges would have to be replaced with stronger ones, and the iron rails themselves needed to be replaced with steel rails to withstand the pounding.
Andrew Carnegie saw opportunity during the time he spent working for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The railroads were going to need lots of steel to improve their right of way and he would be their primary supplier. His Keystone Bridge Works took on spectacular projects such as spanning the Mississippi River. Carnegie Steel built the Edgar Thomson Works in 1875 to provide steel rails for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Carnegie was a shrewd marketer, naming his mill for the current president of the PRR. It was his first steel mill and is still in operation, though no longer producing rail. It can be argued that Pittsburgh would not have become what it was without the era of railroad growth.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the years walking along railroad tracks. Anyone who does so will notice that all of the rails have mill marks: cast-in “labels” identifying who made the rail, the size, when it was rolled and other specialized details. The marks are repeated every few feet along the side of the rail. Not only are the rails identified this way, but often bridge girders, tie plates and equipment have mill marks or builders’ plates. All of the rail infrastructure was made for heavy use and made to endure. Railroads can’t repave their tracks every 7-10 years like we do with roads. It is not unusual to see rails on secondary routes and yards that are still doing their job 80-100 years after being rolled in the mills.
Often I find myself daydreaming about what was going on when a particular rail was being made. It’s kind of like looking at an autograph and thinking about the person who signed it and what was going on in their life when their hand held that pen.
Here are a few examples:
Quinnimont Laurel Creek Yard, West Virginia
1899 – Carnegie Steel Edgar Thomson Works
This rail was rolled at the Edgar Thomson Works in November 1899 when the works were still owned by Andrew Carnegie and just twenty-four years into the mill’s life. Also in 1899 the Bronx Zoo had just opened and Kennywood Park near Pittsburgh was only one year old. Iron City Beer maker Pittsburgh Brewing Company and the Duquesne Brewing Company were newly established. This rail was in a yard of the CSX Railroad in Quinnimont, West Virginia.
Quinnimont Signals
1958 – Lackawanna Steel
The Lackawanna 1958 plate was on one of the cantilever signal bridges at Quinnimont, West Virginia. By 1956 Lackawanna Steel was a part of Bethlehem Steel. They specialized in plate and structural steel and built many of the New York City skyscrapers. The Lackawanna fabrication shop made a lot of these distinctive cantilever signal bridges for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.
Spruce, West Virginia
1913 – Lackawanna Steel
The rail in the photo was still in service at Spruce, West Virginia when the photo was taken. In 1913, when this rail was rolled, Grand Central Terminal in New York was opened, Ford started production on the Model T and the Lincoln Highway was dedicated. The West Virginia Spruce Lumber Company mill opened at Spruce in 1902 and the railroad was the highest elevation of any mainline east of the Mississippi at 4,033 feet a few miles from Spruce. It was an isolated mountain town which had no road access. You had to ride the train to get there. Nothing is left of the town except a concrete pad where the railroad engine-house stood and some crumbling foundations of the old lumber mill. The photo of Spruce shows a CSX Laurel Bank Turn on the horseshoe curve around the Spruce townsite. My good friend Dave Dudjak introduced me to Spruce and gave me a good history of the town and railroad. A thank you to Dave; I never would have seen this without him.
Linan, West Virginia
1904 – Lackawanna Steel
This section of rail was rolled by the Lackawanna Steel Company in Buffalo, New York at their brand new steel mill on the shore of Lake Erie. The mill was built in 1902 to compete with Carnegie Steel for the railroad business. In 1904, when this rail was rolled, the Open Hearth Process to make steel was still relatively new. It was slower than the Bessemer Process, but could produce very good quality steel in large batches. Steel companies promoted Open Hearth Steel as being of the top quality, strong and with very few defects. Often customers specified that they wanted Open Hearth Steel in the products they bought, which is why Lackawanna Steel touted it on the side of each section of rail. Carnegie did this too, but usually with a simple “OH” on the rail mark.
Feather River Canyon
1909 – Fort Pitt Bridge Works
This is a builder’s plate on a Western Pacific Railway bridge in Feather River Canyon, California. The famed California Zephyr streamliner crossed this bridge on its run between Oakland, California and Denver, Colorado. The bridge was constructed in 1909 during the twenty year span when Pittsburgh lost its “h.” The Fort Pitt Bridge Works was Pittsburgh based and specialized in bridges, steel structures and blast furnace topworks. When this bridge was being built, the Pittsburgh Pirates won their first World Series at the brand new Forbes Field. Honus Wagner led the Buccos in seven games, outplaying the Detroit Tigers with Ty Cobb.
Buffalo Grain Elevators – Buffalo, New York
1917 – Lackawanna Steel
Lackawanna Steel Company rail from 1917 that was in service in Buffalo, New York at a grain elevator on the Buffalo River. In 1917, Buffalo was the hub for grain shipments coming out of the Midwest through the great lakes. The big news for Buffalo at that time was the opening of the Glenn Curtiss Aeroplane manufacturing plant, the largest plane factory in the world. Just in time, too, since the US entered WWI that same year.
Coopers, West Virginia
1926 – Carnegie Steel Edgar Thomson Works
A lesson in reading mill marks: this rail was rolled by the CARNEGIE Steel Edgar Thomson Plant USA in 1926. The slash marks are for the month rolled, so this one is a September baby. 13031 indicates the rail weight, 130 lbs per yard. PS is Pennsylvania Section, the profile spec of the rail and OH indicates that it is Open Hearth steel. It must have been good quality because it was still carrying coal trains in Coopers, West Virginia on the Norfolk and Western Railway Bluestone Branch. Coopers and the branchline this rail was on is near where a blacksmith named Jordan Nelson used coal from a nearby seam to fuel his forge. A representative from the railroad stopped by in 1881 as they were surveying their line. Jordan showed him where he got his coal, a thirteen foot thick seam on a hillside. This was the start of the billion dollar Pocahontas coal field in the southern border of West Virginia.
Gautier Steel Mill – Johnstown, Pennsylvania
1949 – Carnegie Steel
Johnstown was built around steel. This photo shows the Gautier Steel mill on the left and the Little Conemaugh River with a Norfolk Southern eastbound train starting the climb up to Altoona. The tracks of the Johnstown Inclined Plane climb Yoder Hill in the background. Kevin Tomasic provided a lot of my knowledge of Johnstown and in particular the Gautier Steel mill, which we were able to view in operation. This rail type is pretty unique. It was rolled by Carnegie (US Steel) in 1949 specifically for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The PRR was rebuilding after WWII and specified the largest rail profile ever produced, 155 lbs per yard. This heavy duty rail was like everything the Pennsy bought for their railroad: built to last. They were called the Standard Railroad of the World because they set the goal that other railroads hoped to achieve. A four track mainline, stone bridges that are still rock steady over 100 years later, the most tonnage moved and the largest employer in the US at one time. It’s no coincidence that the mill where this rail was made was named by Andrew Carnegie after the president of the PRR, J. Edgar Thomson.
Cambria Iron Works – Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Cambria Iron Works – J&SC Bridge
The Cambria Iron Works, founded in 1854, was a early innovator in steel production including the Bessemer process for converting iron into steel. Andrew Carnegie took advantage of the innovations from Cambria to greatly increase the productivity of his own mills. Cambria Iron eventually became a part of Bethlehem Steel. The mill is pictured here in 1994 behind a Conrail westbound. The beam with the Cambria marking is on a bridge on the Johnstown & Stony Creek Railroad, which serviced the mills. This bridge spanned the Pennsylvania Railroad mainline and the Little Conemaugh River near the historic Staple Bend Tunnel and provided access to a slag dump.
