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An Overview of the Main Line of Public Works, and its Successor, the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1828 - 1893

The Creation of Pennsylvania’s Main Line of Public Works

The vast America stretching west from Pittsburgh, out across the Ohio River Valley and beyond, had been attracting farmers and settlers since after the Revolution. In 1803 the population of the new state of Ohio had numbered a mere 42,000 citizens. But by 1830 it had grown wildly to almost 1,000,000. The fertility of this new land was already legendary, and its abundance of grains and other bulk foodstuffs was much sought after by the highly-populated states along the country’s East Coast.

But how to economically transport this agricultural bounty to those who desired it, and move passengers from east to west and back again? An individual seeking passage across the Commonwealth in 1830 from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh would expect to endure seven days in a cramped stagecoach over abominable roads. Moving cargo by wagon across the mountainous spine of Pennsylvania was unpredictable, sometimes dangerous and always expensive. The state desperately began to investigate a means of providing reliable transportation if it was to compete with its aggressive neighbors.

And its neighbor to the north, New York State, was aggressive, and had created an innovative system – albeit to criticism and mirth by many during its construction beginning in 1817. But when the Erie Canal across New York opened in 1825, a truly revolutionary commercial route to the “West” had been created. The Canal connected the Hudson River at Albany (thereby allowing clear passage through New York City and Atlantic Ocean shipping) to Buffalo on Lake Erie, wending its way across 363 miles. Almost overnight Philadelphia, America’s largest seaport, bowed in submission to New York City as vast quantities of trade poured through the new Canal.

Yet Pennsylvania’s government seemed to struggle with alternatives. In 1824, a year before the opening of the Erie Canal, the state’s Governor John Shulze created a Board of Canal Commissioners, and charged them with establishing “a navigable communication between the eastern and western waters of the State and Lake Erie.” [1] The Commissioners in turn issued orders to scour the Commonwealth’s landscape for a viable route by which a series of canals could connect Chester and Lancaster Counties in the east with Pittsburgh to the west. [2]

Three years passed, and in 1827 a Major John A. Wilson of the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers was commissioned to conduct a survey to discern where and how a canal could be constructed between Philadelphia and the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County. But his detailed report emphatically stated that the terrain between these points was unsuitable[3] for the canal demanded by the Board. The Commission reluctantly acknowledged that perhaps, alternatively, some kind of railroad might have to be built to link this and other gaps in order to connect a series of canals across the Commonwealth. The following year Major Wilson was again commissioned to lead a second surveying team to recommend the best route for a railroad west from Philadelphia. The result, found within the final plan of what would become known as the Main Line of Public Works, to be financed by the State and approved in March 1828, directed that, in addition to 413 miles of canals to be dug through Pennsylvania, there should also be created a “railroad from Philadelphia through the City of Lancaster to Columbia”; and then, farther to the west, “a railroad across the Allegheny Mountains” (later to be called the Portage Railroad). [4]

The Beginnings of the Columbia and Philadelphia Railroad
It is generally agreed that England gave birth to the steam locomotive. An English inventor and builder George Stephenson created his first steam engine in 1814, with a greatly improved model developed the following year. By 1825 a twenty-six-mile line called the Stockton and Darlington Railway had been completed across a portion of northeast England. This line connected inland coal mines in County Durham with the city of Stockton-on-Tees, where coal was trans-shipped onto sea-going boats. This public railway became the world's first to use steam locomotives.[5]

When Maj. Wilson led his second survey to lay out what would become the initial right-of-way for the Columbia and Philadelphia Railroad in 1828, three years had already elapsed since the innovative launch of the steam-powered Stockton and Darlington Railway. Yet there is no indication that the planners for this new Pennsylvania road, engineers and Commissioners alike, knew or cared a great deal about the technical potential for railroading. All seemed to agree that horses or mules would be the sole motive power for pulling these railway cars. Not in their wildest dreams did the planners conceive the tremendous advances in technology which the future would bring to railroading within just a very few years.

