CSSHEGEWISCHHindsight is always 20/20. As has been mentioned above, corporate ego may have been a factor in the lease of the Pan Handle, considering that B&O had its own line to St. Louis and NYC had leased the Big Four. That being said, obtaining a route to St. Louis may have been a smart move at the time.
All things considered - one cannot truly understand the considerations that were in play when decisions were made well over half a century ago. While we can see the results as they played out over time, we don't know the 'forward looking' assumptions the decision makers used in making their decisions.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Au contraire, orsomething like that. The PRR got to St. Louis FIRST, in 1869! The PRR then shortly thereafter acquired a 50% interest in an inferior route to St. Louis. Commodore Vanderbilt saw no need fro a line to St' Louis--which turned out to be a mistake. When Jay Gould arrived on the scene in the late 1870's the lack of a Vanderbilt line to St. Louis was a Serious Drawback and Weakness in its "system"; "Billy" Vanderbilt was running the Vanderbilt system then an while a great operating man he was weak as a strategist and hadn't developed a backbone--yet--untik the NYC&StL crowd took him to the cleaners. Whereupon George Roberts of the PRR sized up the situation and realized selling that 50% of the inferior route to Billy Vanderbilt--for a good price--would cause Gould's house of cards to collapse in short order and rearrange the railroad systems of the Midwest, so Billy fell for it in 1881-2. Note that while the general rule for PennCentral and later ConRail west of Pittsburgh [there IS an "h" at the end!) and Buffalo to downgrade the PRR lines and upgrade the NYC--the route kept to St. Louis is the PRR line and the NYC is largely gone. I have more remarks to be given elsewhere.
OK--I'll do it now. Define Terms. There's the Panhandle west to Steubenville from Pittsburgh; deceptively short compared to following the Ohio River as the Erie & Pittsburgh line did--also PRR. Then there is Steubenville west to Columbus and so on. The Pandandle proper to Steubenville had curves and grades--a stiff eastbound grade out of Weirton Jct (Hanlin Hill) which my Dad told me was a helper district plus the Dinsmore/Bertha/NumberFour Tunnel with clearance problems at its top. That tunnel was by-passed (NOT daylighted!) 1949-50 in a clearance project that involved several other tunnels Pitttsburgh-Columbus. Also the bridge over the Ohio at Steubenville was single-track until today's massive two-track continuous truss was built around it in 1926. (My Dad, now 102, remembers the celebration for its completion; he and I are descended from the Hanlin of Hanlin Hill.) Remember too traffic was different in former times and places along the line once contributed much more traffic. Weirton Steel didn't happen until 1909; before then Hollidays Cove was maybe 500 people. A good investment for you all is a set of SPV Atlases for the US; ironic that a British publisher puts out the best maps of the US rail system with very few errors. It will set you back $450 or so but it's useful, or just buy the parts you really need; since my mileage-collecting is in the Northeast I can do with extras of just a few of 'em. Oh, the canalization/channelizing of the Ohio River wasn't completed until 1929; there's a photo of the Wheeling suspension bridge in the summer of 1903 with the Ohio about 30 feet wide at most; no river traffic in those days during droughts! Traffic histories are hard to find; I've learned a lot in 50 years of following railroads. I gotta go--but I did get the Panhandle Mingo Jct. to Columbus in 2004--thanks, Bennett!
Samuel Johnstonwest of Pittsburgh [there IS an "h" at the end!)
Depends on when. The official city organization papers in 1816 have no 'h' at the end!
There is a common wives' tale that Carnegie's 'simplified spelling' craze and Theodore Roosevelt are responsible for the period where the 'h' was sometimes omitted. It's Mendenhall's and Harrison's Board on Geographical Names (from 1890) that "officially" simplified the names of all American cities with 'burgh' to 'burg'. It's in the period this was active that names like 'Pittsburg Junction' got established, and interestingly, never reversed.
(I have always suspected that the "Queensboro" of the 59th St. Bridge comes from the same cause.)
BaltACDAll things considered - one cannot truly understand the considerations that were in play when decisions were made well over half a century ago. While we can see the results as they played out over time, we don't know the 'forward looking' assumptions the decision makers used in making their decisions.
Overmod There is a common wives' tale that Carnegie's 'simplified spelling' craze and Theodore Roosevelt are responsible for the period where the 'h' was sometimes omitted. It's Mendenhall's and Harrison's Board on Geographical Names (from 1890) that "officially" simplified the names of all American cities with 'burgh' to 'burg'. It's in the period this was active that names like 'Pittsburg Junction' got established, and interestingly, never reversed.
I was under the assumption that Col Robert McCormick and the Chicago Tribune were the primary promoters of "simplified spelling". You could still occasionally find it in the Trib into the 1960's.
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