The Fiery Furnace: A History of the B&O's Pittsburgh Division

New Resource Found!!!

2011-03-31T10:08:00.002-04:00

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

2011-03-24T23:52:00.001-04:00

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

This is getting more complicated than I expected...

2011-02-15T22:25:00.002-05:00

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

2011-01-25T22:52:00.002-05:00

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.

BINGO!

2010-12-02T10:57:00.002-05:00

My passion is railroad history and my job is centered around library science and information management. Sometimes these two things meet and create good things.

One of the big thorns in the research side of this project has been a lack of digital resources for the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad. The railroad was to have connected the city of Pittsburgh with the B&O's main line via a junction at Cumberland, MD in the 1850's. It became a pawn in a power play between emerging Pennsylvania Railroad interests, Pittsburgh commercial and industrial interests, the B&O Railroad and the State of Virginia and the City of Wheeling.

While this line was eventually built all the way to Cumberland, it took much political and commercial and in some cases legal maneuvering to get it done. Now, finally! there are portions of the annual reports online!

Go to: http://www.hathitrust.org/

and in the search field put in "Pittsburgh Connellsville Railroad"

Enjoy!

WABTEC ca. 1905

2010-06-17T09:51:00.002-04:00

Shorpy.com is a really nice photo site that showcases high quality scans of historic images. In this case, they are showcasing the Westinghouse Air Brake factory in Wilmerding, PA ca 1905.

And there's B&O cars there to boot!

Build the Bibliography

2010-06-16T10:42:00.003-04:00

So, I'm having to go back to my days as a young graduate student at UMBC and remember how I researched and wrote my master's thesis. If I recall, the first part was to compile an annotated bibliography of sources. So, that's where I'm going to start here. Look for these items to be appearing on this blog over the next few weeks.

My projects are on a Lazy Susan...

2010-06-08T11:22:00.002-04:00

So this blog got pushed well to the back of the pile a few years ago. This was mainly due to the fact that this project got pushed to the back of the pile as well. Now things are starting to revolve around. A couple of major projects for the B&O Railroad Historical Society have been moved to the "done" pile. This now opens up a slot for a new or existing project.

In this case the Pittsburgh Division Book is back at the forefront.

There's a couple of reasons that have led to this movement. One is that I do have more free time. Another is that a colleague in the field of amateur railroad historians has been doing some great work in Virginia. I think I've been inspired by his success to move ahead with this project. One more reason is that the archives of the B&O Railroad Historical Society have been getting organized by leaps and bounds since I put this project on the table. It's now easier to find things than it had been.

So, I'll be blogging some more as I work on things here. See you soon.

Crosspost from This Historian for Hire

2007-12-12T11:01:00.001-05:00

This is a crosspost from my personal blog but as it has to do with Pittsburgh and the B&O, I'm including part of it here.
----------------------------------
December there are no B&O Railroad Historical Society Archives sessions, so I get some time off there.

This time off from being archivist and caterer has been good for me. I have a bit of a break to catch up with some scanning projects of archives documents, work on the web page, and dabble in some research. Currently I have an itch about the B&O's trackage rights out of, er rather around, Pittsburgh on the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad. This was a coup negotiated by Daniel Willard in 1934 that gave the B&O a really sweet route around Pittsburgh to Chicago. Low grades and good track on this line enabled the B&O to run their trains faster than they were able to on their own hilly and curvy track in Pittsburgh.

It seems this was a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The B&O and P&LE's parent company, the New York Central, both were fighting against the Pennsylvania Railroad for traffic in the area. The PRR had the advantage of getting to Pittsburgh first and was very well off financially. (This would not last) So the NYC in a move to give the proverbial finger to a competitor, allowed the B&O access to the P&LE route. This made the B&O more competitive for freight from Chicago to Baltimore and Potomac Yard (near DC and a waypoint for traffic from the Northeast to the South). What I need now is source material. I've checked B&O magazine articles, 1934 and 1944. I also have a 1962 B&O railroad report on using the B&O track again since the lease was up for renewal at that time and the P&LE (NYC) was asking for a lot more $$$. I need to go through the VP of Operations files at the archives and look at the Wall St. Journal and Pittsburgh papers. I've found some stuff in the local papers on newspaperarchive.com, but not enough. Then there is the chance to look at it from the other side and see if the NYC and P&LE historical societies have items in their collections that may help. Ideally this will become an article for the Sentinel and a chapter in "The Fiery Furnace."

A new tack...

2007-06-18T09:11:00.001-04:00

Okay I've figured out how to attack the research on this project. It's a bit bass-ackwards but it will probably work. I'm going to have to go at this from both the Railroad History side AND the Industrial History Side. The pitfall here is to not get distracted by interesting stuff on the Labor movement while researching the steel, glass, coal and coke industries around Pittsburgh.

New!

2007-05-18T14:28:00.000-04:00

A Jolly Good website on the steel industry.

