General Commentary on the Milepost Studies by Rick Tipton
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General Commentary on the Milepost Studies By Rick Tipton To prepare for PRRT&H Society's 2011 book, the Pennsylvania Railroad in Columbus Ohio, mileages and milepost lists were collected from a large number of Employee Timetables, creating a "longitudinal" history of this data for each of PRR's five lines into Columbus. Similar data was added from PRR's 1923 and 1945 CT1000 lists, and also from a limited number of other lists as available. The data (which is usually expressed in tenths of a mile) was input to a Microsoft Access database; this allowed studies involving various manipulations and comparisons. I should point out that mileposts are not always a completely sincere reporting of distance ‐‐ for example, a station list in a PRR Employee Timetable may head a column with "Distance from Columbus", but that column in fact reports mileposts, not the current distance. Why? ‐‐ because every man on the line knows its locations intimately by milepost number. Records are kept using this number, and bridges may be marked with it. If a location was at milepost so‐and‐so in the past, it is much safer and more convenient for all concerned if its milepost doesn't change. In actuality, generations of rebuildings, wreck repairs, and even normal operations will shift track alignments, and the distance between old mileposts doesn't stay at 5280 feet ‐‐ the accumulated "creep" of actual distance between mileposts can be seen in engineering track charts.. If mileposts had to reflect current actual distance, they'd have to be continually reset ‐‐ creating chaos and likely contributing to accidents. Thus, in most cases smart management lets mileposts "stay put". The few historic exceptions to this rule will be pointed out (below) in discussion of the specific tables. Mileposts depart most from actual mileage when a line is rebuilt. For example, the Panhandle Division (see Section One below) had tunnels daylighted and bypassed, plus curves and grades eased, in major construction between 1943 and 1950. But even so the mileposts west to Columbus stayed at their 1923 numbers. Another clear example is the Sandusky line's bypass around Delaware Ohio. At Delaware, the Sandusky Short Line was originally built right up the east bank of the Olentangy River, but took heavy damage in the 1913 flood. Relocation raised the line onto higher ground east of downtown Delaware, but mileposts north and south of the project did not change ‐‐ instead, one "mile" in the new alignment shrank to 4400 feet. On the other hand, the milepost of an individual named location CAN change. Some reasons for a milepost to "crawl" from one station list to the next can include: 1. A tower closes, and the milepost shifts to the location (or former location) of the nearby passenger station. 2. A siding is lengthened, or a tower's track arrangement is remodeled, shifting a key switch to a new "milepost". 3. Multiple locations are closed, and are replaced by a new control point (manned tower) in the vicinity. 1 In the tables below, you will see the "station" names listed in order on the left. Some effort has been made here to represent separate mileposts of towers and stations; this is difficult because most station lists included do not discriminate between the two entities. If the telegraphic call letters of a tower or station are known, they are included here. Each table is made up of columns titled with MP and a year, each with the mileposts of a different source. In most of these cases, the mileposts are "as input" from that source. However (as noted in the sections below), some milepost lists can start from some other location; in those cases an accompanying "normalized" table will show these MP's AFTER the adding or subtracting of miles to make the data comparable. Normalized milepost series will be headed by "Calc" or "Recast" and a date, reflecting their recalculation. The key (in fact, the sort key) for each table is its "PMP", or Presumed Mile Post. This is a number I have assigned to each location, estimating where it would be on the 1964‐1967 railroad. This is obviously easy for places still named in late ETT's, but for long‐gone locations it is more of a judgment call. Those who have access to old issues of The Keystone may notice that Jim Lynch's articles by division list mileposts in 1942; my late‐PRR PMP will in some cases show a different number, reflecting 1964‐1967 designations. Those comparing these tables with the Columbus book will quickly see that, because we had a wealth of information and photographs in the Columbus area, the book was pruned to cover essentially only the Columbus terminal area. However, we collected much outside that area, and expect to create one or more articles on each of these five PRR lines, to appear in future issues of PRRT&HS' quarterly