A Little Urban Hike

Put a few miles on the boots today. This rail line was huge in its day. The bridge I’m standing on was set up for at least four tracks. Down the creek to the left, there are the remains of a smaller rail bridge for at least one track, which branched off from this line somewhere behind me, and serviced the growing industries along the river. It continued along the river and eventually rejoined this main line via a second branch that entered the Alcoa complex a little further north. This line in the photo is the one that people rode from Pittsburgh to come and see the new town the Burrell Improvement Company was building up north along the Allegheny. Those passengers would first pass through the borough of Parnassus, straight ahead here. They would have likely continued past the Parnassus Station, located directly in the middle of the 300 block of what is now known as Sixth Avenue (you can still see the brick of the old street where it went around the back of the station, currently part of a parking area between two commercial buildings, which themselves were formerly the Keystone Dairy complex, where local engineers and entrepreneurs developed and tested dairy equipment in that rapidly growing industry). Continuing along through the mansions and farmland that was Parnassus, their train would at last arrive in the new town of Kensington (soon to be renamed New Kensington, due to the prior existence of a Kensington in the postal service).