A quote form my newest book find, Follow the Flag, by H. Roger Grant, about the Wabash: …“Pittsburgh…generated freight traffic, estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau (in 1910) to be more than three times the tonnage of…any other city on the globe,…greater than the combined totals of Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia…”[:O]
Obviously, a lot has changed in a century, and not just in Pittsburgh. I started thinking about this statement as it relates to the railroad business in America today. King coal, and the Powder River Basin is obviously #1 as far as producing tonnage. Grain, from all over the place, would have to be #2. The foreign container traffic that futuremodal is always carping about ranks pretty high as well. Beyond that, where does the major freight come from? Do we have an “industrial area” any more?
This is the business by commodity grouping on the BNSF. Half their loads are intermodal. Another 1/4 are coal. Everything else, including grain, makes up the other 1/4.
Note the large declines from 2006 to 2007 in lumber/wood and forest products.
Early in the 20th Century this country was infatuated with size–bigness–weight. “Heavy industry” earned its moniker fairly. Faster passenger trains with bigger engines and steel coaches. More torque than ever for the freights. Bigger steam shovels. Great Lakes shipping. Portland-type cement. Bessemer-process steel, the incarnation of “heavy.” Bridges made of steel instead of wood for the first time. The Panama Canal. The Woolworth skyscraper in New York. Teddy Roosevelt’s four-pipe Navy ships. The Model “T”, the concept of which was styled in wood, like a carriage, but got its reputation selling cheaply and made with steel–while I’m on that subject, the River Rouge plant in Detroit, which poured practically all the raw materials in, with T’s coming out the other end.
Probably the peak of focus (and wonderment) of quantity of production came
I assume you are interested in industrial areas that generate carloadings of manufactured materials and consume carloadings of raw and semi-manufactured materials. Major industrial areas generating and consuming substantial numbers of carloadings include North Jersey (Conrail Shared Assets Territory); Detroit (also Conrail Shared Assets); Houston; Los Angeles; and Chicago. Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City are virtually tied for number of manufacturing jobs.
The US Imports about as much coal as it Exports. For a while when the US Dollar was very strong the imports exceeded the Exports, currently slightly more is exported than imported, Columbia is the largest import source, most of which goes to powerplants in South Texas and Florida.
Yes! Where once the P&LE was a 2-3-4 track railroad from Connellsville through Pittsbubgh to Youngstown serving almost all the steel mills along the way. It’s remanents is the Pittsburgh Subdivision of CSX that is a 40 MPH single track line from McKeesport to New Castle, a mere shadow of what previously existed.
I want to put in a plug for Pittsburgh, PA. The cliche of that city as a smelly, smoky steel-mill town is about 45 years out of date. I doubt if there’s even a single Bessemer-type steel mill left in the city or up the Mon(ongahela) Valley. Pittsburgh is clean, liveable, and has scenery that ranges from gorgeous to breathtaking. They even converted some of the old trolley lines to Light Rail.
Around 1960 various civic, government and business leaders designed a plan to take Pittsburgh to a healthy place once the steelmaking was gone. As a result, Pittsburgh today has a pretty healthy, diverse, even high-tech economy (think: Carnegie-Mellon); look around and you won’t see much “rustbelt” about it. I am giving serious thought to retiring there, provided I still want to live in a big city.
When the heavy industry left, then along with it I guess the heaviness of car loadings and such went with it too. Not all the heaviness left, but probabably enough to knock the city way down in the heaviness-factor department. Which doesn’t seem to bother the residents all that much.
“Was it heavy? Did it achieve, uh, heaviosity?” – Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) to Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) in film “Annie Hall,” regarding a rock concert she had attended.
Bessemer-type furnaces are ancient history everywhere except for some very small production specialized products, but there is still an integrated mill in the Pittsburgh District, U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works, consisting of Edgar Thomson, Irvin, and Fairless Plants. Edgar Thomson, located at Braddock, has two blast furnaces, two BOPs, and a dual-strand continuous slab caster. Total works capacity is 2.8 million tons/year Here’s a worthwhile photo: