WB. Here is a photo by an unidentified photographer that was taken in Altoona, Pennsylvania, c. 1860. Prominent here is the cathedral-like roundhouse near the center of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Altoona Machine Shops complex. With the completion of the Horseshoe Curve in 1854, the PRR's mainline took its current form: instead of paralleling 9th Avenue out of Altoona to Duncansville and interchange with the New Portage Railroad, the tracks curved right at 9th Street and paralleled 10th Avenue past SLOPE Tower and up the Allegheny Mountains. Note the two-story Master Mechanic's Building at the left and the unidentified wood-fired "Ten-Wheeler" parked in front of the roundhouse. [For more photos of this roundhouse, see RRPA album http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/archiveThumbs.aspx?id=142429] (Not Burket Collection.) |