Warwood Tool is hard to find—heck, the first time that you came here a friendly lady at the local bakery had to give you directions to it. Built in 1905, way before the residential homes that now hide it, the shop building is long, low and gray, bound by the Ohio River and a rail trail. Warwood Tool is a maker of forged hand tools for the railroads, the mining industry and just about anyone else who uses their hands for their livelihood. The company was founded in 1854 over across the river in Martins Ferry, Ohio as a maker of agricultural tools, but Mr. Warwood brought his shop over to the West Virginia side and changed his focus with great success. Of course, times have changed. Competition from the US and abroad has cut into sales, making the last few years a struggle to survive, but a management change in 2020 has brought new life to the plant. The big hammer “Thumper” runs most every day and tools are still being painted a nice dark blue before going out the door.
Special Train for AREA Members at Northtown Yard – October 13, 1978
I joined the Association of American Railroads’ (AAR) Research & Test Department in Washington, D.C. just after Christmas, 1977, as an Environmental Specialist. I was thrilled to be there. I grew up in southern New England watching trains on the New Haven and the Boston & Albany, hanging around stations, towers, shops; anywhere there were railroaders working. Back in the late ‘50’s and early 60’s, railroads were wearing out everything: the employees, the track, the equipment, and as fascinating as it was to me, I couldn’t see myself working there. Having chosen to work on environmental problems, I studied water and air pollution in school and worked for a consulting firm for several years. But, after realizing that railroads would need people who could help to deal with their pollution problems, I was fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time.
Winter was on its way and it was chilly and grey, but the cars were warm and the coffee hot.
View of the nearly complete Magrath BSB 1000 in the spring of 1980 Jim F. Pearson photo
The concrete elevator seen here stands out as a unique example of Alberta’s ingenuity. For a time in the 1980s, it was the ‘Cadillac’ of the grain industry and the future of what was to come, replacing the iconic wooden grain elevators of old (and hopefully spread across Western Canada). The Buffalo-Sloped-Bin (BSB) 1000 series was the name of this futuristic design, created in collaboration between Alberta Wheat Pool (AWP) and Buffalo Engineering Ltd. Out of three examples built of this version, only two remain; one in Fort Saskatchewan and one in Magrath. The other elevator in Vegreville was demolished in 2009.
Background
From the early 1900s to the early 1980s, the wood grain elevator ruled the landscapes across western Canada. The late 1970s were good times for Alberta’s farmers and for one of the major western Canadian grain companies—Alberta Wheat Pool. A few years of bumper crops and high grain prices kept the wooden elevator network humming and added well to the profits of the Pool. With some of the surplus profit, AWP decided to do some design work with an engineer from Edmonton, by the name of Klaus “Nick” Drieger. Drieger and his company, Buffalo Engineering Ltd., drew up the initial concepts of the new concrete grain elevator to be built with large modular precast concrete pieces, sloped grain bins (to help with the grain flow) and clad with non-combustible pre-finished metal panels.
Being part of a railway museum (and in charge of the collections/archives) a person comes across some interesting donations, such as this series of photos from retired Canadian Pacific Railway engineer Nick Korchinski from Lethbridge, Alberta.
Crossing the High-Level Viaduct heading east
The donation is photos from his trip taking empty grain hoppers to the last grain elevator holdout on the CPR Stirling subdivision at Orion, Alberta, on a warm fall day in September 1998. Nick takes photos from the cab of a worn GP38-2 as they head south from Lethbridge onto the 85-pound territory of the Stirling subdivision, passing vintage wooden grain elevators, several of which fall from memory within years of his trip.
Background
A little bit of the history of the railway line. The Stirling subdivision originally ran between Lethbridge, Alberta and Manyberries, Alberta. The subdivision was named after the junction point “Stirling”, where the west running Cardston subdivision and south running Coutts subdivision met. Stirling is named after J. A. Stirling, an executive in a company in England that helped finance the Alberta Railway & Coal Company in their expansion southward from Lethbridge toward Great Falls, Montana, in the 1890s. Years later the Stirling subdivision was reorganized to start at Stirling and head east, and the Coutts (now Montana) subdivision was extended to start at Lethbridge and head south towards the US border.
