Pitcairn: A Railroad Town (1850 - 1980)

[Music] if you go down route 48 over the mossad bridge and turn right you'll see what is called the intermodal terminal but that terminal is only a small portion of what used to be there they are grassy patches of land with abandoned railroad tracks concrete pads where once stood sheds and workshops now it's all overgrown with weeds and a few scraggly locust trees it's pretty quiet there now but there was a time when they say you could actually feel a trembling under your feet the very earth shaking to the thundering roar of massive locomotives rumbling through the night the air pierced with the screech of high-pitched missiles clanging of bells and the shuttering squeal of air brakes it was the time of the railroads and on that very spot stood the largest railroad marshalling yards east of the Mississippi the Pitcairn yards the story begins in 1835 when a tobacco farmer named John McGinnis bought a piece of land just that east of Pittsburgh he began selling off Lots at the place he called McGinnis ville at first only a handful of farmers settled around McGinnis property and the place might have remained nothing more than a backwater or it not for what happened in 1850 by that time the railroads were transforming American life and the Pennsylvania Railroad was about to begin its east-west service across the state from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and so it was that in 1850 the railroad bought an arrow right away from John McGinnis it established the station in that area called the walls station and began regular runs these were the years of the railroads and by the time of the Civil War railroads on both sides were playing a vital role in the war effort it was a war that touched everyone's life Patton Township with only a few hundred families found some 60 soldiers would fight in the war most of them in the 63rd pennsylvania volunteers from the colonel Alexander Hayes of those 60s some thirty are buried in our Crossroads Cemetery Stephen Crane takes up the story of that terrible war firing begins somewhere on the regimental line and it ripped along in both directions sheets of flame developed great clouds of smoke they tumbled and tossed in the wind near the ground for a moment then rolled through the ranks as to a gate clouds were tinged with an unearthly glow in the summon and the shadows they were sorry blue flag was sometimes eaten and lost in this massive vapor but more often it projected Sun touched and resplendent Pittsburgh the iron city would become the Arsenal for the Union producing ammunition and the heavy cannons for the war cannon barrels cast at the Fort Pitt foundry had to be tested and rural Patton Township was the perfect site for test firings the wall proving grounds were established on the banks of the Turtle Creek just east of the mossad bridge this location was ideal as it was already on the railroads right away cannons could be out from Pittsburgh to the proving grounds by train then tested by firing into the hillside across the creek larger guns could even be fired directly from railroad flatcars soon the growing railroad was running out of room at its facilities in downtown Pittsburgh the city yards at 28th Street were too small to accommodate the large number of trains and so in 1874 Robert Pitcairn divisional superintendent of Pittsburgh operations began looking for a place to relocate the Pittsburgh Yards he found a relatively flat expanse of valley floor in a turtle creek valley just east of Pittsburgh the rail yards were been relocated and began to grow the first receiving and classification yards were completed by 1892 by 1905 the westbound hop yard and Pitcairn was open here real cars were pushed up a hill hump uncoupled and then allowed to roll downhill into a remotely controlled sorting track a series of four tracks ran up to each humps and fanned out into 35 in the receiving yards thus began the decades love affair between Patton Township and the Pennsylvania Railroad for many years all east and westbound freight for the pittsburgh division of the prr was channeled through the Pitcairn yards and the yard grew into one of the largest classification yards on the prr system a newspaper reporter named Bruce Kish continues the story mr. Pitkin Gary's deist word toward the Turtle Creek Valley we're laying the farmlands of the McGinnis Britton wall onto hill families in 1874 he purchased 215 acres of this land about 15 miles from Pittsburgh the track would serve as the new home for the Pittsburgh rail yard and for its workers and for the next 20 years the neighboring hillsides resounded with a set of axes and the pounding of hammers as the forest yielded to a growing company town in 1894 the village was incorporated as a borough adopting the name of that railroad superintendent Pitts turn soon the quiet streets of Pitcairn were ringing with the clanging of bells the screams of shrieking whistles of mighty steam engines and the haunting call of the low Diesel's wine puffs of steam rose in great clouds from mighty locomotives that chugged and roared like mindless jungle beasts going about their daily business and the mass of switching yarns it was the age of steam and the Pennsylvania Railroad reigned supreme the Pitcairn yard was its prized jewel Don wait a retired railroad engineer recalled that era and a Land Between the Pitcairn and wall rock to the sounds of steam locomotives screaming whistles and rivet guns guns it could have been a chorus of Gatling guns for all the racket they made day and night night and day 24 hours a day we had some people come here to stay from Philadelphia they said how do you sleep with all that noise and we said what noise it was just like music he got used to it those were the days that had no beginning and no ending