Construction of the Old Portage Railroad from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown, thirty six miles long, began in 1831 and took three years to complete. It included a tunnel long as well as a
viaduct over the
Little Conemaugh River upstream from Johnstown. The vertical ascent from Johnstown was . The vertical ascent from Hollidaysburg was . The project was financed by the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a means to compete with the
Erie Canal in New York and the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Maryland. The work was done largely through private contractors. The railroad utilized eleven grade lines and ten
cable inclined planes, five on either side of the summit of the
Allegheny Ridge, to carry loaded canal boats on flatbed railroad cars. Trains of two-three cars were pulled on grade lines by mules. On inclined planes, stationary steam engines pulled up and lowered down cars by hemp ropes switching to wire ropes in 1842. The entire Main Line system connecting
Philadelphia and
Pittsburgh via the Philadelphia-Columbia railroad, the Columbia-Hollidaysburg canal, the Portage railroad linking Hollidaysburg to Johnstown, and a canal from Johnstown to Pittsburgh, was long. A typical ride took 4 days instead of the former 23-day horse-wagon journey. The Old Portage Railroad was in operation for twenty years being considered "the wonder of America."
Charles Dickens wrote a contemporary account of travel on the railroad in Chapter 10 of his
American Notes. Quoted at length in the
Pennsylvania guide, Dickens "described travel on the Portage in 1842," describing aspects of the Portage Railroad's immediate social and geographic context, as well as mechanical strategies used by the Railroad for coping with the steep grades encountered on the route : In the 1850s, the Main Line of Public Works and its
portage railroad was rendered obsolete by the advance of railway technology and railroad engineering. Early in 1846 the Legislature chartered the
Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) to cross the entire state in response to plans by the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to reach the Ohio Valley through Virginia. In December 1852 trains started to run between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh shortening the travel time from 4 days to 13 hours. Construction on the New Portage Railroad, a 40-mile realignment to cross the Allegheny Ridge bypassing inclines, started in 1851 and cost $2.14 million. The PRR raised sufficient investment and had enough quick success that they bought the existing Portage railroad and other parts of the Main Line of Public Works from the state on July 31, 1857. The PRR abandoned most of the line and used the rest as local branches; "anything of value was either sold or stripped from the Allegheny Portage Railroad." Nearly half a century later, the graded roadbeds of the descending section east of the
Gallitzin Tunnel were re-railed with standard gauge freight tracks. The line reopened as a freight bypass line in 1904. Pennsylvania Railroad successor
Conrail abandoned this line to
Hollidaysburg and most of the branch trackage along the
Juniata River in 1981 and removed the rails. The Allegheny Portage Railroad was designated as a
National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the
American Society of Civil Engineers in 1987. to
Johnstown|center ==National Historic Site==