The Canal Commission issued construction orders late in 1828 for the creation of forty miles of single-track railway; twenty miles to be laid from Philadelphia to just west of Paoli, and another twenty miles east from the Susquehanna River town of Columbia. [6] By early 1829 the work of grading and bridging the right-of-way upon these two twenty-mile sections had begun, although progress stuttered periodically when the Legislature failed to appropriate sufficient money for the construction. But by September 1832 the first 20-mile track section from Philadelphia to Intersection (later Malvern) was ready for operation. [7] All cars to be used upon these new railroad sections, both for hauling passengers and freight, were to be owned and operated by either private companies or individuals, and horse or mule teams to be provided by them were the only motive power to be used upon these rails.

Matthias W. Baldwin of Philadelphia created his first steam locomotive in 1832, and two years later his company, Baldwin Locomotive Works, and that of his competitor, William Norris and Son, (also located in Philadelphia) launched the American locomotive industry. The Main Line of Public Works across the Commonwealth was fast reaching initial completion, and yet the innovations of these men were already beginning the obsolescence of canals, and creating a radical redefinition of the term railroad.

Despite a general appreciation by most Pennsylvanians for the creation of a Main Line of Public Works across the state, the concept of a canal seemed a more understood means of conveyance than any new-fangled railroad during the original construction of the “Works.” In fact, there was much opposition from parts of the Commonwealth to the construction of this railway. Therefore, those sponsoring the railroad project demanded cost reductions in every possible way as an expedient way to contain the resistance. Straightening and leveling tracks by creating “cuts” and “fills” and other grading were expensive, and to be avoided if at all possible. So, when the single-track right-of-way from the Susquehanna to the Schuylkill was opened in April 1834, the line generally tracked the contours of the land, undulating around the many hills like a giant snake. As an example, the 33-mile section of the line built between Philadelphia and Downingtown contained 132 curves. [8] But because the road had been intended only for the use of plodding horse-power, there seemed no anticipation of long trains, higher speeds and elongated wheelbases on the equipment. The cost-cutting during construction of the Columbia Railroad resulted in curves over thirty-four percent of the trackage, the sharpest of which was more than nine degrees in a hundred feet. [9]

After a highly-publicized statement by the Canal Commissioners in 1831 [10] which revealed their unambiguous favoritism for canal versus rail transportation, it was indeed a revolutionary step which the Board took three years later in April 1834 when they placed orders to purchase twenty locomotives to haul trains on the Columbia and Philadelphia Railroad. By November 1834, the first two of these engines, built by the Baldwin Works, were in daily use and able to reliably run from end to end in about eight hours. [11] And because locomotives always need repair shops, soon after the engines had been ordered, the site for the first railroad shop in Pennsylvania was chosen at a newly-laid-out town in Chester County called Parkesburg.

Six months after opening the single track between the Schuylkill and Susquehanna rivers, the 82-mile long Columbia and Philadelphia Railroad was running double tracked operations for the entire distance in October 1834. It was the longest double-tracked railroad in the world. And with the Portage Railroad, which crossed the spine of the Allegheny Mountains, the Main Line of Public Works was now able to provide a connection - however disjointedly - between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

This completed route now enabled a westbound passenger to depart Broad and Vine Streets in Philadelphia (relocated to 11th and Market in 1842) on a rail car and, after an anticipated delay at the Belmont Inclined Plane in West Philadelphia on the Schuylkill River, to continue west at maximum speeds of some 10-15 miles per hour through the maze of twisting curves to the Columbia Canal Basin on the Susquehanna River. Our passenger would then transfer to a canal boat, and settle in for the slow transit (about 2 m.p.h.) over 172 miles of the Pennsylvania Canal to Hollidaysburg, south of Altoona. He would then board a railcar of the Allegheny Portage Railroad to traverse the ten inclined planes of this innovative but often dangerous 36 miles of this route [12] over the mountain barrier into Johnstown. Then, once again, our passenger would board another canal boat for the final 105 mile journey into Pittsburgh. This total trip of 395 miles across the Commonwealth was scheduled to be accomplished in about 91 hours: 118 miles by rail and 277 miles by canal boat.[13] Though the average speed of the transit was a modest 4.34 miles an hour, the “Public Works” had drastically reduced the seven arduous days previously spent by a traveler crossing Pennsylvania on a dusty, bouncing stagecoach.

