The Shenango & Allegheny Railroad
In March of 1865, in order to link the abundent coal fields near Pardoe with the Erie & Pittsburgh Railroad and the Erie Extension Canal, the Bear Creek Railroad was established. Just two years later, the name was changed to reflect it's northwestern terminus, the tiny village of Shenango located just south of Greenville (a place that still plays a major role in local railroad interests). Thus, the Shenango and Allegheny Railroad was born. During the coal boom of the eighteenth century, the Shenango & Allegheny Railroad was indispensible in the delivery of coal to many other areas of western Pennsylvania.
As the coal boom gave way to the fledgling steel industry around the turn of the twentieth century, the Shenango & Allegheny, which had meanwhile been extended southeast toward Bulter County, and even further south into Pittsburgh, as well as northward toward the ports of Erie, underwent another name change. Now the Pittsburgh, Shenango, & Lake Erie Railroad, its extended trackage caught the imagination of steel entrepreneur Andrew Carnegie. And as steel was becoming king, the PS & LE merged with another up and coming railroad, the Butler & Pittsburgh to become the Bessemer & Lake Erie.
A branch of the transportation conglomerate Transtar, the B&LE Railroad is still running today. Certainly one of the most colorful railroads in western Pennsylvania, with orange and black locomotives still traveling over the original Shenango & Allegheny right-of-way from the Shenango yard to Pardoe. In all, the B&LE covers most of western Pennsylvania from Erie to Pittsburgh, with side routes that connect to other railways.
Back to the Forgotten Railroads of Mercer County