Ingenious Engineering!

Our son Richard teaches STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) classes at a middle school in southeast Washington, D.C.  He often gives his students a collection of materials and tells them to build something that will solve the problem he poses.  I thought of his students when Tim and I visited the NPS historic site for the Allegheny Portage Railroad.  It is, in my opinion, a great example of thinking outside the box.

Concerned by the amount of trade being siphoned away by the Erie Canal, Philadelphia businessmen proposed that a canal should be dug across the state of Pennsylvania.  The only problem was the Allegheny Mountains stood in the way.  Undeterred, the Pennsylvania legislators authorized the Main Line Canal in 1826 and soon digging began west from Philadelphia and east from Pittsburgh.

An incline house

As workers on both canals approached the Alleghenies in March 1831, the state legislature authorized a bold plan in which canal boats filled with passengers and goods would be moved to rail cars and towed up a series of five inclines by a pulley system powered not by mules but by stationary steam engines in each incline house.  On the descent, the boats would be let down five more grades, then transferred again to the canal.

A toy model at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site

The portage railroad was an ingenious solution for the time preceding steam locomotive railroads.  But it was not without its difficulties.  Transportation by canal was interrupted by the freezing temperatures of Pennsylvania's harsh winters.  Boilers in the incline houses could explode and the 3.5-inch-diameter hemp tow ropes often frayed and without careful inspection tore.  John Roebling solved the rope problem by suggesting the rope could be replaced by the new "wire rope" he invented, the same type of steel cables he later used to build the Brooklyn Bridge.  Despite this new technology, the portage railroad was soon obsolete.  Canals could not compete with the year-round faster service of steam locomotives.  After 23 years of operation, the portage was abandoned when the Pennsylvania Railroad bought the Main Line canal system in 1857.

But for a time, the Allegheny Portage Railroad was a grand and exciting idea.

When Charles Dickens toured the United States, he rode the Allegheny Portage Railroad and described his trip in his 1842 publication, American Notes for General Circulation, using these words:

"Occasionally, the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy precipice; and looking from the carriage window, the traveler gazes sheer down, without a stone or scrap of fence between, into the mountain depths below.  The journey is very carefully made, however; only two carriages traveling together; and while proper precautions are taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers..."

Oh, my!  This ride sounds just as thrilling as any of today's amusement park roller coasters.  A grand and exciting ride, indeed!