Operations along the Columbia Railroad
For the next 23 years (1834-57) the Columbia Railroad served Pennsylvania as the easternmost segment of the Main Line of Public Works. Because this summary is intended only to overview the C&P rather than provide yet another detailed treatise, let me share but four points of interest to help the reader better understand operations along the line:

Evolution of the Trackage
When the first 82 miles of single track was completed between Philadelphia and Columbia in April of 1834, there were no existing standards as to the “right” combination of tracks, supports and connective fittings. Railroading was just too new. So the Board of Canal Commissioners had ordered the entire length of the Columbia to be used as a test bed to help create such standards.

Eighteen miles of right-of-way was initially laid with wooden cross-tie supports, and another six miles with large “granite sill” supports (then experimentally used by the competing Baltimore and Ohio Railroad). On each of these ties or sills was connected a flat iron “strap rail.” For the remaining 58 miles of the initial line they used large stone block supports (each 18”x18”x12”) spaced 3 to 4 feet apart between centers and attached to rolled iron “edge rails.” Both types of iron rails, imported from the Ebbw Vale Iron Works in South Wales, were secured to their stone or wooden sleepers by cast-iron chairs.

Several lessons soon emerged. The flat iron “strap rails” quickly worked loose from the “chairs” which were affixed to each support, often with serious consequences. In the early months, several trains a day would derail. Further, the heavy stone block supports were found ironically to be overly rigid to normal track vibration, and the more elastic wooden cross-ties were soon substituted across the length of the road. And several years later, the far superior tee rails, with their broad base through which a spike is directly driven into a wooden cross-tie, became the standard rail for the Columbia & Philadelphia Railroad and, later, for all American railroads.[14]

Inclined Planes
When the surveyors were laying out the original railroad for the Main Line of Public Works, they took it for granted that trains could only operate on generally level track. But what if you came to a hill which could not be avoided? Based upon the technology available, the surveyor might recommend an inclined plane, a length of track laid straight up the slope on a grade of between seven to ten feet per hundred, with an overall length generally not exceeding half a mile. At the top of the incline, a stationary steam engine would be positioned, pulling an endless rope (later an iron cable) over a drum. Railway cars to be raised or lowered were attached to this rope by means of clamps.

The “Public Works” had several inclined planes, and the Columbia and Philadelphia Railroad had two: the larger on the banks of the Schuylkill River at the Philadelphia terminus, called the Belmont Inclined Plane, with a length of 2,805 feet and a rise of 196 feet (a 7% grade); and the second plane down the hill to the Columbia basin on the Susquehanna River, stretching 1,800 feet in length with a rise of 90 feet. [15]

From its first terminal at Broad and Vine streets in Philadelphia, the railroad crossed the Schuylkill upon the first Columbia Bridge. [16] On the west bank the line ascended upwards almost 200 feet out of the river valley towards Judge Richard Peters’ Belmont mansion located near the top. A pair of 60-hp stationary steam engines (one used at a time while the other served as backup) moved cars up and down the 7% grade at 6 mph by means of a continuous rope nearly 3” in diameter, running on 9-foot horizontal pulleys at each end.

However, soon after the Columbia and Philadelphia became operational, the Canal Commissioners realized that the inclined planes at both termini were not only exceedingly inefficient and time consuming, but also expensive to operate and dangerous. They were a frequent source of accidents that destroyed railroad cars and their loads. To spare the passengers, the company had them disembark at the top and walk down to the river while the cars were lowered. But this process still caused delays for freight, and was “a source of terror to most minds, and of grievance to all.” [17] The Belmont Plane soon became stretched to the limit of its capacity, and moving cars up and down the grade caused increasing scheduling delays for both freight and passengers. Several alternate rail routes were surveyed and debated over the ensuing years, [18] and each in turn attained political gridlock by the advocates of the other routes.

