Hi,
Wonder if anyone could help with this.
My layout is going to use Pittsburgh as its base, but try as I might, I still cannot fathom the track layout through the city and how trains get from one side to the other. I’m especially confused as to how the main station works.
Could anyone shed some light on how train operations take place through Pittsburgh. A track schematic would be a great help in understanding it all 
Many Thanks
Mike
Hi Mike,
I will try to help you out as much as I can. First here is a website that contains an excellent schematic.
http://www.lundsten.dk/railfan_pa/pit.gif
Let’s start in the upper left corner on the north side of the Ohio River. That is Norfolk Souther’s mainline between Conway Yard and Harrisburg. After passing Bellevue, double stacks will cross the Ohio River on the Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge to the South side of the river. They must do this as double stacks cannot go under a couple of street bridges in the area known as Pittsburgh’s North Side, nor can they fit under the train shed at the old Penn Station. Which by the way, is now apartments except for the Amtrak Station on the ground level. Almost all of the other freight trains continue past the Ohio Connecting Bridge, go through the Island Avenue Yard until they reach the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge. Here they either cross over the Allegheny River to the Penn Station or continue on up the Allegheny River. This area is marked on the schematic as Downtown.
I should add that the Allegheny Valley Railroad interchanges with Norfolk Southern at te Island Avenue Yard on North Side. So they have trackage rights from Island Avenue Yard, over the Fort Wayne Bridge, through Penn Station until they pick up their own tracks.
CSX comes up the south side of the Ohio River and parallels, but is seperate from, North Southerns tracks.
All the other railroads are shortlines.
Hope this helps some. Tom
Pittsburgh when matters too.
If you mean right now today, there’s an Amtrak report about an improvement plan for the Capitol Limited that actually has a current track diagram of whats hiding underneath the train shed.
Here are pictures & Google Maps from PRR to Amtrak:
[1] Wikipedia.
[2] RailPictures.net.
[3] Railroad.net.
[4] Panaramio.
Hi Mike,
Now that I’ve probably added to your confusion about Pittsburgh and its railroads, let’s go to part 2. I more or less focused on Norfolk Southern in my previous post. Now about CSX. They do cross the rivers as well, just not in Pittsburgh. Their main line follows the Beaver River from New Castle and crosses the Ohio River in a town called Monaca. That puts it on the south side of the Ohio as it goes through Pittsburgh, then follows the Monongahela River to Homestead, PA, where it crosses to the other side of that River.
The Allegheny Valley Railroad crosses the Allegheny River around 33rd Street in Pittsburgh. That line follows the river to Etna where it turns north. The Allegheny Valley RR uses this line to interchange with the Buffalo & Pittsburgh RR at either Bakerstown Siding, or sometimes at a longer siding outside of Evans City. They also cross the Allegheny River at Aspinwall and follow the river to New Kensington, PA.
That’s about all I can contribute about the railroads and the rivers here in Pittsburgh. You can search the internet for the other railroads and how they interchange with each other. Three other shortlines you might be interested in here are the Pittsburgh & Ohio Central, the Union Railroad and the Wheeling & Lake Erie. The Union Railroad also crosses the Monongahela River on the way to North Bessemer where they interchange with the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad.
Good luck… Tom
Been three weeks since I have been home and wanted to respond to your request. I still don’t know in what era you are interested but the background information is still pertinent. Pittsburgh had a plethora of basically industrial railroads serving the coal fields and steel plants that radiated out in all directions. Bessemer and Lake Erie and Pittsburgh and Lake Earie went to Cleveland hauling coal one way and iron ore back and were among the most profitable ever. Others included Union, Pittcburgh and Shawmut, Pittsburgh and West Virginia, Waynesburg Southern and a host of others. None of those would have had much in the way of passenger service beyond locals. B&O came to town and had a station along the Monongohela at the edge of the golden triangle. B&LE had a station across the Mon that is now Station Square. A high end mall uses their freight house as its building and the station houses (or housed) a high end restaurant. The 500# gorilla in Pittsburgh was the PRR and I believe that is the station you are interested in. The PRR had two locations where major traffic diversion took place. One was at Zoo tower in Philly where the Washington and southern connections diverged to 30th Street station and south and the western traffic diverged toward Lancaster, Harrisburg, Altoona and Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh there was another intersection of the Panhandle line which went to Indianapolis, Terre Haute and St Louis and the Chicago traffic, The bridge the trolleys use to cross the Mon is the PRR Panhandle access and the track location for the trolley cars at the station is on the roadbed off the PRR. The PRR tracks turned and were above the B&LE tracks up the hill a little. These merged with the mains just east of the station. Two through tracks to Chicago turn and crossed the Allegheny river about 100’ to the west of the station. So why all the stub end tracks in the station? Because of
Thanks everyone for the information - its been really useful in planning my new layout.
Sorry for not replying before - busy preparing to move house in a couple of weeks.