Cinder Dumps - Old Underpass


After passing the 'Furnace Dam' area, and crossing the small creek, this is the first site you see of the Cinder Dumps.

The next thing we'll take a look at, is an old underpass. To reach it, you would start walking sharply to the left, into the woods, and towards the turnpike. You eventually see this:


While not in plain site in this distant shot, you can see traces of a former underpass on the bank.


A closer look.

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Close-up of one of the sides.

I use to think that this overpass was to be part of the South Penn Railroad, a line that was being built from 1883 to 1885, but never finished. I had theorized that since the original "Everett Iron Company" would have been constructing the furnace at about the same time as the railroad was being worked on, that they would have built an overpass so that the SPRR could pass overhead, and the EIC could still access the location of it's slag piles. I've since found this out to be untrue.

While it is true that this location was to be part of the SPRR right-of-way, I recently found out that no construction at all to the SPRR was done in Everett; When the SPRR called it quits, construction in Bedford County stopped near the present-day golf course, just on the east side of Everett.

After Thropp bought the furnace, he quickly switched to using better quality iron ore, shipped in from the Great Lakes via train. It came from the north, and was shipped to Everett via the Huntingdon and Broad Top RailRoad. Unfortunately, The Earlston Furnace was on the south side of the river, and the H&BT-owned tracks ended on the north side of the Mt. Dallas bridge. The bridge was owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, who were known to charge higher rates at the time than most, and thus, Thropp had to pay the PRR to ship his ore across the bridge. From there, it was still a good 3/4 mile or so to the Earlston Furnace, and thus, Thropp had his own track between the Mt. Dallas bridge and the furnace, although, I'm unsure of the type of track this would have been, or if it was drawn by engines at all, it may have simply been a small horse or mule-driven line for the short distance.

So, with the location of the old Earlston Furnace, which is a present-day turnpike detail of the PA State Police barracks, immediately on the other side of this old underpass, this underpass was either built into the original grade for the afore-mentioned line, or, perhaps it was built later on, around 1912, for the improved line. You see, Thropp didn't like to have to pay the PRR the extra money just to cross the Mt. Dallas bridge. So for many years, he pressured the H&BT about building a bridge downstream from the Mt. Dallas bridge, strictly for the purpose of reaching the Earlston Furnace. He also offered to sell them a railroad right-of-way that he owned, that ran from the Earlston Furnace, through Black Valley, down to Little Orleans, MD, although the actual line was only developed to about 5 miles out Black Valley.

So, after many, many years, the H&BT finally took Thropp up on his offer, and built the bridge in 1912, and thus, I would imagine that the grade that the present-day turnpike lies on, was part of both Thropp's old line, and the new H&BT extension that ran to the furnace. Either way, this overpass would have been put in place to allow the right-of-way to run overheard, and allow access below from the furnace to the slag piles.

As for the Black Valley right-of-way, it is said that the H&BT was preparing to utilize it, and even went as far as to build about a dozen trains/cars/etc for it. The new line would finally make the H&BT more competitive, with their own line running into MD. However, before any work begun on the right-of-way itself, WWI started, and everything was halted. After the war, apparently the demand for the line waned, and thus, the project was abandoned. Even the bridge they built for Thropp was only used for about 10 years, and was dismantled for scrap in 1940.

If anyone has any additional information about this, please let me know!

(Special thanks go out to Russel Love, webmaster of the great South Penn RailRoad website, and also to members of the Blair, Bedford, and Broad Top Railroads Yahoo group, for the new information regarding this.)

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