Altoona, America

Before America's towns began their love-hate relationship with the automobile, they had a love-hate relationship with the railroad. Just as the automobile fueled the American economy from the 1940s through the '60s, the railroad was the engine of growth from the 1890's through the 1930's, when cars began to dominate both landscape and civic life.

But some places could never give up their affair with railroading. When Amtrak passengers get off the train in a small city nestled in the Allegheny Mountains, they are greeted by a colorful clock in the town square, one that blows steam and whistles on the hour. While those who can't understand the relationship the town has with trains may suspect the clock is malfunctioning, the many who come by train to see what was once the "railroad capital of the world" are reassured by the hourly celebration that the age of railroading is still alive, at least here in this small Pennsylvania city.

Most of them ride in from the west, even if they have only taken the two hour ride from Pittsburgh. They may have come to Pittsburgh by air and taken the shuttle to the train station just to ride along the Appalachian ridge, through the Allegrippus Gorge, and around the Horseshoe Curve, one of America's greatest engineering feats and still a place of natural beauty and man-made wonder.

As you approach Altoona from the west, a voice requests that you look out the right side of the window. The voice tells us the story of how Irish immigrants built the sweeping curve with only picks and shovels. It tells how Andrew Carnegie's best customer, J. Edgar Thompson, staked out the only route which could avoid an impossible 8.5 percent grade and allow the trains to traverse the mountain. It tells an extravagant story about how during World War II Nazis arrived in New York with the goal of blowing up the Curve, and finally it recounts the hundreds of visitors who still come to see the wonder each year and how it has been made a national landmark. It was these mountains and the challenge they presented that gave rise to the city of Altoona, a curious name which could have its origins in Germany or in an Indian word meaning "high land of great worth." But now, according to a popular book on the Pennsylvania Railroad, it's "a magic word denoting the location of the world's largest and most famous railroad complex."

To those who have come to love railroading, and to the city that still loves it, the last definition is good enough.

Today the shops that built ten thousand steam-gushing engines for the Pennsylvania Railroad are a shadow of their former selves. Faced with competition from new forms of transportation, as well as excessive regulation of the railroad industry, in 1968 the Pennsylvania Railroad merged with its rival, the New York Central.

Soon passenger service was given over to the newly created "Amtrak," and the shops employed fewer and fewer people, though they have consistently remained an important part of the economy. The mountains, it is said, gave cause to the placement of the shops at Altoona because of the wear the grade imposes on the engines.

As much as anyone can love their employer, thousands in Altoona came to know and love the railroad. Once the height of railroad days had passed, a new generation that never knew of the smoke, dirt, and hard work carried the nostalgia to new heights--even though when the State of Pennsylvania decided to build a railroad museum, Altoona wasn't chosen. Population centers made it more practical to locate it on the other side of the state.

That didn't faze Altoona. Locals got together and built a museum, dedicated not to the Pennsylvania railroad, nor to the Altoona shops, but to the countless men and women in the city's history who had worked as welders, in test plants, and as mechanics to take care of the trains that allowed the west to be won and the nation to prosper.

Then they went farther. Before the Penn closed its doors, it had donated a K-4S steam engine, number 1361, to the city and placed it in a park at the Horseshoe Curve. By the late 1980s, the engine had deteriorated and was representative only of the city's glorious past. What a wonderful thing it would be, many in the town thought, to take the mighty but aged steam engine away and make it run again.

Anyone who has ever been around steam engines knows that to make one run again is like taking a fossilized dinosaur out of a museum and making it live again. But they went at it anyway.

In a strange historical twist, the K-4S was removed from the park and replaced with a diesel engine of the same type which had put the age of steam into the pages of history.

Brought back to the Altoona shops, the K-4S was restored. While the Horseshoe Curve hadn't seen steam since the 1950s, thousands came to ride and see K-4S 1361 run on several excursions on secondary lines over the Pennsylvania countryside.

But Altoona loved the engine too much and soon discovered that steam couldn't pull the city forward as it once did. A crack in the boiler would mean the engine 1361would again be out-of-commission indefinitely. Today the engine is undergoing restoration at Steamtown USA in Scranton, Pa.

But the emotional one-two punch the new life, and then the second death, of K-4S 1361 hit the city with wasn't enough to make it give up. Since then, Altoona has brought forth a new state-of-the art museum dedicated to railroaders, and is working to establish a toy train museum.

At the end of the day when tourists leave the museum, walk over the bridge and head back to the railroad station, the steam clock blows again. Passengers rounding the Horseshoe Curve--now on their left--can look back and see the tail of the train, and then look over the mountains, see the challenges of the past, and feel comforted in having found a town committed to finding its future there.

Eric Miller

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