at least not ones defined by the Sun when the yard was roaring with activity when I was a youngster I'd go down to ride the trains every Saturday I'd go to Pittsburgh it was exciting the big steam monsters would be hissing and there was dirt all over the place sights and sounds were something you never forgot in their heyday the yards bustle dwith activity Bruce Kish continues the story from the West Trains pulled into the loading dogs from Chicago and st. Louis and Cincinnati to drop off grain and agricultural products loading crews refilled the cars with manufactured goods and sent two trains back to the Midwest great booms of smoke rose into the sky ear reverberate 'adam and world machines and the pounding of sledges Pitcairn handled virtually every aspect of train travel and of maintenance in the vast network of machine shops and factories for round houses used for repairing passenger and freight cars jobs were created daily Don fails a local historian talked about the newcomers who came to follow the railroad Pitcairn started to grow a little bit more and more as more and more people came in who were these people where were they coming from first of all they were the ones who ran the trains the rolling stock people engineers and firemen the conductors and brakeman a lot of those people came from Homewood Rushton area Hays and other parts of Pittsburgh some of them came from 20 50 Street they came here with their families they came here for the jobs they needed houses our houses were quickly built on 2nd Street 3rd Street 4th and 5th Street and on up the hill houses were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s and so on but there still wasn't enough labor they needed more people to come they needed stone bases they needed mechanics they needed machinists they needed track players they needed maintenance personnel they needed clerks and all sorts and kinds of people to work and the immediate area wasn't enough so they sent delegations to the center part of the state and they recruited and brought them here farmers for the most part it would be trained for this new kind of work they also went overseas they sent delegations to Germany looking for train mechanics and machinists they recruited them to come to the Pennsylvania Railroad they also went to Italy and there they recruited stonemasons men who had been building things out of stone for centuries and doing great jobs of it and they needed that done and if you looked upon the bridges and the overpasses and the water routes along the railroad they're made of stone they needed the stonemasons that knew what they were doing and they got him and then they needed the people for the labor and the laying of the tracks basic labor and they brought them over in time the scots-irish settlers were joined by these Germans and Italians and by immigrants from many countries around the world all lured by good-paying jobs for them and their families Paul couger of the gateway newspapers gives a picture of the beehive of activity that was in the yard the plants bricks smokestacks the highest point in the yard loomed over everything the stack thrusts hundreds of feet in the air and spewed great black smoke almost continuously there were two round houses on the Pitcairn side of the valley freight and passenger cars are repaired in a round house that resembled a giant donut the other round house on the wall side was used for repairing locomotives like most of the yards buildings it was a busy place during one 24-hour period 200 engines were serviced and repaired at that yard there was also a chain of shops carpentry shops metal shops paint shops where cars were built inside and out private cars were privately crafted and lavishly decorated in that Victorian age it was there during the arts heyday between World Wars 1 and 2 the workers turned out some 55 cars a day they built boxcars and gondolas flat open top cars usually used to carrying lumber and machinery and hoppers also open top cars that were used to haul materials such as coal the size of a hopper were higher than a gondolas and there is an opening at the bottom tempting the material during World War 2 more than 200 trains passed through each day at one point about 7,000 people from all over the valley were earning their paychecks at the railroad yards these were the boom years headwind guard retired railroad engineer living in Monroeville remembered the working conditions were such that today's Romans wouldn't put up with them in the days of the steam engine we had to wear coveralls bandana around her neck and goggles to keep the cinders from irritating her eyes because we were assigned to duty for a maximum of 16 hours we were required to rest 8 hours between runs we slipped into one room bunk houses in various locations along the track as a fireman on a steam engine for two years I shoveled coal and operated a stoker it was hot and dirty work but I was learning skills the difference between steam and diesel engines was significant running a diesel engine was easier because maintaining the right speed with the right engine was challenging of course the diesel was cleaner and it changed our way of dressing that of coveralls we could wear casual clothes but I feel the diesels took the romance out of my engineers job I like being a steam locomotive engineer over the years I hold a variety of freight including produce cattle meat and your faction Goods and various ores later my train cars also hauled automotives and trucks I always liked my job it was challenging well-paying and encouraged the special fellowship among the railroad men years later when only the ghost of the old yard remained a longtime rotor David kuchel told of that fellowship Mondays and Tuesdays were usually quiet then a number of freight and passenger trains gradually picks up on Wednesday and Thursday and by Friday they're hammering through the town whenever I hear those trains I think back to the old days when Pitcairn was a railroad town and it was a company town many a son followed in his father's footsteps working in a machine shop around the house or the offices in my family my grandfather was a conductor and his father and brothers were engineers and his uncle an airbrake Foreman in the steel shop I worked as a clerk in the arts for most of my career as did my sister pennsie employees were a close-knit family if he went to the bank and said you worked for the Verrett Pennsylvania Railroad you never had a problem getting alone I was proud to be a railroader arthur fox a long time Pitcairn resident well remembered growing up in a railroad family raised in a railroad family I lived half a mile from the continuous turbulence and the clamour and the thick gray haze generated by one of the largest real facilities in the world Pennsylvania's Pitcairn yards in the 1950s my weekends were filled with playing in the dusty abandoned buildings and oil soaked wooden sheds bordering the PR tracks exploring boxcars on remote sightings and laying pennies along the rails to watch them flatten into thin copper wafers by the passing trains Cairn workers kept the trains running spirit and enthusiasm and pride United the 7,000 men of all races and nationalities who worked in the Pitcairn yards during the forties that spirit appeared to be forged by tough hiring practices family connections became a prerequisite for employment on many Cruz fathers worked alongside their sons the family connections also made the workplace a happier group of individuals the camaraderie was reflected in the daily life of Pitcairn families for instance my father grandfather and two uncles all worked for the railroad my grandmother kept the kitchen table permanently set for meals since railroaders worked on conventional schedules in those days when I was in high school I worked as a clerk in Peter Sierra's cramped corner confectionary store that was just across the iron railroad bridge from the railroad station to Broadway Pete's served as a cross-section of the borough when railroaders rail passengers and locals crowded the store late afternoons and evenings during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 I provided passengers fresh off the trains with updates from our small radio Pete's not only provided services but functioned as the town's social club many of the businesses along Broadway facing the railroad across the Turtle Creek provided for the needs of railroaders and thrived until the mid-1960s another of the local businesses along Pitcairn's Broadway that grew up to cater to the railroad workers was Amelia Shipley's tiny luncheonette next to the Broadway hotel the town was so crowded with workers rubber accrues passengers and soldiers who were coming and going you couldn't walk on the streets for eight hours a day every eight hours a railroad crew would stop in for a shift they came from Altoona and Nola in Columbus and after they ate at the restaurant they went to the Broadway or one of the boarding rooms to get some sleep they paid a 10-cent deposit on the room and the company picked up the tab and when it was time for them to go Stu Colin Wars covering the shift would leave their rooms at the Y and knock on the doors the railroaders were my friends after you served those guys for 20-25 years and seen them every other day they became part of the family well that all ended after World War two as one by one yard operations were phased out were relocated by 1960 employment at the Pitcairn yards had fallen to almost a thousand and in 1967 Pennsylvania Aurora ceased all major operations at the Pitcairn yards by 1979 only five workers remained in the end Conrail successor to the prr decided it could no longer afford to keep the Pitcairn yards open it was a bitter decision workers with years of loyal service lost their jobs local businesses suffered but some like mrs. Shipley's luncheonette managed to hang on for a while still the atmosphere around town basement the same the abandoned yard was to experience a rebirth in 1996 given a New Leash on Life as an intermodal facility operated by corn rail and then by the northern Southern Railroad and so how do we wrap up this story how do you tell the story of a town well you might choose a single thread from the tapestry of life that makes up that community and what we've done is charted the glory days of the Pitcairn the railroad town and met some of the folks who have been along for the ride but towns change and so it is with Pitcairn beginning in the years after World War Two the Pennsylvania Railroad began its gradual withdrawal by the 1980s only a ghost of the sprawling yards remained tracks now occupied by the con rail intermodal terminal which kept the pulse of the railroad alive transferring freight from trucks to trains and so we've come back to the old yards the place where it all began so many years ago and throughout its history Pitcairn like so many of the industrial towns along our rivers has built its own unique small-town character the people Pitcairn have readily volunteered to serve in various religious fraternal and social organizations all dedicated to helping their neighbors youth organizations sports teams various unions and church groups have all come forward to help it's their efforts that form the ongoing character of the community of Pitcairn [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Monroeville Historical Society

Views: 10,014

Rating: 4.8612719 out of 5

Keywords: Monroeville Historical Society, Pitcairn PA, Rail Road, Pensylvania Rail Road, PRR, Railroad

Id: OynyvwMhiCI

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 27 2019