Driving Trip to Pittsburgh
July 25-31, 2013

“Coal Goes to War” was the title of a private-car excursion, run on Norfolk Southern under Amtrak auspices, set up by Bennett Levin of Philadelphia for Sunday, July 28, 2013, from Pittsburgh south on a round trip over the former Pennsylvania Railroad “Mon” (Monongahela) Division and former Monongahela Railway to a point called Clif (or Cliff) at the Pa.-West Virginia state line, where there is a wye that forks into two dead-end branches to coal mines. The one-way mileage was about 112, about 93 of which were new for us: 42 PRR and 51 Mononghaela (“MGA”). Rick Moser and I bought tickets on Levin’s parlor car “Warrior Ridge” for the trip, and drove from his home in Naperville, Ill., to Pittsburgh, taking 3 days to do so beginning on Thursday. On Monday, the day after the excursion, Rick went in search of 14 depots to photograph in the Beaver River valley north of Pittsburgh, for his large digital depot photo archive, while Chuck Weinstock, John Arbuckle, and I drove down to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (aka Arden) at Washington, Pa., then photographed 4 depots on our excursion route from the previous day, and in late afternoon dropped John at the airport to fly home to Kansas. Chuck and I then attended the Pirates-Cardinals baseball game at PNC Park (Chuck shares two season tickets in the low section behind the home-plate screen). On Tuesday, July 30, Rick and I began the 2-day drive home.

My digital photos are set up in four files to match the trip segments. The 2 photos here show an etching of a PRR E8 nose on the “Warrior Ridge” plus the special head-rest covers on the swivel parlor seats, depicting Levin’s “Coal Goes to War” scene and the car’s title in a PRR-like emblem. The car is a former Amtrak diner lounge, which still has its 4 tables and self-serve galley/counter areas intact. Bennett gutted the other end of the car (which has no vestibule) and installed 13 or 14 swivel parlor-car seats from a former New Haven RR parlor car. Levin typically selects a charity for which all proceeds from an excursion of his are directed, and this one, for which our fare is tax-deductible, benefitted the Broad Way Historic Preservation Conservancy, which is dedicated to the restoration of Alto Tower (on-site) in Altoona, Pa.