(soft upbeat music) - Up next on "Keystone's Stories", Railroads.

(soft upbeat music) Welcome to "Keystone Stories" By 1900 the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest railroad company in the world.

So, why is Altoona known as Railroad City?

The answer lies here, at the Railroad's Memorial Museum located in the former PRR Master Mechanics building originally constructed in 1882.

This home for rail fans is where our new project is underway to bring back a legendary locomotive, the K4.

(train running on tracks) (train horn) If you call yourself a rail fan, you love trains.

And there's no better place for a rail fan than Altoona, Pennsylvania.

For a lot of reasons!

They can watch trains around the world famous Horseshoe Curve.

They can ride the Everett Railroad steam train in Holidaysburg.

They can see exhibits at the Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona.

Where an effort is underway to bring back the K4 13 61.

A legendary steam engine, which has been named The Spirit of Altoona.

Because after all, Altoona is railroad city.

(train running on tracks) Now, some say the railroad built America, but everyone says the railroad built Altoona.

- Altoona wouldn't exist without railroads.

- Without railroading, there wouldn't be a city of Altoona.

- Railroading is Altoona.

- It's the hearts, the soul, the very being of the city.

- Altoona, Pennsylvania came into being, by being at the right place at the right time.

The Pennsylvania Railroad needed an all rail route, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and in its way where the Allegheny Mountains.

- And this brilliant engineer, John Edgar Thompson of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

He saw three mountains, one that had an easy grade from the east, one in the center, one that had an easy grade down to the west.

And he thought, if we fill in the dirt between these mountains we could create a continuous ridge line and we could have trains run through that.

That's the Horseshoe Curve.

(train whistle blows) - 400 immigrant workers with pick axes, shovels, and dynamite completed the Horseshoe Curve in 1854.

A steadily climbing track so well aligned, it's still in use today.

But that easy grade of the curve was tough on early steam locomotives.

And trains needed multiple helper engines to make the climb.

(train climbing tracks) - The Pennsylvania railroad said, 'Hmm, we are gonna need to repair these locomotives all the time.

That is too much work for locomotives.'

They said, 'We need a place to build rail shops.

Altoona.'

Altoona only existed to repair those locomotives to go around the Horseshoe Curve.

- But, Altoona workers did more than fixed broken trains.

By 1862, they were making steam locomotives.

- Altogether, five generations of skilled workmen produced 6,700 steam locomotives here in Altoona.

So that's why we're railroad city.

- When you think back to 1915, 1916, when there were 15-16,000 shop workers here, let alone the train crews, the maintenance of way crews, the dining car crews, all of the track crews, it was a railroad city unlike any other.

- The Juniata Locomotive Shops became centers of innovation, and they turned out some of the biggest and fastest steam locomotives.

- And of course, the big news always the big news is a new engine.

When you had a bigger locomotive with a brand new engine, something completely new from scratch.

The whole town was a buzz with the excitement of that.

So that's the K4.

That was the newest, biggest, largest steam engine and there were so many big hopes for that.

- Altoona Tribune.

Monday morning, May 25th, 1914, Juniata Shops to finish big engines.

Mammoth Passenger Locomotive will be completed tomorrow ready for service.

Railroad men are anticipating with much interest the actions of the huge machine on its trial trips.

It will be utilized in hauling heavy passenger, and express trains at fast speeds.

(train whistle blows) - 425 K4's are built, and they would remain the Pennsylvania railroad's main passenger power for over 30 years.

- What makes the K4 the most significant is that they were constructed here in Altoona at the Juniata Locomotive Shops by Altoona workers.

It was Altoona designed, and Altoona built, and Altoona maintained, and it was really a product of the heyday of Altoona railroading.

(soft upbeat music) - But by the 1940s and fifties with the coming of diesel engines, the days of steam trains were numbered.

And on a rainy day in June of 1957 the K4 13 61, one of two surviving K4's was placed on display at the Horseshoe Curve and dedicated as a permanent memorial to the age of steam power.