The problem of Pittsburgh

2007-01-15T19:19:00.000-05:00

For some reason the people around Pittsburgh don't seem to have much written about the railroads in their city. I've been looking and there is hardly anything to be found. It's most distressing.

D'oh! Friggin school work...

2007-01-14T21:56:00.000-05:00

Classes have started again and train show season is getting ready to start. My time to write will be decreasing until next fall. Sigh.

The Gathering...

2007-01-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

Well, it's begun. I've started gathering sources for the B&O in Pittsburgh book project.

The first new acquisition is "Railroads of the Ohio Valley" Vol. 1. I also found a switching agreement that was for sale on the internet and picked that up for the BORRHS. It may be something useful to add to the sources.

First Research Forays...

2006-12-28T15:34:00.000-05:00

Well, I've actually had some time to start poking around the existing work on the B&O. So for the first time in over two months, this is where I am.

My first stops are:

Sand Patch by Roberts-Nice picture book, fair captions but the author doesn't follow proper citation practice for a scholarly work. No footnotes or endnotes and a short bibliography. This book gives a good visual overview of the area from Cumberland, MD to Connellsville, PA but doesn't do much outside of that.

The History of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad by Stover-A rather dry economic history of the entire road. It is properly referenced so I can get some good footnotes mined. However it's coverage of Pittsburgh is limited as it is an overview of the entire company.

Centennial History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad-Hungerford (2 vols.)-Produced as part of the PR blitz for the 1927 Centennial of the B&O railroad this is an interesting read. However I have to be aware that there is as much folklore as fact in these books. No documentation and it was written by the company so a lot of the seemy details got left out.

The Sentinel-The Quarterly Publication of the B&O Railroad Historical Society. They did a two volume spread on Pittsburgh so I've purchased those from the Society Company store. As I'm the society archivist I have access to most of these primary source documents.

Next I'm going to use my Drexel Library access to mine some databases for articles and hit the various and sundry special collections around Iron City.

Outline as of 09/25/2006:

2006-09-25T22:06:00.000-04:00

Cracking the Keystone:
The B&O Railroad from Connellsville to Pittsburgh

By: Nicholas Fry

Outline:

Introduction:
1873: The B&O and the Steel City
An overview of Pittsburgh transportation and economy. Focus on the monopoly of the PRR on the town, the friction between the municipal government, the local community, the workers and the RR. Show how the PRR’s lack of understanding and good relations with the Pittsburgh community contributed to the riot and see if the riots helped break the PRR’s control on Pittsburgh’s rail commerce. Focus on Tom Scott vs. Mayor of Pittsburgh.
Cite complaints of steel companies. State the objective of the book: Show the history of the B&O’s line to Pittsburgh and it’s impact on RR commerce in the area and the B&O itself. How it enabled the B&O to reach Chicago and compete with the NYC and PRR for commerce between the upper Midwest and the Eastern Seaboard.

Pt. 1:
The Prize
A history of Pittsburgh to 1873
Pittsburgh’s existing Railroads before the B&O entered
Pittsburgh vs. the PRR
Overview of the B&O’s attempts to reach Pittsburgh to date and how they were thwarted
Pittsburgh vs. Wheeling as the B&O’s Ohio River terminus

Pt. 2:
On the Brink
Plans for entry into Pittsburgh
The machinations used to get there.
Latrobe goes to run the P&C for the B&O

Pt. 3:
The quest for the P&C
The P&C RR
B&O’s acquisition of the P&C Charter
PRR’s reactions
1864 revocation of P&C Charter
1868 reversal of act
Pittsburgh’s Reactions

Pt 4:*
The Line
Detailed summary of the route from Connellsville, PA to Pittsburgh, PA
Photos of construction and operations
Narrative history of operations from acquisition of branch to end of the B&O in 1987
Impact of changes in economy of area on the line.
How the line has fared today under CSX.
*This section will probably have the majority of the photographs of RR Ops and trains in the book.

Research Strategy:
B&O RR Museum
PA State RR Museum
NMAH-John Garrett Papers
MD Historical Society
PA State Archives
U Pitt Library
CMU Library
JHU Library
-Daniel Willard Papers-
-Keyser Papers-
B&ORRHS Archives
-B&O Annual Reports-
-VP Ops Files-
-Eng. Dept. Files-
-Timetables-
PRRTHS Archives
National Archives
Library of Congress
James Mischke Collection
Hageley Library
PSU Library
UMD Library
Stover’s B&O Railroad
Dilts’ The Great Road

Schedule:
Finish Introduction Draft: end of Q4 2006
Begin construction of the companion web site to blog my research and link to the on-line resources I’ve found: Q4 2006

2006-09-25T21:34:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my blog. I will be posting my outline and research progress on "Cracking the Keystone: The B&O from Connellsville to Pittsburgh and Beyond."