 Well, you sure don't look much like a railroad, and not much of you left. I guess we've all seen better days. It's life. Grow up, you work hard, you tumble back into the earth. But by gosh, we had our day, didn't we? Six boats. Six canal boats. We pull up that steep incline every hour. Big boats! Put them on a flat bed, haul them up over the alligating mountains, drop them in the water on the other side, send them on their way to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or whichever way they were going in the first place. You put it on a train, you take it over the mountain. It's unbelievable. You talk about overcoming what nature put in your way, well, look out, you can't block progress, especially when you've got a whole country of people chomping at the bit. You want to go west to send a boatload of supplies in that direction. Well, now's now. We may be falling apart. By gosh, for some 20 years we had a time of it, didn't we? We should have wrote a book about it. The Allegheny Portage Railroad by Edgar West. How would I start it? As a young man, way back in the 20s, my occupation was to lead our mules along the canal, Topac. I lived with my family. Mules included aboard the canal boat. And we hauled cargo back and forth on a canal built alongside of a river that was just too cantankerous to run a boat on, what would the rabbit in the water for? And working the canals, that wasn't as easy as it looked, no sir. Well, most of the time between the locks it was uneventful, except when one of the mules fell in the water and then you had your hands full. And when you came to one of the locks, you had to think fast and act even quicker. Mules from the boat, tie them up, run help guide the boat into the lock and then tie her off quick so she wouldn't go busting through the gates at the other end of the lock. Of course, a lock keeper would that help. Maybe a bystander too. The gates on the other side locks into my hard work. But it sure was the only way to take her there was some fun to be with a daughter to spark or maybe you could listen to the local gossip. Do you know what Pennsylvania's gonna do? What now? Gonna dig a canal all the way across the state. Don't Pennsylvania have enough canal? Not east to west they don't, like New York. It's gonna go from Columbia near Harrisburg straight through to Pittsburgh. Oh, what's it gonna do when it gets to the Allegheny Mountains? From what I heard, they're gonna figure that one out when they get dug that far. That's flat out crazy. Why do we need another canal anyway? Well, New York state's already got the Erie Canal running all the way west and Maryland's fixing to dig a canal from Washington out west. Pretty soon. Well, pretty soon won't be anybody traveling across our state, that's what. They'll be traveling west using the north of or south of Pennsylvania route and we'll be left out. Could all this be true? A bunch of folks otherwise thought to be in their right minds deciding to dig a canal across the whole state then up one side of a mountain down the other? Oh, well that might be interesting to watch. So I decided to go out on my own. Maybe make something of myself. After all, I'm almost 17. In that spring of 1831 I left my parents. I walked on over to take a look at that mountain. Anybody who could figure a better way to get people in wet weather to slow you down. And when the weather cleared, the black gnats and rattlesnakes came out. And with this kind of trouble, only high priced cargo like furs and whiskey could ever expect to make a profit. No wonder smart folks were using the Erie Canal. I came upon Pittsburgh. Gate way to the west, people called it. Downtown folks were being recruited for the new canal project. And the whole thing is headed up by a fella named Sylvester Welch. An engineer he was. Gentlemen, it is all quite simple. Now follow along on this map. The canal runs from Pittsburgh to Johnstown. At Johnstown there begins a 36 mile railroad section that takes travelers and goods over the mountains. A series of ten inclined planes allow the passenger cars and boats to be hauled up and let back down by steam power. Then when they reach Holidaysburg on the eastern side, they're set back into the new canal and sped on their way toward Philadelphia. A journey of five days compared with 23 days by wagon. An amazing time for a voyage of some 394 total miles. Pretty much now, so I hired on. Working on what they're called America's first railroad tunnel. Staple Bend Tunnel. And that was the first big hurdle in the railroad scheme of things. We had to dig 900 feet straight through a mountain or rock. We could make a hole big enough to drive a locomotive through. Well, it hard work. And you shared your bed and board with an assortment of characters and critters. There were drunkards and rattlesnakes and black mats everywhere. But making 47 and a half cents a day, kind of used to pay. And it wasn't long before I was putting down Stone Sleepers, the foundation on top of which they set the ties and edge rails themselves. I could take it. As the able-bodied man could get work all along the mainline canal route, that's what they called a mainline. Somehow all the railroad tracks were spiked into the ground through the Staple Bend Tunnel over the Panama Viaduct, up one mountain across the top, down the next valley, and then back again. It was almost a year before we were going to open up. And people already there anticipating how this mainline's going to be a big benefit for everybody. It took me 23 days to come from Philadelphia here to Pittsburgh. Now it'll take only five days to get back home. With this new mainline, Philadelphia's ports will again prosper, quite possibly overtaking New York. Certainly Baltimore won't have a chance. I tell you, my friends, people moving west will come through our fine state of Pennsylvania, and that will