The Keystone. Thus, if you have questions, comments, or data you believe should be added here, please contact me at [email protected]. I will be routing my future questions and further discussion on these lines onto [email protected] in preparation for those projected articles. Section One Commentary, Mileposts Pittsburgh to Columbus Since the "Panhandle" was built from Pittsburgh west, it is not surprising that all historic lists of mileposts and mileages run from Pittsburgh Union Station west. The zero milepost was on the south side of the station, near "PH" tower. In the distant past (i.e., 1850's to 1880's), it is almost certain that Columbus was more than 190.7 (or 190.9) miles from Pittsburgh; the famous "ten tunnels" of the Panhandle were artifacts of a late 19th Century building program creating (at that time) double‐track bores. From an earlier time, I've seen mention on a map of an earlier "Tunnel 13" somewhere in the middle of the hilly part of Ohio. Additionally, there is good evidence that before Tunnel Five at Gould's Hollow was built, the line (single track?) wound torturously around the outside of that hill following a creek. But 19th‐Century ETT's are lacking to demonstrate the resetting of the line's mileposts. At least PRR's 1968 track chart shows us where the 10 tunnels were located. 2 Prior to system consolidation, Lines West operated its Pittsburgh‐Columbus segment as its "Pittsburgh Division, PCC&StL Ry". However, once these lines came under direct PRR operation, there could not be two Pittsburgh Divisions, and so the line to Columbus was renamed the Panhandle Division, formally using its longtime nickname. The tables below for this trackage start in 1901, and from that time "mileage creep" between Pittsburgh and Newark is very modest. Because of the large number of employee timetables used, we present three tables : 1. MP PH Pittsburgh‐Newark 1901‐1942. All data is from PRR Employee Timetables except 1923 CT1000 and a retyped list of 1923 "block stations and Towers". Note that Newark (the PRR station there to be exact) is 157.8 "miles" from Pittsburgh from at least 1920 to 1942. 2. MP PH Pittsburgh‐Newark 1942‐1967. All data from PRR Employee Timetables . Again, Newark Ohio's Penn station remains at milepost 157.8 from Pittsburgh throughout. 3. MP PH on C&N_ Newark to Columbus (selected dates). These 33 miles combine data from PRR Employee Timetables with B&O timetables of their "Columbus & Newark Division" from 1920, 1939, 1942, 1951, 1954, 1962, 1967, and 1968. Since the B&O numbers start with Newark as zero, the "calc" numbers are restated to compare with the PRR mileposts from Pittsburgh. Mileposts from the different sources, though normalized, do not line up perfectly for us ‐‐ and I do not at this time have a good explanation of this. There were probably small line relocations over time on the C&N, especially at the approaches to Columbus Union Station. Section Two Commentary, Mileposts Columbus to Xenia (and Cincinnati) PRR's line from Xenia to Cincinnati was originally the Little Miami Railroad, and it's almost certain that its original mileposts counted up from an early terminal (Pendleton?) in Cincinnati. When the Columbus & Xenia was built, it likely counted mileposts from Xenia, from whence it was built. Since the C&X was a daughter enterprise of the Little Miami, it's even plausible those C&X mileposts also counted up from some "Cincinnati zero". However, the various Little Miami lines were leased to PRR interests since 1869, and the mileposts found for this study uniformly counted up from Columbus through Xenia to Cincinnati. A source mentions that the C&X's zero milepost was at the west end of Depot Track 1. This is probably the meeting point of three PRR lines ‐‐ MP 190.7 of the Panhandle Division from Pittsburgh (see Section One), MP 0.0 on the C&X (this section), and MP 0.0 on the CC&IC or Bradford line (see Section Three below). It's clear the C&X got plenty of reconstruction ‐‐ built as a single track circa 1847‐1850, it was double‐ tracked with big, grade‐reducing earthmoving by the early 20th Century. Many of the original stations were replaced with Lines‐West‐Standard frame stations (circa 1880s‐1890s?), with masonry ones (1890s‐1905?) or with modest brick ones circa 1912, but essentially on the same sites. Of course, many 3 of the smaller manned towers disappeared with the 1927 re‐signaling project or other electromechanical improvements; another wave of refits and remotings came in early WWII (circa 1942). Incidentally, long exposure to the Little Miami track between Xenia and Cincinnati has convinced me that, apart from getting replacement steel bridges, the line's mostly‐single track following the Little Miami River was aligned as much like its original 1843‐1846 construction as any PRR line anywhere ‐‐ which again allowed retention of the mileposts already in place in 1903.