The Railroad That Never Was: Vanderbilt, Morgan, and the South Pennsylvania Railroad (Railroads Past and Present)

By: Herbert H. Harwood Jr.

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Synopsis: This account of a doomed enterprise is &“an important contribution to both rail and road history, as well as to business history&”—photos and maps included (The Lexington Quarterly). Stretching over two hundred miles through Pennsylvania&’s most challenging mountain terrain, the South Pennsylvania Railroad would form the heart of a new trunk line, from the East Coast to Pittsburgh and the Midwest. Conceived in 1881 by William H. Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and a group of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia industrialists, it was intended to break the rival Pennsylvania Railroad&’s near-monopoly in the region. But the line was within a year of opening when J.P. Morgan brokered a peace treaty that aborted the project and helped bolster his position in the world of finance. The railroad right of way and its tunnels would sit idle for sixty years—before coming to life in the late 1930s as the original section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Based on original letters, documents, diaries, and newspaper reports, The Railroad That Never Was uncovers the truth behind this mysterious railway, one of the most infamous construction projects of the late nineteenth century.