Costs steadily rose and Vanderbilt’s initial optimism began to erode by the day. He saw the buyout by Pennsylvania of the West Shore Railroad in NY as a threat to his holdings in that state and decided to build one of his own in PA, jointly with Reading Railroad, that would connect to the coast.īack to the tunnels themselves though, as the tragedy continues to mount. He and Vanderbilt hoped that connecting the Steel City to the State Capital and the Susquehanna River would bolster Vanderbilt's fight for railroad supremacy in both Pennsylvania and New York State. The construction of the tunnels were personally oversaw by Carnegie. Ground broke on the Rays Hill Tunnel around 1884 and the Sideling Hill Tunnel in 1885 in what is now a tract of the Buchanan State Forest in Bedford and Fulton counties. Land was surveyed again for the new project that was to cut through the mountainous wilderness between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.
The project was then revived in 1881 by legendary industrialists and businessmen Andrew Carnegie and William Vanderbilt when they stepped in and aimed to solve “the lack of interest” and “too expensive” problems by throwing a bunch of their money at the struggling owner of the right-of-way, the South Pennsylvania Railroad. So, of course after that announcement, no more work would be completed and the project sat dormant for more than 25 years. After many delays and setbacks, work finally began in Summer of 1857 when two miles were graded and the track owners promoted a 200 mile expansion into Maryland and Virginia. The railroad had many names, (none of which stuck) with the first being the excitingly apt “Duncannon, Landisburg and Broad Top Railroad” and the last being the shorter, but less descriptive “South Pennsylvania Railroad”. Consistent with it’s future fortunes this turned out to be prophetic. The project proceeded, despite vocal concerns that costs would be too high. This rail would use much of the land originally surveyed a decade earlier, including the 13 miles stretch through two mountains near Breezewood. Later on, in the 1850’s, a train route was conceived that would run over 50 miles from Duncannon to the Juniata River, with a later addition of over 200 miles of track. While they did find a route, it was deemed far too difficult to build within budget and thus it was set aside for other plans. It was built upon the remains a thrice failed rail line, its fate seemingly written long before the wheels of progress left it behind to rot.ĭuring the 1840’s, the US Army Corps of engineers surveyed some land in search of a rail route between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, including a 13 miles stretch near what is today known as Breezewood. Buried in the Appalachian Mountains of South Central PA, lies a curious bit of pavement that has a history steeped in failure.
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