There it sat for 28 years, but it's stay was not permanent.

- I saw it on Horseshoe Curve when I was about 16, so that goes back to the 1960s.

I never dreamed that I would see it run and never believed it would come off of Horseshoe Curve.

Once it was stuffed and mounted there I thought that's where it was gonna stay forever.

- In 1985, the K4 13 61 was taken down, and moved to the Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona, with the intent of restoring it to operating condition.

(train whistle blows) In 1987, it was repaired enough to move under its own power, and to much excitement it made a number of runs in the area, but it didn't last.

(train running on tracks) The locomotive suffered mechanical issues, further attempts at restoration sputtered, and ultimately failed.

In July of 2021, the Railroaders Memorial Museum held a press conference, and announced that the restoration of the K4 13 61, the spirit of Altoona would get a new start.

- No other locomotive embodies the community it came from in quite the same way as the K4.

And I think that's a really important part of the whole restoration effort given that here we are standing in a museum that's really dedicated not only to the shops, but to the people and the town.

They existed.

- Well, the mission is to tell the story of railroading in Altoona through the eyes of railroaders.

And it was because the engine was built here that makes it very special.

- This is the K4 13 61 today.

It lies in giant pieces on the floor of the new roundhouse.

The cab, the tender, the frame, the boiler, the giant wheels, and all the miscellaneous components in boxes.

The team realizes this new effort faces a unique set of challenges.

How do you restore a 250 ton machine built over 100 years ago?

- I would say that this restoration has an upper edge over previous efforts, just merely due to the fact that technology has evolved so greatly over the past 35 years.

I think it really empowers a lot of the engineers and the volunteers that will be taking on this task as a labor of love.

- You analyze what you have to actually work with.

You cross reference with the old then you see what you have, what it should be, and then you match that up against current standards.

And then those current standards dictate the future designer improvements.

So that's how we bridge those gaps between what's old, current, and what needs to be done.

- Directing the work is FMW Solutions, an engineering firm specializing in locomotive restorations.

Who will use a combination of archival research and modern technology to revive the K4.

- Well, we're gonna have a little bit of dissection to do with what what past work has taken place in the past couple decades.

But what's really nice is all the pieces are here.

The locomotives disassembled.

So now it's really a matter of fixing the boiler, inspecting the rest of the pieces, and putting it back together.

The roundhouse is in place, it's got the turntable, we've got the space to do the work, so timing in some ways is pretty nice for this.

- Depending on money raised and what surprises they may find, the team estimates the restoration timeline between four to five years.

But once completed, the plan is for the K4 13 61 to be a mobile classroom with the ability to transport young and old through time.

- Increasingly, we as humans, but especially young students are visual sensory learners.

To read about K4 13 61 in a textbook is nowhere near matching the experience of being able to see it in person.

- So the K4 is gonna be much more than just the operating steam locomotive.

It's gonna become the living history component of the museum and where it'll be a centerpiece for STEM education.

- Ultimately, it's about the the railroaders and the residents and their families to observe and to commemorate the things that these people built well over a century ago.

And so I think it will truly afford visitors especially young visitors, an experience that will be unsurpassed.

- Pennsylvania is filled with unique rail fan experiences.

In 2016, WPSU aired Our Town Crescent featuring this next attraction, where you can expect a not so quiet night's sleep.

- Hi, I'm Tom Davis and I'm here to talk about my bed and breakfast, The Station Inn.

And it is a bed and breakfast in downtown Metropolitan Crescent.

The Inn is located right across the street from where the Crescent Railroad station once stood.

The railroad's been there since about 1855, 1856.

Crescent started booming around 1900 when the coal mines opened up.

For ages this was the area for met coal, short for metallurgical.

This area provided met coal for Johnstown and Pittsburgh and all around the area as well.

Despite the fact that coal has dropped off the amount of traffic passing our front door hasn't dropped off that much.

