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Pennsylvania Railroad
The Pennsylvania Railroad ( reporting mark PRR), legal name as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy," was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At its peak in 1882, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest railroad (by traffic and revenue), the largest transportation enterprise, and the largest corporation in the world. Over its existence, Pennsylvania Railroad acquired, merged with, or owned part of at least 800 other rail lines and companies. At the end of 1926, it operated of rail line;This mileage includes companies independently operated. PRR miles of all tracks, which includes first (or main), second, third, fourth, and sidings, totalled 28,040.49 at the end of 1926. in the 1920s, it carried nearly three times the traffic as other railroads of comparable length, such as the Union Pacific and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroads. Its only formidable rival was the New York Centra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Brooke Roberts
George Brooke Roberts (January 15, 1833 – January 30, 1897) was a civil engineer and the fifth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad (1880–96). Early life and education Roberts was born at his family's farm in the Pencoyd (Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania), Pencoyd region of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. In 1849, he graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and went on to teach there for two years before becoming a rodman for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR). Beginning in 1852, he worked for the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad, returning to the PRR in 1862 as assistant to the president, J. Edgar Thomson. Roberts oversaw the construction of bridges and other engineering work, including the Pennsylvania Railroad Connecting Bridge, Connecting Railway Bridge over Schuylkill River in Philadelphia (attributed to Wilson Brothers & Company, John A. Wilson, 1866–67) that connected PRR's southern and northern lines. He became a PRR vice-president in 1869, and succeeded Thomas A. Scott as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norfolk Southern Railway
The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The company operates in 22 eastern states, the District of Columbia, and has rights in Canada over the Albany to Montreal route of the Canadian Pacific Kansas City. Norfolk Southern Railway is the leading subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation. Norfolk Southern maintains 28,400 miles of track, with the rest managed by other parties through trackage rights. Intermodal containers and trailers are the most common commodity type carried by NS, which have grown as the coal business has declined throughout the 21st century; coal was formerly the largest traffic source. The railway offers the largest intermodal rail network in eastern North America. NS was also the pioneer of Roadrailer service. Norfolk Southern and its chief competitor, CSX ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of United States cities by population, 67th-most populous city in the U.S., with a population of 302,971 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The city is located in Western Pennsylvania, southwestern Pennsylvania at the confluence of the Allegheny River and Monongahela River, which combine to form the Ohio River. It anchors the Greater Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which had a population of 2.457 million residents and is the largest metro area in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the Pennsylvania metropolitan areas, second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the List of metropolitan statistical areas, 26th-largest in the U.S. Pittsburgh is the principal city of the greater Pittsburgh–New Castle–Weirton combined statistic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allegheny Mountains
The Allegheny Mountain Range ( ) — also spelled Alleghany or Allegany, less formally the Alleghenies — is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada. Historically it represented a significant barrier to westward land travel and development. The Alleghenies have a northeast–southwest orientation, running for about from north-central Pennsylvania southward, through western Maryland and eastern West Virginia. The Alleghenies comprise the rugged western-central portion of the Appalachians. They rise to in northeastern West Virginia. In the east, they are dominated by a high, steep escarpment known as the Allegheny Front. In the west, they slope down into the closely associated Allegheny Plateau, which extends into Ohio and Kentucky. The principal settlements of the Alleghenies are Altoona, State College, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania; and Cumberland, Maryland. Using the USGS classification of physical geography (physiography) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allegheny Portage Railroad
The Allegheny Portage Railroad was the first railroad constructed through the Allegheny Mountains in central Pennsylvania. It operated from 1834 to 1854 as the first transportation infrastructure through the gaps of the Allegheny that connected the midwest to the eastern seaboard across the barrier range of the Allegheny Front. Approximately long overall, both ends connected to the Pennsylvania Canal, and the system was primarily used as a portage railway, hauling river boats and barges over the divide between the Ohio and the Susquehanna Rivers. Today, the remains of the railroad are preserved within the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site operated by the National Park Service. The railroad was authorized as part of the Main Line of Public Works legislation in 1824. It had five inclines on either side of the drainage divide running athwart the ridge line from Blair Gap through along the kinked saddle at the summit into Cresson, Pennsylvania. The endpoint ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Funicular
A funicular ( ) is a type of cable railway system that connects points along a railway track laid on a steep grade (slope), slope. The system is characterized by two counterbalanced carriages (also called cars or trains) permanently attached to opposite ends of a haulage cable, which is looped over a pulley at the upper end of the track. The result of such a configuration is that the two carriages move synchronously: as one ascends, the other descends at an equal speed. This feature distinguishes funiculars from inclined elevators, which have a single car that is hauled uphill. The term ''funicular'' derives from the Latin word , the diminutive of , meaning 'rope'. Operation In a funicular, both cars are permanently connected to the opposite ends of the same cable, known as a ''haul rope''; this haul rope runs through a system of pulleys at the upper end of the line. If the railway track is not perfectly straight, the cable is guided along the track using sheaves – unpowered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philadelphia And Columbia Railroad
Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad (P&CR) (1834) was one of the earliest commercial railroads in the United States, running from Philadelphia to Columbia, Pennsylvania, Columbia, Pennsylvania, it was built by the Pennsylvania Canal Commission in lieu of a canal from Columbia to Philadelphia; in 1857 it became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It is currently owned and operated by Amtrak as its electrified Keystone Corridor. The Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad's western terminus was located near the former ferry site known as Wright's Ferry, in the town once of that name, but now Columbia, Pennsylvania, Columbia in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Lancaster County. There the P&CR met with the Pennsylvania Canal—Canal, navigations and improvements on the Susquehanna River east bank approximately south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Most of its right-of-way was obtained by the actions of the Pennsylvania Canal, Pennsylvania Canal Commission which operated the railroad under th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Main Line Of Public Works
The Main Line of Public Works was a package of legislation passed by the Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1826 to establish a means of transporting freight between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It funded the construction of various long-proposed canal and road projects, mostly in southern Pennsylvania, that became a canal system and later added railroads. Built between 1826 and 1834, it established the Pennsylvania Canal System and the Allegheny Portage Railroad. Later amendments substituted a new technology, rail transport, railroads, in place of the planned but costly canal connecting the Delaware River in Philadelphia to the Susquehanna River. The route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh remained a patchwork of canals and railroads until the Pennsylvania Railroad was built in the 1850s. Historic Background Trans-Appalachian settlement had begun in earnest during the latter years of the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Following the war, the British government ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chesapeake And Ohio Canal
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, abbreviated as the C&O Canal and occasionally called the Grand Old Ditch, operated from 1831 until 1924 along the Potomac River between Washington, D.C., and Cumberland, Maryland. It replaced the Patowmack Canal, which shut down completely in 1828, and could operate during months in which the water level was too low for the former canal. The canal's principal cargo was coal from the Allegheny Mountains. Construction began in 1828 on the canal and ended in 1850 with the completion of a stretch to Cumberland, although the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had already reached Cumberland in 1842. The canal had an elevation change of which required 74 canal locks, 11 aqueducts to cross major streams, more than 240 culverts to cross smaller streams, and the Paw Paw Tunnel. A planned section to the Ohio River in Pittsburgh was never built. The canal is now maintained as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, with a trail that follows ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east–west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigability, navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing the costs of transporting people and goods across the Appalachians. The Erie Canal accelerated the settlement of the Great Lakes region, the westward expansion of the United States, and the economic ascendancy of New York (state), New York state. It has been called "The Nation's First Superhighway". A canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes was first proposed in the 1780s, but a formal survey was not conducted until 1808. The New York State Legislature authorized construction in 1817. Political opponents of the canal (referencing its lead supporter New York Governor DeWitt Clinton) denigrated the project as "Clinton's Folly" and "Clinton's Big Ditch". Nonetheless, the canal saw quick success upon opening on October ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1857 PRR
Events January–March * January 1 – The biggest Estonian newspaper, ''Postimees'', is established by Johann Voldemar Jannsen. * January 7 – The partly French-owned London General Omnibus Company begins operating. * January 9 – The 7.9 Fort Tejon earthquake shakes Central and Southern California, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (''Violent''). * January 24 – The University of Calcutta is established in Calcutta, as the first multidisciplinary modern university in South Asia. The University of Bombay is also established in Bombay, British India, this year. * February 3 – The National Deaf Mute College (later renamed Gallaudet University) is established in Washington, D.C., becoming the first school for the advanced education of the deaf. * February 5 – The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States is promulgated. * March – The Austrian garrison leaves Bucharest. * March 3 ** France and the United Kingdom form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Premier Underwriters
American Premier Underwriters is a property and casualty insurance company, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Prior to 1995 the company was known as the Penn Central Corporation. In addition to casualty insurance, the company is also in the business of fire and marine insurance. History During the nineteenth century the company was the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was established on April 13, 1846. On March 25, 1994, the company changed its name from Penn Central Corporation to American Premier Underwriters Inc. In December 1994, the company, which was 40.4 percent owned by the American Financial Corporation, announced that it would be acquiring the parent company in a stock merger. The combined company became known as American Financial Group. In 1995, as a publicly traded company, APU reportedly had 5,400 employees and sales of $1.8 billion. Amtrak lawsuit The company sued Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak (; ), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
