Now You See Them 4/10/21

They are easily missed during the spring, summer and fall when trees and other vegetation have leaves. But even in the winter you can pass right by them if your eyes are on the rail-trail or the river it follows. I am talking about concrete remnants of railroad structures along what is now Lower Rail-Trail. Exactly what these 100 plus year old concrete structures supported is unclear. Amazingly, one is at least 100 ft up on the steep mountainside with no visible means of getting to it up the side of the mountain or from the top another 100 ft above.

In the 1820s and 30s, the Frankstown Branch of the Juniata River was part of a Pennsylvania Canal System – a statewide system of waterways with added locks, dams and towpaths, and short railroad lines developed to compete with the Erie Canal. Twenty years later many of the waterways had been abandoned and replaced totally by railroad lines, typically along side of the waterways that had been part of the system.

In the late 1800s, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) built a 30 mile branch that connected the PRR mainline at Petersburg and Hollidaysburg. This so called Petersburg Branch was more direct by 20 miles than the mainline, which runs northwest from Petersburg to Tyrone and then southwest to Altoona and on to Hollidaysburg. The branch mainly followed the Frankstown Branch of the Juniata River. The branch operated until 1979 when it was abandoned and put up for sale. The concrete remnants are from early in that period.

In 1989, Rails to Trails of Central Pennsylvania Inc., a non-profit, purchased eleven miles of the old rail bed - from Williamsburg to Alfarata with a gift from T. Dean Lower, a Hollidaysburg attorney. An additional section of the rail bed was purchased in the mid-1990s that extended the rail-trail from Williamsburg to the edge of Canoe Creek State Park.

The above photo were taken between mile markers 1 and 2 on the Lower Trail in late January 2021 - on a COVID GOOTH (Get Out Of The House) excursion. There are other remnants in the woods along the 16 mile trail from both the canal and railroad periods. These include, among others, canal lock walls, house walls (lock keeper?), rail bridge abutments, rail siding beds, all of which now blend into the terrain as shown in the next four photos taken in early April and the last/fifth taken in the Summer of 2015.