There are only about three or four crossings of the Allegheny Mountains.

This is one of the busiest.

So we have a lot of traffic coming through from California, Kansas City.

Because we have roughly 70 trains a day on the main line.

It's one of the busiest places in the US.

People are interested in trains.

We have people in a steady stream from Australia, Ireland, Wales, the UK.

They stop by my place to chase trains in the Eastern part of the US.

The people from Europe and the UK are amazed at how long the trains are.

They are amazed at how many locomotives there are.

They're amazed at how big the American locomotives are.

This is a completely different world for a railroad enthusiast.

(upbeat acoustic music) - In it's heyday, railroading could be a very dangerous business and accidents happened.

This next story comes from our friends at local historia and features a legendary tale from Tyrone.

- In 1893, if you're a traveling circus, you're traveling by rail.

Main circus was no different.

His train included customized cars, double the length of a normal train car.

The menagerie included hundreds of animals, many horses, zebras, elephants, lions, panthers, reptiles, birds, tigers.

This was a spectacle for people to come out and see.

- A memorial day in 1893, one of the most infamous train wrecks occurred in Tyrone, Pennsylvania.

It claimed six lives, five on the train and one during the cleanup.

These are the graves of William Lee and Barney Maltaney.

They're suspected of having been riding on the open cars on top of canvas and did not survive the accident.

Today they're buried in Tyrone's Grandview Cemetery.

The Walter L. Main circus train derailed at high speed plummeting over a 20 foot embankment at McCann's crossing in the early morning hours.

The carnage of the wreck and the aftermath of freed animals make for a legendary tale of tragedy.

Eerie walking along the the exact rail bed where this took place.

You can still see the two, you know where the rails ran.

It doesn't feel like that sharp of a curve by today's standards, but a train in 1893 that is too heavy, and too long, moving too fast, and we're on the curve somewhere in this spot.

George Mandeville last sees William Heverly, the brakeman jump from the car trying to escape the wreckage.

- We paid a visit to Susan O'Brien at the Tyrone History Museum.

Susie's a local authority on the wreck and even got me fascinated by the story when she visited my elementary school with the same artifacts as a kid.

- Now this was, it's part of part of the railroad car that wrecked but it all, the scrap wood they used to build things, chicken coops or whatever.

This was on corn crib of my great great grandfather Harry Friday's corn crib for years.

And then they took it off and gave it to me when I started to do these talks in 1993.

- I wonder what the what.

- Probably Walter.

- I say.

- Yeah.

- Or W. - Unless it's the other way and it's an M. - Or it's, yeah, that's cool.

- One of the big cats cages latches.

- Oh wow.

- And it was on the Karen's smoke house till 1993.

Then we put it on this board to display it for the kids.

Oh, okay.

That's Har, that's Hannah Friday.

That milked the cow.

Yep.

- So that's the subject of the the cow milking story which is now like the legendary tale.

So the story goes, Hirum's daughter, Hannah was milking a cow in this barn in 1893 directly after the train wreck.

And while she was milking the cow, that cow was being stalked by one of the tigers that got loose.

And as she was milking that cow, a tiger leaped up on the back of the cow scaring Hannah, killing the cow instantly.

And then the tiger proceeded to drag the cow off towards the woods, which would've been directly over here.

Several of the neighbors in this area all then commit to going out and finding this tiger.

According to the Daily Herald, it was killed while it was drinking water along Vance Quick Run.

Today it's skull can still be seen in in the Tyrone Sportsmen.

(somber music playing) In the aftermath of the wreck, the town of Tyrone is gonna respond with hospitality.

Many of these circus performers are gonna be out of food, out of housing, at least until the cleanup of the wreck which could take days, weeks, no one was really sure.

Community members in Tyrone came together, brought these circus performers in, and would put them up in, in the St. Matthews Academy, or the Empire Hotel or even the Ward House, which is still standing today.

