Trip Report: November 27 - December 21, 2001
by Ted & Sylvia Blishak
28 DAYS ON THE RAILS
AMBRIDGE, PENNSYLVANIA
Wednesday, December 5, 2001
The weather is extraordinary for Pennsylvania in December, sunny, dry, and temperatures in the sixties. This cannot last. Soon after arriving at my mother's home in Ambridge, we go with her on her usual two-mile morning walk. She is only 88 and in very good health, so we huff and puff to keep up with her. Her route follows a series of quiet streets along the ridge top overlooking the Ohio River and the town of Ambridge, with its numerous closed steel mills. The largest, the American Bridge Company, is on the south end of town. In the center of town, the remains of National Electric Products lie abandoned. Where Pittsburgh Coal Washer was located, there is now a set of tennis courts, a part of the sports facilities of Ambridge Area High School. The H. H. Robertson Co, maker of steel siding and roofing (and where my father worked a lifetime) is a rusted-out wreck. Spangs Chalfant, which turned out millions of artillery shells during WWII, is closed. Wykoff's is abandoned. A. M. Byers, with its Bessemer process wrought-iron works is cold. Across the Ohio River, what was once the largest steel plant in the world, Jones & Laughlin, a five-mile-long series of structures, including coke ovens and blast furnaces, is derelict.
The town of Ambridge, built and named the same year that the American Bridge Company was built, surrounds an older community of Economy, founded by the Harmony Society in 1835. These people developed a lifestyle based on agriculture and crafts. Where the rusted-out hulks of mills now lie abandoned, the Harmonites once raised wheat, grapes, and apples.
When the American Bridge Company moved in, most of the Harmonites moved out, to a new location in Indiana which they named Harmony. The society was not self-perpetuating, as they did not believe in marriage and children. Of course, they had a problem in finding new recruits, and so gradually died off. When I was of grade school age, I visited Economy one summer afternoon, and was privileged to shake the hand of a very old man who was the last surviving member of the organization to remain in Economy, Mr. John Duss. To this day a major street passing through Ambridge is named Duss Avenue. Old Economy is now a State of Pennsylvania Historical Site, visited by many tourists every year.
On the our side of the Ohio River is the four-track main line of the former Pennsylvania Railroad, their famous Broad Way. Taken over by Conrail when the Penn Central collapsed, it is now owned by the Norfolk Southern. On the opposite side of the Ohio lies the roadbed of the former four-track main line of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad, a division of the New York Central System. Sadly, now it has been reduced to a single-track of the CSX. As you can imagine, when I was growing up here, there was always heavy train action on these dual four-track mains. I would spend hours there during the halcyon days of the changeover from steam to diesel. Mixed in with the Alco PA diesel locomotives of the New York Central System and the Erie Railroad -- which operated combined NYC/Erie passenger trains from Pittsburgh to Cleveland -- I would see Baltimore & Ohio streamlined dome-liners with Electro Motive E-6 units, and the last steam engines built by Alco, the P&LE 2-8-4 freight locomotives.
The PRR side was even more interesting, as K-4 Pacific and streamlined T-1 locomotives, with a 4-4-4-4 wheel arrangement, pulled some fast passenger trains, while other trains were pulled by EMD E-6, Alco PA, Baldwin Centipedes, and Baldwin shark-nose diesels. PRR freights were hauled by 2-10-4 steamers as well as EMD F-3 and Fairbanks Morse diesels.
It was an exciting time to be a railfan. While I was there, hanging around the bridge across the Ohio, watching trains on both sides, I would also have opportunity to observe the heavy tow-boat traffic on the river. (On the Ohio and Mississippi River system, tow boats push barges which are lashed together in what are called by the rivermen, tows.) The riverboat people were also going though a changeover from steam to diesel, and I was able to observe paddle-wheel steam boats, such as J&L Steel's "Titan", and Homestead Works of US Steel's "Homestead". Mixed in with these relics of the past was the J&L Steel steam-turbine, twin-screw "H. E. Lewis", the largest boat on the river.
Steamboats were being replaced -- as I watched -- with diesel-powered boats such as Dravo Corporation's "Buckeye" and "Keystone," named after the two states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the ultimate streamlined, almost yacht-like beauty: the diesel powered "M. S. LaBelle." Today, the "Delta Queen" paddle-wheel cruise boat makes a visit to Pittsburgh every summer, and my mother can listen to the steam calliope as it cruises through Ambridge.
There was much excitement during three summers in the early 1950s, when "Titan" and "Homestead" raced upstream on a several-mile course terminating at the Smithfield Street Bridge in downtown Pittsburgh. (The "Homestead" won all three years, even the last race, when their mechanical stokers broke down in mid-race, and the crew hand-fired its coal burning boilers.)
This afternoon, with the weather holding, we take our second walk, in Economy Park, a grassy and wooded park in the hills over Norfolk Southern's Conway Yards.
Continue to Next Page
