We were at the downtown post office this afternoon and reminded of this blog post by Tom Castaldi: http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-pennsy-shops.html
The railroad line that would become the PFtW&C was built in three sections from Pittsburgh west. The main part in Indiana started life as the Fort Wayne & Chicago, incorporated in 1852. The Fort Wayne and Chicago (FtW&C) was to connect the Ohio & Indiana (O&I) Railroad, connecting Fort Wayne to Crestline, Ohio, to Chicago. The Ohio & Indiana, in turn, connected to the Ohio & Pennsylvania (O&P), which connected Crestline to Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. (Allegheny City is now known as the north side of Pittsburgh.) By 1856, the FtW&C had managed to build to Columbia City, 19 miles west of Fort Wayne. ... The PFtW&C would also make Fort Wayne a major rail hub city. Major yards and shops were built there, earning the city the nickname of “Altoona of the West,” after the largest railroad facility in Pennsylvania of the PRR. Copied from the longer article Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railway Richard M. Simpson, III Uncategorized 19 June 2019 at Indiana Transportation History
History of the Pennsylvania Railroad | Vintage Promotional Film Series 1946 film published March 30, 2020 by Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society on YouTube The powerhouse Pennsylvania Railroad was one of the largest railroad networks in the United States and at one time was the largest transportation company and the biggest corporation in the world and dominated the south side of downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana with a massive shop for building and repairing freight cars, passenger cars, and steam locomotives and was the city's largest employer during the Great Depression. Though little evidence of the historic railroad remains in Fort Wayne, it's former Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railway route is owned today by CSX and operated by Genesee & Wyoming. The railroad's Baker Street Station survives to this day after an extensive restoration in the early 2000s and at one time hosted 4,000 passengers a day!
The Pennsylvania Railroad: The Age of Limits, 1917–1933, represents an unparalleled look at the history, the personalities, and the technologies of this iconic American company in a period that marked the shift from building an empire to exploring the limits of their power.
