12. The portage fueled the engines of its demise
By 1845 the Allegheny Portage Railroad was known throughout the United States and Europe as an engineering and technological marvel. Economically speaking, it presented limited success. Pittsburgh and other towns along the Main Line Canal, as well as towns connected by feeder canals, grew exponentially. Philadelphia never regained the lead as America’s international trading capital, but its ports and industries grew steadily. Engineers traveled to Hollidaysburg and Johnstown to examine the portage and its infrastructure, particularly its growing dependence on locomotives to move passengers and freight. Central Pennsylvania became a technology center for steam locomotives.
The Allegheny Portage became a testbed for new technologies which quickly came into play in other industries. Stationary engines, installed at the surface, began using wire ropes to haul ore trams along mine shafts, extracting coal, iron ore, and precious metals. More powerful locomotives, with improved drive systems, successfully encountered the previously discouraging grades of the eastern mountains. By the late 1840s, the railroads could move larger amounts of freight at speeds which exceeded those of the canals, which were restricted by the use of animal power to tow boats along the waterways. In 1847 the Pennsylvania Railroad was chartered with building a railroad connecting Pittsburgh to Harrisburg, bypassing the Allegheny Portage Railroad.