The showman reported that they were grateful that the catastrophe took place in Tyrone, where they received first class treatment and even put on an unscheduled performance to show their appreciation.

(train running on tracks) (train whistle blows) (upbeat folk tunes) (train whistle blows) - Our final two stories come from WPSU's Our Town Series.

At one time, both Clarion and Houtzdale had railroad lines.

Even though the trains are gone, both communities worked to maintain the history and passion of the rails.

- The first rail that came into town came from Knox and there was a narrow gauge rail, and it came across a trestle.

That ran for just under 20 years and they decided that the trestle wasn't strong enough to bring it across a river anymore, but the town refused to put up the money to build a new one.

So 1896, it just shut down and then the railroad opened in 1904 from Clarion to Somerville.

But it was so hilly and it was so hard for that train to get up and down that they finally closed that part and it became the LEF&C in 1913.

LEF&C stands for Lake Erie, Franklin and Clarion.

You can still see LEF&C cars in use today.

When it stopped carrying passengers then it started carrying freight, and coal, and glass, and all kinds of things.

So it finally closed completely in '93 because the coal industry went belly up and there was just no need for it anymore.

And now they've pulled up all the tracks so we have no railroad.

We have a lot of memories, but we do have a railroad because we have a model railroad club in Clarion.

The Clarion Model Railroad Club, which is a hidden jewel.

You would only know it's there if you see this small sign on the alley side of the Masonic building on Main Street, and it's only open for visitors on Wednesday night.

But it does have a big Christmas show every year, and it has a huge Autumn Leaf Festival show every year, And that is a magical place down there.

- All above the Paul Williams excursion.

- I can go down there and when they get all those trains running at once, and those whistles, and I just, my head's gone back and forth, and you're walking around, it's so much fun to see parents bring their little kids in there.

It's wonderland for little kids that like trains.

But the Railroad Club is a wonderful, wonderful place.

It's just fun.

It's different every year, and they keep changing the displays down there.

They work on them, they change them.

and they've got the whole LEF&C set up down there.

Really exciting.

So I'm, I get all giddy.

I just love trains.

(laughs) - The Ali Popper became the railroad in this area because of the amount of coal mines that were opening up.

And it made a boom of the town.

It came here in I believe the date was about 1894 when it reached Houtzdale.

It was also considered the line of the trestles, the huge trestle.

One of the longest trestles on the thing was 2,160 feet long which is the upper end of town here in Westby Shannon.

And that's the one that collapsed back a number of years ago.

Siegmun Lubin was the owner of Lubin Filmmaker Companies.

He made over 5,000 non-talking type films, and he was the one that approached Pittsburgh and Susquehanna officials.

The Lubin film company wanted to make an actual wreck no trick photography, and it was used in numerous movies.

(trains crashing) The film was staged down in the place of Hudson which was about a mile outside of Phillipsburg.

It was an area where they had the dual tracks.

The double tracks were a prime area place for them to practice before the wreck.

The trains actually, the engines practiced the week in advance on separate tracks, and they would compile a distance and a speed as to exactly where it was going to wreck.

And they were so inclined to make it such a big deal in Phillipsburg, that they actually had wooden bleachers made there, and they had a canvas backdrop, so to keep them on purchasing ticket people out, and they collected a lot of money.

There was thousands of people in attendance.

The day of the wreck they actually staged it.

It was a memorial weekend of September of 1914 and whenever that wreck occurred, the trains were full throttled, and the engineers leaped off.

and they had a pusher behind them, and then they ran free.

Whenever it wrecked, it came right to the pinpointed place within feet of where they had estimated it was going to crash.

And of course, all the people was in awe with a tremendous wreck.

Houtzdale was a very unique community in the coal mining era at that time because there was such great coal.

The coal was high, the coal was good, and it was a great community and people flocked here.

It was a great place to live and still considers to be a great place to live.

It was primarily the coal miners that made Houtzdale.

- Thanks for joining us on Keystone Stories.

(soft upbeat music)