Finally, in 1849 the Legislature approved a new and more efficient route to bypass the Belmont Plane. Using portions of the right-of-way of the failed West Philadelphia Railroad, the new route began in West Philadelphia near the Market Street Bridge and ascended up from the Schuylkill River for 7.5 miles at a comparatively gentle 0.7% grade until connecting with the original Columbia tracks at Athensville (later Ardmore). This new bypass was put into passenger operation in October 1850, and two months later a second track was opened which allowed freight service. [19]

Every Man An Equal
During the first decade of the C&P’s operation, an ironic egalitarian presumption controlled the way the railroad conducted itself. Stated simply, the Board of Canal Commissioners believed that this railroad, owned and maintained by the Commonwealth, was essentially little different from any other turnpike … only with certain improvements. Therefore, any citizen who wished access to the trackage would be allowed passage so long as he paid the wheel tolls, and he used a vehicle compatible with the rails. This presumption of equality became the law, and any farmer wishing to take produce to market using the “Public Works” was as entitled to operate on those tracks as the largest commercial transport company.

Thus our farmer, with his small four-wheeled cart loaded with potatoes and hauled by his horse, was entitled to plod along the rails toward market, stopping every few miles to water or otherwise rest his animal. Anticipating these natural respites, the railroad had been constructed with turnouts [20] and side tracks adjacent to each of the main tracks, every mile and a half for the entire length of the road. But should a locomotive hauling a trainload of passengers approach the farmer from the rear soon after he has passed the last turnout, our farmer would legally have the right to set the pace of the entire track for the next mile or more despite the impotent frustration of those following close behind. Conflict was continual between individual transporters, who wished to maintain the use of horses, and the Board of Canal Commissioners who quickly realized that steam provided better control to the movement of trains. Ironically, not until 1844 did the Commissioners finally announce a prohibition of horsepower upon the State-owned “Main Line.”

Passenger Stations
William Hasell Wilson, in his 1896 classic The Columbia-Philadelphia Railroad and its Successor, makes clear to his reader that during the 25 years of the Columbia Railroad, “the State had workshops of limited extent for ordinary repairs of locomotives, but no station houses for passengers or freight.”;[21] Every stop centered around an old roadside inn that had stood serving the local transportation network long before the “State Works” was built. Interestingly, Charles Frederick Carter, in his book When Railroads Were New (1909), makes clear that early “railroad travel … had its compensations”:

“There were no stations in those early days. The roadside inns sprinkled all over the country at intervals of a few miles, in response to the requirements of stage-coach travel, took their place.”
“Coaching customs were still kept up. As the stage always stopped at every inn, so the trains would come to a halt whenever they passed in sight of one. All hands - engineer, firemen, trainmen, and passengers - would alight and trudge across the field, leaving the train deserted on the main line until the thirst and appetites of all were satisfied. Each inn carried the fundamental necessity of life in the thirties, to wit, whisky, of course; but in addition each had its own particular specialty by which its fame was spread among travelers. At one place it would be coffee and big, fat doughnuts; at another, apple-pie with milk; at another, waffles and fish; at still another, chicken fricassee or beer and gingerbread, and so on. To any one not dyspeptic nor in haste, therefore, a trip over the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad was one prolonged delight.” [22]

While Carter perhaps spoke with his tongue in cheek, the old inns did provide a respite from the travel. Not until after the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased the assets of the Main Line of Public Works would passenger stations, in the way we understand that term today, begin to be established along what had been the Philadelphia & Columbia right-of-way.

Beginning of the End for the Main Line of Public Works
While the Main Line of Public Works initially did some considerable business after becoming fully operational in 1834, it never really became a strong competitor of the Erie Canal. And a decade after incurring the tremendous expense of commencing the Main Line, the anticipated flood of new trade and travel never did reach expectations. For example, in 1847 the Erie Canal hauled 1,661,575 tons of goods across New York State. This compared to a mere 234, 229 tons which traveled across the Commonwealth on the Main Line of Public Works. [23] The high tolls charged to its customers, and the continual route delays and inconvenience caused by the inclined planes (especially the Allegheny Portage Railroad) were moving Western shippers to the easily traversed Erie Canal, or upon the burgeoning Baltimore & Ohio Railroad which connected to the port of Baltimore. It was even said that merchants and millers from Western Pennsylvania and the Ohio River Valley found it cheaper to send their flour down the river to New Orleans, and by ship to Philadelphia, rather than patronize the State Works. [24]

