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PRR (Middle Division)
In 1839, the Pennsylvania Canal Commission had surveys made for a continuous railway from Philadelphia
to Pittsburgh, as an alternative to the combination of railroads, canals and inclined planes then in use.
One of the three proposed alignments, the "Middle Route," followed the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers to
Lewistown. To save distance, the route deviated temporarily from the river valley, by cutting north
through Mann's Narrows, then west into Kishacoquillas Valley running straight on through
Belleville (then known as Greenwood) to Huntingdon. This route was chosen by the newly chartered Pennsylvania Railroad, seven years
later, but was modified by continuously following the banks of the Juniata River to Huntingdon,
skirting Kishacoquillas Valley altogether. The reason for this was explained at the first annual report
of the chief engineer of the PRR,
John Edgar Thomson, on June 12, 1848 in Philadelphia:
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This 1840's map shows the original survey, shown in green  , of the PRR cutting north from Lewistown to Browns Mills (Reedsville) and then west through Greenwood (Belleville) and Allenvale (Allensville). It has been revised to show the finalized route, shown in yellow  . (Pennsylvania Library collection. Revisions by Author)
Click an Image to Enlarge
This 1915 view of Lewistown Junction shows the station and the hotel with Lewistown in the background. Since the canal hugged the north side of the Juniata, the PRR ran its tracks on the south side and established its "Lewistown" on the other side of the river. In the 1860's or 1870's the PRR referred to this station as "Lewistown Junction", to distinguish it from the M&CC station in Lewistown. (John H. Harlacher collection) | |
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"The beautiful valley of the Kishacoquillas offered the greatest temptation to leave the river route; but
here we would have had to encounter gradients, in both directions, of 264-10 feet per mile (50-2 meters per kilometer), a bridge over
Mill creek, 1200 feet (365.8 meters) long, 111 (33.8 meters) high, another over a small tributary of the Juniata, 850 feet (259.1 meters) long and
150 feet in height, together with several others, or embankments of great magnitude, across ravines in
the north slope of the river hills. These difficulties, added to 342 feet (104.2 meters) of additional elevation to be
surmounted at the Allentown summit, so greatly overbalanced the small increase of curvature and distance,
(7-10ths of a mile (1.1 kilometers),) by the river route, that it could not be adopted."
PRR service began when the first link,
Harrisburg to Lewistown, was completed in September 1,1849.
This eventually became the main line of what was to be America's single most important railroad,
streching from the Atlantic to Chicago and St. Louis and encompassing more than 10,000 miles (16 000 kilometers).
The Pennsylvania Railroad lasted until February 1, 1968, when its arch rival, the
New York Central merged with it, forming the mammoth Penn Central Railroad. Although the event
was touted as being the greatest day for railroading, the baby giant survived for only 867 days.
Then the largest merger in US history became the
largest bankruptcy! Section 77 of the Bankruptcy Act protected the Penn Central from its
creditors, and trains continued to run, while financial losses continued to pile up.
In the 1970's, the US Government finally had to step
in to save the nation's railroads. First it created Amtrak, a private company which, on
May 1, 1971, began managing the nations rail passenger service. It then created
Conrail (Consolidated Rail) on April 1976 to
take over the Penn Central and other Eastern railroads in financial trouble.
In 1981 Conrail was solvent enough to go out on
its own, and the federal government sold its share of the company. In an attempt to improve its
competitive position in the Eastern United States, Conrail
merged with CSX Transportation in 1997. CSX then promptly entered into an agreement with
Norfolk Southern and the two divided up Conrail's
assets. CSX took over the NYC lines and
NS picked up the old
PRR lines. So today, you will see Amtrak
and Norfolk Southern trains passing through and stopping at the station in Lewistown.
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