Dream Drained

Exactly a century ago State surveyors reconnoitred a rail route over Pennsylvania's forested ridges between Chambersburg and Pittsburgh. Two more surveys were made, four times the name of the prospective road was changed before 1863 when the line, on which in 25 years not so much as a spadeful of earth had been turned, received its final title--the South Pennsylvania Railroad. Not, however, because of these abortive promotions, but because 54 years ago the late William Henry Vanderbilt lost his temper, was Pennsylvania able last week to take the first steps to obtain one of the finest, safest motor highways in the U. S.

Vanderbilt then dominated the swift rising New York Central. His chief rival was the Pennsylvania, but both railroads kept to their own backyards until a scandalously promoted third line, the West Shore, began paralleling Vanderbilt's tracks along the west bank of the Hudson to the Port of New York. Angry clear through he decided that if the Central was to suffer from competition close to home, so was the Pennsylvania. Acquiring the "South Penn" charter, Vanderbilt declared a railroad war, sent 300 engineers and thousands of laborers trooping into the rugged, coal-bearing Alleghenies, with orders to build a competing road 25 mi. south of the Pennsylvania's main Harrisburg-Pittsburgh line along the 46 miles shorter route surveyed half a century before. Andrew Carnegie, steel sales in mind, backed Vanderbilt.

After two years of feverish construction during which more than $10,000,000 was poured into rights, roadbeds and tunnels, the competing lines agreed to return again to their backyards. So eight months before completion the "South Penn" was abandoned, peace reigned in the Alleghenies and no appreciable dent was made in the $200,000,000 Vanderbilt fortune.

Peace especially visited the seven miles of tunnels, 140 miles of costly, well-constructed roadbed through the nine dark ridges of the Alleghenies. Grass overgrew "South Penn" embankments, saplings pushed their way through its rock ballast and water seeped higher and higher over the rubble of the tunnels. For half a century nothing stirred in those dark caverns except some albino, sightless trout which according to Pennsylvania Highway Planning Division's Director Kaulfuss "mysteriously developed in these unnatural, impounded waters."

To residents the ancient roadbed has long been "Vanderbilt's Folly"; when it was proposed to make it into a motor road, cynical post-War Pennsylvanians dubbed it "Dream Highway." Last week the first contracts were let for draining the tunnels and Pennsylvania prepared to spend $73,000,000 to make the dream come true. The new four lane road is the straightest practical line from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, its 164 1/2 miles being 40 miles shorter than the present Lincoln Highway--which it crosses three times. Of the almost 14,000 ft. of cumulative climb on the Lincoln Highway, 10,000 ft. will be missing in the new road. Only bottlenecks will be the two-lane tunnels. The almost $400,000-a-mile cost to widen and surface the road, to drain and finish boring tunnels, to employ an estimated 17,000 men for three years, is to be paid for by the eventual users--$1 toll per car, $7 for trucks.

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