The Panhandle Bridge (officially the Monongahela River Bridge) carries the three lines of the

Port Authority A port authority (less commonly a port district) is a governmental or quasi-governmental public authority for a special-purpose district usually formed by a legislative body (or bodies) to operate ports and other transportation infrastructure. ...

Light Rail Network across the

Monongahela River The Monongahela River ( , ), sometimes 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 nor ...

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 Un ...

. The name comes from

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 ...

subsidiary Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, also known as the Panhandle Route, which operated over the bridge.

History

The basic structure was built in 1903, and was the third railroad bridge on the site since 1863. It was raised in 1912–1914 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, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

and

express Express, The Expresss or EXPRESS may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Film * ''Express: Aisle to Glory'', a 1998 comedy short film featuring Kal Penn * ''The Express: The Ernie Davis Story'', a 2008 film starring Dennis Quaid * The Expre ...

trains from Pennsylvania Station 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 The Ohio River () is a river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its river mouth, mouth on the Mississippi Riv ...

, or went the long way around the

West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...

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

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak (; ), is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates intercity rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

became the only regular user of the bridge from 1971 to 1979, when the New York-St. Louis-Kansas City '' National Limited'' was discontinued on October 1 of that year. As PRR successor

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busine ...

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 ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

light rail subway project, which removed trolleys from downtown streets and the Smithfield Street Bridge. PAT (as the Port Authority system was known at the time) light rail cars began using the bridge on July 7, 1985.

Services

The bridge has two tracks, carrying the

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

, Red, and

Silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

Lines of the Pittsburgh Light Rail system. The tracks connect to the former Pittsburgh & Steubenville Extension Railroad Tunnel to the north, which now carries light rail trains toward their northern terminus at Allegheny station. At the southern approach to the bridge, its two tracks curve to the west, connecting to Station Square station at the northern portal of the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel. A a single track diverges to the east, connecting to the tracks of the former Brown Line, a surface route over Mount Washington via the Allentown neighborhood. The Brown Line route is not used in regular service, but serves as an important alternate route during tunnel closures.

Gallery

Image:Trolleyatdusk023.jpg, A one-car T Light Rail train crosses the bridge Image:Panhandlebridgefoundation016.jpg, Bridge supports from the river File:Pittsburgh Light Rail on the Panhandle Bridge over the Monongahela River.jpg, Light rail crossing the bridge

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

History

Services

Gallery

See also

References

External links