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Muleshoe Curve

1857 establishments in PennsylvaniaPennsylvania RailroadRail infrastructure in PennsylvaniaRailway lines opened in 1857Tourist attractions in Cambria County, Pennsylvania
Transportation buildings and structures in Cambria County, PennsylvaniaUnited States rail transportation stubs
Old Route 22 and Allegheny Portage Railroad panoramio (6)
Old Route 22 and Allegheny Portage Railroad panoramio (6)

Muleshoe Curve is a curve of track on the former Pennsylvania Railroad, located near Duncansville, Pennsylvania. It never reached the same amount of popularity as the nearby Horseshoe Curve, located 4.34 mi (7 km) north of Muleshoe curve, mainly due to it being merely a secondary route. Built in 1850s by the state of Pennsylvania as part of the New Portage Railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) purchased the line (and the curve) in 1857 and promptly closed it, as the PRR already had its own line in the region. It was brought back into service in the 1890s due to increased rail traffic. Subsequently, the rails were removed and used by the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad. In 1904, the line was reopened and double-tracked by the PRR as a bypass. One track was removed in 1955 and the other in 1981. After the railroad was taken over by Conrail, Muleshoe Curve was permanently abandoned in 1981.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Muleshoe Curve (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Muleshoe Curve
Old Route 22, Juniata Township

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Wikipedia: Muleshoe CurveContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 40.435 ° E -78.52 °
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Old Route 22
16635 Juniata Township
Pennsylvania, United States
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Old Route 22 and Allegheny Portage Railroad panoramio (6)
Old Route 22 and Allegheny Portage Railroad panoramio (6)
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Allegheny Portage Railroad
Allegheny Portage Railroad

The Allegheny Portage Railroad was the first railroad constructed through the Allegheny Mountains in central Pennsylvania. It operated from 1834 to 1854 as the first transportation infrastructure through the gaps of the Allegheny that connected the midwest to the eastern seaboard across the barrier range of the Allegheny Front. Approximately 36 miles (58 km) long overall, both ends connected to the Pennsylvania Canal, and the system was primarily used as a portage railway, hauling river boats and barges over the divide between the Ohio and the Susquehanna Rivers. Today, the remains of the railroad are preserved within the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site operated by the National Park Service. The railroad was authorized as part of the Main Line of Public Works legislation in 1824. It had five inclines on either side of the drainage divide running athwart the ridge line from Blair Gap through along the kinked saddle at the summit into Cresson, Pennsylvania. The endpoints connected to the Canal at Johnstown on the west through the relative flats to Hollidaysburg on the east. The Railroad utilized cleverly designed wheeled barges to ride a narrow-gauge rail track with steam-powered stationary engines lifting the vehicles. The roadbed of the railroad did not incline monotonically upwards, but rose in relatively long, saw-toothed stretches of slightly-sloped flat terrain suitable to animal powered towing, alternating with steep cable railway inclined planes using static steam engine powered windlasses, similar to mechanisms of modern ski lifts. Except for peak moments of severe storms, it was an all-weather, all-seasons operation. Along with the rest of the Main Works, it cut transport time from Philadelphia to the Ohio River from weeks to just 3–5 days. Considered a technological marvel in its day, it played a critical role in opening the interior of the United States beyond the Appalachian Mountains to settlement and commerce. It included the first railroad tunnel in the United States, the Staple Bend Tunnel, and its inauguration was marked with great fanfare.

Blair Gap
Blair Gap

Blair Gap, one of the gaps of the Allegheny, is a water gap along the eastern face atop the Allegheny Front escarpment. Like other gaps of the Allegheny, the slopes of Blair Gap were amenable to foot travel, pack mules, and possibly wagons allowing Amerindians, and then, after about 1778–1780 settlers, to travel west into the relatively depopulated Ohio Country decades before the railroads were born and tied the country together with steel. The gap was used historically for the upper sections of the Allegheny Portage Railroad, which as was authorized by the enabling acts in 1824 of Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works as part of the Pennsylvania Canal System which originally envisioned linking Pittsburgh to Philadelphia by canals. In the early 1900s, U.S. Route 22 followed alongside the watercourse through the gap. Until the 1920s, after new founded auto clubs gathered enough numbers to political clout to push for initiatives creating roads between towns, off the railroads the primary means of travel town to town was on foot or where hauling was needed, using wagons. There were only five ways through the Appalachians east to west: Around the bottom (plains or Piedmont area) in Georgia, the Cumberland Gap, the Cumberland Narrows, the gaps of the Allegheny Front, and up the Hudson River then around the north end of the Catskills and across Upstate New York to the Great Lakes. All other transits involve difficult climbs a man on foot can only make with great difficulty, and which animal drawn transport could not. Geographically and geologically, without the large projects and engineering capabilities of the 20th century, there were exactly three internal regions where it was possible to get animal powered vehicles from the east side to the west side of the Appalachian Mountains, making five routes overall counting traveling around the plains at either end of the western chain. Below Canada, the geologic nature of successive barrier ridges of the Ridge and Valley Appalachians runs from the valley of the Hudson, the Delaware Water Gap down through all of northern Pennsylvania, sundering eastern and central Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.