But the Columbia and Philadelphia route was destined to more important things than merely affording an all-rail route to Baltimore. At Columbia it connected with the important Pennsylvania State system of internal canals and railroads, affording a direct line of communication with Pittsburgh and the headwaters of the Ohio River.
This was accomplished by use of a canal through to Hollidaysburgh upon the east slope of the Alleghanies, and the well-famed Alleghany Portage Railroad over the summit of those mountains to Johnstown, where another canal reached down into Pittsburgh and enjoyed unexampled prosperity from 1834 to 1854. The Alleghany Portage railroad was a solidly constructed affair and its rails after the fashion of almost all railroads of that day were laid upon stone sleepers, rows of which may still be seen where the long-since abandoned railroad found its path across the mountains. The Portage Railroad was operated by the most elaborate system of inclined planes ever put to service within the United States; one has only to turn to the pages of Dickens's "American Notes" to read:
"We left Harrisburg on Friday. On Sunday morning we arrived at the foot of the mountain, which is crossed by railroad. There are ten inclined planes, five ascending and five descending; the carriages are dragged up the former and slowly let down the latter by means of stationary engines, the comparatively level spaces between being traversed sometimes by horse and sometimes by engine power, as the case demands.... The journey is very carefully made, however, only two carriages travelling together; and while proper precaution is taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers."
The Portage Railroad was the first to surmount the Alleghanies although in course of time its elaborate system of planes disappeared, as they disappeared elsewhere, under the development of the locomotive.
An interesting feature of the operation of the eastern end of this route of communication across the Keystone State, which was afterwards to develop into the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad, was the communal nature of the enterprise. The railroad was regarded as a highway. Any person was supposedly free to use its rails for the hauling of his produce in his own cars. The theory of the Columbia & Philadelphia Railroad was simply that of an improved turnpike. For ten years after the opening of the line in 1834, the horse-teams of private freight haulers alternated upon the tracks between steam locomotives hauling trains. A team of worn-out horses hauling a four-wheeled car, loaded with farm produce could, and frequently did keep a passenger train hauled by a steam locomotive fretting along for hours behind it. In the end the use of horses was abolished on the Philadelphia & Columbia--the name of the road had been reversed--and in 1857 the road was sold by the State to the newly organized Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The Pennsylvania had already built a through rail route from Columbia over the Alleghanies, and, by the aid of the wonderful Horse Shoe Curve and the Gallitzin Tunnel, through to Pittsburgh; it had created its shop-town of Altoona and abandoned for all time the Alleghany Portage Railroad. But before the consolidation came to pass, two companies had been organized to control freight-carrying upon the tracks of the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad. One of these was the People's line, the other the Union line; and in them was the germ of the private car lines, which in recent years have become so vexed a problem to the Interstate Commerce Commission.