The Panhandle Bridge (officially the Monongahela River Bridge) carries two rail lines of the Port Authority "T" line across the

Monongahela River The Monongahela River ( , )—often referred to locally as the Mon ()—is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-cen ...

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

. The name comes from Pennsylvania Railroad subsidiary Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, also known as the Panhandle Route, which operated over the bridge. The basic structure was built in 1903, and was the third railroad bridge on the site since 1863. It was raised in 1912-14 as part of a grade separation project. The bridge's function was to carry Panhandle Route passenger,

mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal sys ...

and express trains from

Pennsylvania Station Pennsylvania Station (often abbreviated Penn Station) is a name applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) to several of its grand passenger terminals. Several are still in active use by Amtrak and other transportation services; others have been ...

in Pittsburgh, with a tunnel in between the station and the bridge. Pennsy Panhandle freight trains utilized the Ohio Connecting Bridge slightly downstream on the Ohio River, or went the long way around the

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the B ...

Panhandle via

Conway, Pennsylvania Conway is a borough in Beaver County, Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the ...

. Rail traffic over the Panhandle Bridge declined as passenger trains were discontinued, and

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

became the only regular user of the bridge from 1971 to 1979, when the New York-St. Louis-Kansas City ''

National Limited The ''National Limited'' was the premier train of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) on its route between Jersey City, New Jersey and St. Louis, Missouri, with major station stops in Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, Ohio. (Buses took passen ...

'' was discontinued on October 1 of that year. As PRR successor Conrail had no use for the bridge and the restrictive downtown tunnel, it was sold to the Port Authority, who rebuilt the bridge beginning in 1982 as part of the downtown light rail subway project, which removed trolleys from downtown streets and the

Smithfield Street Bridge The Smithfield Street Bridge is a lenticular truss bridge crossing the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The bridge was designed by Gustav Lindenthal, the engineer who later designed the Hell Gate Bridge in New York City. The ...

. PAT (as the Port Authority system was known at the time) light rail cars began using the bridge on July 7, 1985.

References

External links

Panhandle Bridge
on pghbridges.com * Bridges in Pittsburgh Bridges over the Monongahela River Bridges completed in 1903 Railroad bridges in Pennsylvania Light rail bridges {{Pittsburgh-struct-stub

See also

References

External links