Legacy Streetcar Tracks in Pittsburgh

 Legacy Streetcar Tracks in Pittsburgh

 

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Here are a set of streetcar Legacy Tracks leading into and out of what at one time was the Rankin Car House in Braddock, PA. {G3130} Pittsburgh once had hundreds of miles of streetcars and interurban passenger rail routes. The Port Authority of Allegheny County rebuilt a few miles of ROW into the T, but most of the other tracks have been pulled or buried under a layer of asphalt. The Legacy Tracks, as I refer to them, have never been covered and remain in isolate places around what remains of the former Pittsburgh Railway Company service area.

Legacy Streetcar tracks still exposed in the Pittsburgh area. {11039} I've researched more old trackage and have placed images in my "Pittsburgh" album. Photo by Robert Carlson. Pittsburgh and Allegheny County have undertaken to obliterate all vestiges of its once extensive passenger rail system. The tracks have been pulled from streets where new concrete pavement is placed. Where an asphalt layer is placed, the tracks are merely buried under the pavement. Those tracks occasionally reappear when the asphalt weathers, cracks and crumbles. Even so, there are seven locations I have documented where legacy tracks have never been buried under pavement.

Dooker's Hollow Tracks

#40 Line on Soffel Street

400 yards of streetcar tracks have been hiding in the weeds parallel to Bell Avenue in North Braddock near Dooker's Hollow. The recent replacement of the bridge revealed the tracks when they cleared the roadway as a construction access. This section of tracks was abandoned when the first Dooker's Hollow bridge was constructed. They lay there in the weeds known only to locals who continued to use the road as a pedestrian route. {10297}. Pittsburgh and Allegheny County have undertaken to obliterate all vestiges of its once extensive passenger rail system. The tracks have been pulled from streets where new concrete pavement is placed. Where an asphalt layer is placed, the tracks are merely buried under the pavement. Those tracks occasionally reappear when the asphalt weathers, cracks and crumbles. Even so, there are seven locations I have documented where legacy tracks have never been buried under pavement.

 

#56 Line at Dravosburg

#96 Line in Morningside

Legacy Streetcar tracks still exposed in the Pittsburgh area. {11036} Several other location still exist in the region:

• Chestnut Street in the Northside has about 3 blocks of tracks still set in red clay bricks
• Old section of Braddock Avenue in Regent Square/Edgewood
• Tracks rising to meet the former bridge over Turtle Creek in Wilmerding, PA.
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