Everybody was building canals - the C&O in Maryland, the Erie in NY, even in Ohio. But, darn it, there were too many east-west mountains to get over in Pennsylvania....or were there?
Realizing that they were not able to trade economically with "The West", (the other side of the mountains); that farmers and manufacturers were using those other canals, Pennsylvania took on building a canal with a portage railway to go through the Allegheny mountains from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. (**readers note: this was similar to the Chignecto Marine Transportation Railway of Nova Scotia that we wrote about on 8/27, with the added complexity of having to move the canal boats vertically -- up 1400 feet on one side of the mountains, and down 1200 feet on the other.)
This was accomplished by building ten inclined "planes", five on each side of the mountains. The canal boats were floated onto submerged rail cars which were then pulled up an incline by cables driven by stationary steam engines at the top of the incline. The "train" was then hauled over level ground to the next lift station. The lifts ranged from 150 feet to 308 feet; with grades from 7% to 9.9%. At the end of the 36-mile rail ride, the boats were floated off at the other end into another canal system. Simple, huh?
There were two tracks at the lift stations; one track would carry cars being lowered and the other track cars being raised. The "down" cars would help counterbalance the weight of the "up" cars, similar to the street cars in San Francisco.
This system was developed when railroads were still in their infancy. Within a few years of it's inauguration, increasingly powerful "regular" railway engines were developed that, combined with better road-building equipment, could scale the mountains and this spelled the end for the Allegheny Portage Railway. It lasted just 20 years.
