Hey Guys! My parents went to college near Johnstown and my mom is a civil engineer, and surveyed the dam site and took a picture of the dam in 1987, I also took a near same shot of this in 2008. I wanted to share the comparison of the two time periods, two different railroads. 
Tjsingle
Interesting comments and photos…My original home site is in Somerset Co. And of course I’ve been to this site.
Edit: For those who may not be familiar with the site…we’re looking at the failed site of an earthern dam across this void and where the train and river run now…that is where the failed {washed away}, part of the breast of the dam was. Over 2,000 people were killed in the Johnstown area down stream from the result of that failure back in 1889.
Now…If I remember correctly, that railroad leads to the Windber area and is a coal branch.
The camera is roughly on the “other” end of the breast of the dam.
Yes the branch leads into Winber , and even farther to central city, it is a 30 miles coal branch with several mines along the route.
Yes the branch leads into Winber , and even farther to central city, it is a 30 miles coal branch with several mines along the route.
Yes, and on a ways beyond Central City towards Reels Corner some of the coal will be and maybe already is…being brought out via the Shanksville branch that comes off the S&C of the CSX at Coleman. That branch was just reactivated in the last several years after being dormant for years and years. It required some rebuilding and now I believe is up to the job of supporting 6 axle power, etc…From there it heads south to Somerset…Rockwood and connects to the CSX main.
These are interesting pictures, to say the least. I had no idea the rest of that historic, or should I say infamous dam was still standing; it gives me a very eerie feeling to look at it. Just because it was a long time ago is no reason to forget the people who died and the others whose lives were changed as a result of that ghastly, awful flood. Thanks for posting; I’d never have seen this otherwise.
A little more history may be called for for those unfamiliar with it. The dam and lake were basically a private resort for PRR officials from the general Pittsburgh area. Torential rains weakened the dam and initial concerns were not taken seriously. The PRR mainline bridge in Johnstown withstood the flash flood when it broke and to the best of my knowledge is still in use.
Yes, the “point stone arch bridge” is still carrying 3 tracks of ex. PRR and now NS over the river. The stone arch bridge held up under such forces and also became part of the problem during the “flood”…
Debris stacked up at the bridge and made the flood worse as the water couldn’t get away fast enough. Than the depris caught fire…{of all things}, and I believe caused even more causalities. All this area can be viewed up at the observation platform of the Johnstown Incline Plane…Anyone interested, it is a very interesting location to view the total Johnstown area and there is a collection of photos and memento’s, etc., up there along with an icecream place and nice restaurant with viewing windows that are open to the great view. Highly recommended. Also one can view the mechanicals used to raise and lower the incline plane cars…which one can ride.
Please read this article for a more detailed history. The builder was the state and owners changed several times before the flood.
Johnstown has been involved in two more destructive floods since the 1889 event…1936 and 1977. Loss of life in both, but not as severe as the 1889 flood. One of them had a failed dam involved too…
The Army Corp of Engineers engineered, precided over building a deepened river bed along with {IIRC}, about 15 miles of slanted concrete river walls. That was started roughly 1940. It took until 1977 to breach over those walls and flood the city once again.
The members of the South Fork Club weren’t only - or even mostly - PRR officials. Instead, there was a much large complement of industrialists from Pittsburgh (and elsewhere) - I beleive the steelmen outnumbered the railroaders - see the list of names and affiliations in the referenced Wikipedia article.
Better yet, get the 1968 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough, The Johnstown Flood (I believe it was his 1st book-length work) - very thorough and detailed.
In 1977, I was doing railroad surveying about 100 miles northeast of Johnstown the night of that flood. Having heard that succession of heavy thundershowers all night long, I was not surprised to hear how severe the flooding was. As Quentin mentions, it overtopped the US ACE’s concrete walls. As a result of that flood, the next year (1978) Pennsylvania recognized that better approaches and methods were needed, and so the General Assembly adopted and enacted 2 new laws - Act 167 - Stormwater Management (“Man’s effect on Nature”), and Act 168 - Floodplain Management (“Nature’s effect on Man”). The latter is similar to the FEMA floodplain maps and restrictions; the former is still a work in progress.
Interesting to see the railroad still runs through that location. Thanks for sharing the photos.
- Paul North.
I don’t know how much, but understand quite a bit of coal does come out over that branch from the Windber / Central City area…Perhaps It might be down at the moment from current economic conditions but it is an active mining and coal producing area.
What I’m wondering now is, Was there a track there back in the day of the South Fork Club and the dam and the flood ? If so, did the rich guys have to put up with train whistles while fishing, and in the middle of the night, etc. ?
I could see the answers going either way. Will have to look that up sometime - unless Quentin knows ?
- PDN.
I really don’t know I’ll say up front…but the route would have had to be much different when the dam was present. I will try to find out.
My opinion would be…no railroad up thru there at that time. I’d say the {I believe it’s called the Southfork Secondary} was not in place at that time. Doubt if the mining activity was in place yet in the Windber / Central City…Carinbrook area}, at least to the degree it developed into much later…
That dam had quite a bit of acreage covered with water while it was still an operational recreational facility.
…Doing a little checking on our railroad arrival time back into the Windber coal mining area I find: Berwind-White Coal Co. was founded in that area in 1897 and in so doing…they created the beginning of the town of Windber. This very much indicates the failure of the Southfork Dam predates a railroad being brought back into the Windber area to transport the coal to market. That was just beginning a decade later.
Edit:
After the Southfork Dam failure…The Southfork Railroad Co. was organized and began building a railroad to Dunlo, a distance of 8 miles…Perhaps this was the beginning of a railroad towards Windber…which is just beyond that area of Dunlo.
Later Edit:
The Scalp Level RR was started and extended to the Windber coal field…1897.
1898…A PRR freight station has been established at Scalp Level…{a short distance from Windber}, and now 150 cars {of coal}, are being shipped daily.
All this seems to provide data the RR’s back into these coal fields started a bit later to a decade later than the Southfork Dam failure.
Yes, the flood predates the track, my father who lived in a coalmining town, said that the tracks that led to a sawmill, were ripped out in 1977 along the creek there. There are a few strings of empties or loaded cars, always on the runaround in the damn, there are two tracks running through the damn and there are severval mines in the area, more recently the Rosebub mine #78 reopened in Winber not that long ago, adding even more traffic to the area. It is really interesting to see train running through the area, espically the NS SD80macs, too bad I did not see a conrail SD80mac when they were still in blue. The yard in South Fork, always has strings of coal hoppers, and atleast 5 locomotives, most are SD80macs. There is quite alot of black diamonds flowing out the area. The town where my father is from mines shut down in the late 70’s. Here is a link to the South Fork trackage map from PArailfan, it was cirtical in my railfanning of the area, and it is cool seeing the mines in the area. http://www.parailfan.com/Guides/ns_southforksecondary.pdf Tjsingle