The Pennsylvania Main Line of Public Works was increasingly becoming a financial disaster for the Commonwealth. By 1842 the Commonwealth was unable to meet the interest payments on the Main Line loans, which by that point totaled over $33,000,000, [25] and in his annual message that year Pennsylvania Governor David R. Porter dourly stated that he was reluctant to spend any additional funds for necessary repairs and improvements … even though more competitive routes were being created elsewhere. [26]

State officials began considering ways of getting out from under the “Public Works.” They increasingly came to believe that a continuous east and west railroad from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh provided the greatest hope to profit from the developing commerce of the West, and actively began to encourage private investment. In April 1846 a Charter incorporating the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) was signed by Governor Shunk. The PRR soon began constructing its new eastern terminus in Harrisburg, and by the end of 1852 its trains were able to run all the way from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia … albeit with the use of the archaic inclined planes of the Allegheny Portage Railroad, and the length of the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad.

But with fierce determination the Pennsylvania Railroad laid its direct rail line across and through the Alleghenies, including the completion in 1854 of their soon to be world-famous Horseshoe Curve, and their 3,600 foot long Gallitzin Tunnel, both near Altoona. The new PRR line east from Pittsburgh eliminated the necessity of both the original Portage Railroad and its recent successor, the New Portage Railroad. [27] By November 1855 the Pennsylvania Railroad commenced full operations upon its own seamless road from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg.

A track’s gauge is defined as the distance between the inside vertical surface of its rails. From the beginning of steam railroading in North America, “Standard” gauge was generally defined as 4 feet, 8½ inches, and this was the track gauge used by the Columbia Railroad. [28] Though the Pennsylvania Railroad used a slightly wider track gauge of 4 feet, 9 inches, this was easily compatible with the P&C’s “Standard” gauge.

But there remained a serious problem.

When the Philadelphia and Columbia had been double-tracked late in 1834, the pair of tracks had been laid 9’ 9” from the center of one track to the center of its adjoining track. But when the new Pennsylvania Railroad laid its double-tracked railbed from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg, it chose to establish the width between tracks at 12’ 2” center-to-center, 2’ 5” wider than that found east of Harrisburg. This added track width allowed the PRR to build and use wider cars for both its passenger and freight fleet. This difference in track centers, however, made any unbroken route eastbound from Harrisburg currently impossible.

While the PRR was the “master of its fate” west of Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania Railroad had only partial control over the Main Line east from Harrisburg to Lancaster, and no control at all between Columbia and Philadelphia. At Harrisburg the Pennsylvania Railroad connected eastbound to a double-track line owned by the small Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mount Joy and Lancaster Railroad (HPMJL), which operated for 36 miles on the narrower 9’ 9” centers to tiny Dillerville, just outside of Lancaster. At Dillerville a connection allowed the double-tracked Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad to cover the final 82 miles to Philadelphia ... but again on the narrower 9’ 9” centers. The cars used by the Pennsylvania Railroad into Harrisburg were from 18 to 26 inches wider than the cars used on either the HPMJL or the State-owned P&C (or for that matter onto the narrow tracks of the City railroad within Philadelphia). Passengers from Pittsburgh were therefore obliged to leave their wide, comfortable coaches in Harrisburg and transfer to narrow, spartan cars which they would use for the remainder of their journey east.

And so the tracks of the P&C passed eastbound through eastern Chester County, with stops at Oakland (todays Whitford), Steamboat (todays Glen Loch), Paoli, and Eagle (todays east Devon]); and at Delaware County’s Morgan’s Corner (todays Radnor]). Final stop was West Philadelphia, just west of the Market Street bridge over the Schuylkill River. There, a railroad owned by the City crossed the bridge to connect with the P&C terminus, and then continued east on Market Street and farther south to the country’s second leading port on the Delaware River along Dock Street. The city tracks were, however, in such a bad state of repair that each railcar entering the city, whether passenger or freight, had to be drawn by horse-power from the P&C terminus in West Philadelphia. Tolls on the City’s lines were high, and delays continual. The Port of Philadelphia fell steadily behind, and the management of the State railroads and canals increasingly became a public disappointment.

The Purchase of the Main Line of Public Works by the Pennsylvania Railroad
In 1844 the Pennsylvania Legislature, realizing the Main Line to be a financial sinkhole, offered to sell the system for $20,000,000 … but no one wanted it because it was earning less than three percent of its original cost. [29] Eleven years passed with no interest from private enterprise. In 1855 a new Legislature sweetened the offer by reducing the price of the “Public Works” to $7,500,000 plus other perks. After months of negotiations, both rigorous and often vitriolic, the Pennsylvania Railroad submitted a proposal at the end of 1855 to purchase the “Works” for the $7,500,000 asking price ... but to use an installment plan of $500,000 down, and the balance in fourteen equal payments at 5 per cent interest on the unpaid balance.

Over the next year and a half, the various canal interests fought ferociously against this sale, but on June 25, 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad’s bid was accepted by the Commonwealth. By proclamation of Governor James Pollock, the PRR assumed full operation of the “State Works” effective August 1st. In addition to the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, with its entire collection of rolling stock and right-of-way in varying states of disrepair, was the New Allegheny Portage Railroad, and over 250 miles of canals. [30] The PRR had just purchased for $7,500,000 what had by that point cost the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania $58,000,000. [31]

The Improvements by the Pennsylvania Railroad
The Philadelphia & Columbia was never adequately maintained under State control, and during the two years preceding its sale in 1857, the Commonwealth had allowed the infrastructure of the Main Line of Public Works to fall into serious disrepair. So when the PRR assumed control of the Philadelphia & Columbia, PRR president J. Edgar Thomson immediately set the formidable task of modernizing the old railroad’s entire infrastructure. But the first priority was to quickly re-lay the necessary trackage on the P&C and the HPMJL roads in order to widen the track centers and allow adequate passage for the PRR’s wider cars. This was soon accomplished, and by July 1858 the first through-train passed across the entire Commonwealth without the inconvenience and delay of having to transfer passengers at Harrisburg. [32]

Over the next three decades the PRR accomplished many projects to improve its right-of-way, including track realignments to reduce old curves and grades, road bed widening to accommodate more trackage, the upgrading of track and roadbed, and the construction or improvement of bridges and stations. For example, the road’s decision to replace all their trackage from iron rails to steel rails, begun soon after the Civil War and, accomplished by 1876, is viewed as one of the road’s most important technology investments in that, even though doubling the cost per yard of rail, it substantially reduced the road’s operating cost. [33] Traffic was substantially increasing, causing the PRR’s Philadelphia Division (Philadelphia to Harrisburg) to begin constructing a third and even a fourth track to most efficiently handle the increasing freight tonnage and passenger train density and speed. This creation of a “four-track system” continued to the dawn of the 20th Century.

The PRR’s realignment plan west of Morgan’s Corner (now Radnor) to Green Tree (now east Malvern) was approved in 1876. These adjustments eliminated 15 major curves, and modified many elevations by using “fills” of earth (particularly in the area from Devon west through Berwyn to Daylesford). Also eliminated were many dangerous grade-level crossings on these increasingly busy tracks that had been the scene of tragic accidents. These realignments were mostly completed by 1878, and except for some minor additional relocations between Wayne and Paoli in the 1880s, the Main Line had taken on the configuration we know today.

Full implementation of the four-track system took a bit longer. Though the roadbed west from Philadelphia to Paoli was prepared for four tracks by the later 1870s, laying the four-track capacity only extended as far west as Merion by the time for the widely popular Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. A third track had been laid from Berwyn to the end of the division at Green Tree by 1871, and by 1887 a fourth track now extended to Berwyn. When the system was finally completed to Paoli in 1893, the result was a magnificent four-track superhighway [34] able to simultaneously handle heavy through-passenger fleet service, the many commuter locals, and the ever-increasing freight of all kinds.

One final point: in 1868 the Pennsylvania Railroad began encouraging a postwar building boom west of Philadelphia along its right-of-way to stimulate suburban commuter travel. Land formerly used for farming was purchased, at times by the PRR itself, and increasingly settled with attractive homes, including many belonging to PRR officials.

The Pennsylvania Railroad constructed its series of ornate and even iconic stations for each of the evolving communities, each a distinctive example of Victorian architecture, and often becoming attractions in themselves. [35]

Thus the Main Line, as we know it today, though conceived by the efforts of the Main Line of Public Works, was refined and nurtured by the efforts of the Pennsylvania Railroad.