be good for every man, woman, child and town along the new mainline canal. I just can't wait. The mainline will surely bring us a better selection of hats and dresses, and perhaps a new preacher. Just after the spring thaw in March 1834, the Allegheny Portage Railroad opened for business. I'd bet it was for a month before there were hand bills posted everywhere, talking about the fast news service and low tolls. But even the local newspapers came out ahead of time so they could inform their readers all about it. And by this time, I found me a real good job, a permanent kind, sort of, working at the bottom of plain number six. And I was there, and some reporter came over, he asked me what I did. So I told him just how I figured in this plan to get canal boats over the mountain. Excuse me, sir, may I have your name? Edgar West. You see, a boat comes along to Johnstown, and we float around to a railroad car. You see, we're using these new sectional canal boats now, well, sometimes, and they were invented by this fellow, John Doherty. And we pull it out of the water with a stationary steam engine. Then we pull it along the long, slow grade to the bottom of an incline, like this one here. And then we hitch him up to a continuous three-and-a-half-inch temporal, moves on rollers between rails. Now that cable's being pulled by another steam engine at the top of the incline. Once we get the boat up top, we unhitch it, we pose along the flat summit of the mountain to the next incline, next plane, where it goes up again, and again, until, of course, it starts going back down the other side of the mountain. And that's about 36 miles. That should take from six to 10 hours. Thank you, Mr. West. Much obliged. Now that's the way things were supposed to work. But you see, we had more than a mile of rope running in a circle hauling cars up the incline on one side and letting other cars down on the other track to balance the load. But even three-and-a-half inches of the finest Russian hemp could only take so much wear and tear, and tear it did ever so often. The minute you felt the jolt of that rope breaking, you knew death was rolling toward you. You got out of the way. You hoped everybody else did, too. Then you had time to mourn. Of course, fear turned business slow for the next week or so. People are amazing, you know? They learn, they adjust, they move forward. You know what was interesting always? To hear people in mid-journey talk to each other, find out what they was each in for on the second half of their trips. Good afternoon, sir. I trust you've had a pleasant trip so far. Well, the boat is terribly cramped. I mean, a 14-inch plank attached to a wall for a bed. One really can't turn over. Curiously, they take the boards off the walls in the morning to make a dining table. Well, you'll have no relief on the rest of your journey. However, you will have the excitement of riding up the inclines. And then there's the matter of the Connemar viaduct. Spectacular arched bridge span in the river. As you travel over, they stop and let you enjoy the view. Then there's the staple Bend Tunnel. 900 feet of total darkness. Finally, you go down one last incline, slip back in the water, and the canal takes you right into the center of Pittsburgh. Oh, that's most interesting. Thank you for the information. I've enjoyed speaking with you. I didn't get your name. Oh, Dickens. Charles Dickens. Good day. Your trip or on business or ship and merchandise, everyone recognizes the boldness of what we've done. Outsmarting nature. No doubt about it. And then a fella named Robling comes along and invents an iron braided cable to replace the hemp rope, that thick rope that hauled the boats up the inclines, and it wouldn't break. Well, mostly not. The things I loved. I loved seeing what was being carried on the main line. Mostly, going west was groceries, dry goods, manufactured items and the like. And coming back east, you find coal, timber, an iron ore plus flour, bacon, tobacco, whiskey, feathers, wool, cheese. The farmers out west were going from barely making a living to growing real profitable crops. There's so many raw materials. We're pouring into the east, the prices start to go way down. Low enough so everybody could afford a pretty decent life. No stopping progress. Steam locomotive came along and put the mules out of work. Main line, small towns started to spring up where there wasn't even a wide spot in the road before. I heard somebody say, Johnstown is growing in population about twice as fast as the rest of Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh's going to be as big as any eastern city. Ohio is getting populated too. There was folks wanting to do away with the portage railroad. Steam locomotives were getting bigger and stronger. So these folks said that a long, easy graded track could be built around the portage and trains could pull the load straight on through. I think my job had to agree, secretly. By 1854, the Pennsylvania Railroad had put track up around what came to be called Horseshoe Curve and blasted through the Allegheny Mountain Summit with the Galitson Tunnel. And that spelled the end for the portage railroad. By 1857, we were just a memory. First, we replaced the old-fashioned wagons. Then we got replaced by bigger, stronger locomotives. Seems there's always a better way to cross them out. Well, for a long time, we were the better way. We could compete within a canal or transportation in this country. Moving raw materials, east-manufactured goods, pioneers with their new fangled ideas out west. We were some kind of solution to some kind of problem we were. Back then, this country never had very far to look for an original idea. Well, I don't suppose that's ever really changed. No, I probably never will. No, I don't suppose there's any problem us folks can't solve. Even if it is big as a mouth.