New Resource Found!!!

I've found a new map resource:

PA Department of Transportation Historic County Maps:

http://www.dot.state.pa.us/Internet/Bureaus/pdPlanRes.nsf/infoBPRHistoricCountyMaps

Greetings visitors from RPM East 2011

If you've stayed with my presentation, here's the link: Sites Visited

This is getting more complicated than I expected...

Ok, so the history of the B&O's Pittsburgh Division is requiring me to learn more about the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie. So, I bought a used copy of Harold McLean's "Pittsburgh and Lake Erie." And I'm reading through the parts where the B&O is mentioned and now I see that in the late 1870s the B&O was offered control of the line in exchange for financing. Something that was blown off or pulled off the table by either the B&O or the P&LE respectively. Now I also see that the trackage rights agreement between the two roads from the 1930s got complicated in mid 1963 and I'm going to need to pull some records from St. Louis to find out more. Now, option 1 is to pay for copies, option 2 is to go there. Option 1 is probably gonna be the winner unless I can finagle a way to make it a work trip, but I don't see that happening.

Fun times. Well, back to reading.

The good thing about writing this book

I have to admit, I tend to have a short attention span with projects. Maybe that's why I liked studying the cavalry when I was working on my civil war research in college. Move fast, do the job, go home, do next job.

However, now that I've started working on this book in earnest, I've been able to take advantage of something:

I'm really writing about three railroads in the B&O's system.

Yup. Three. The Pittsburgh and Connellsville which got the B&O into Pittsburgh. The Wheeling and Pittsburgh which was their first route OUT of Pittsburgh. And finally, the Pittsburgh and Western, which eventually got them to Chicago.

This is a good thing because whenever I'm afflicted by a need to change focus, I can just hop over to one of the other railroads. I've already determined that the W&P is probably going to be the most difficult to get good documentation on. But that is just a fact of life.

Anyhow, back to work.