Passenger Trains > Pittsburgh light rail detour through Allentown

The Progressive Railroading Magazine website of January 9 states that due to problems in Pittsburgh's Washington Transit Tunnel, northbound light rail vehicles will, until further notice, be using the normally dormant detour track via Allentown, which goes over the hill the tunnel avoids.  The detour route has lots of traditional streetcar-type street running and grades as steep as 9%.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/20 08:47 by LTCerny.

More information:  The normally dormant detour route being used for the light rail vehicles goes east from South Hills Junction via Warrington Ave, which is quite narrow in places and urban in nature, then turns left onto Arlington Avenue, which descends towards downtown Pittsburgh on grades of up to 9% via many curves along the forested south bluffs of the Monongahela River. 

Well the title had me thinking that Pittsburgh light rail trains were going to detour through Allentown, PA, which would make for quite a detour!

TJY

He did mean Pennsylvania but Allegheny County not the one in Lehigh County.

icancmp193 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well the title had me thinking that Pittsburgh
> light rail trains were going to detour through
> Allentown, PA, which would make for quite a
> detour!
>
> TJY

Lol. To clarify, Allentown is also a neighborhood in Pittsburgh.

Posted from iPhone

Any idea how long this could last?  I’d like to get some pix. 

This is the "Tunnel Bypass" route.  When I visited Pittsburgh in Sept. 1971. one of my goals was to ride streetcar lines that were up for abandonment.  At the time the 49 Beltzhover line was on the "chopping block", and I think it was the only line that used the cliff-side line on a regular basis.  I was the only passenger, and when the motorman found that I had come from California, he stopped the car about halfway up the hill and said, "You can get some good photos here.  I'll wait for you."

---