Catawissa Railroad Trestle

Mainville, PA

Christian Brobst, miller and merchant of Catawissa, was one of the great railroad visionaries of Pennsylvania.  Brobst proposed a link from the Susquehanna Canal in Catawissa, to the Schuylkill Canal via the Catawissa Creek and the Little Schuylkill River. Their headwaters were only three miles apart, in the heart of coal country.  His map of 1825, got him elected to the legislature in 1828, where upon he was able to get a professional survey of the route done.  Now proposed as a railroad, his route would give direct access to the Schuylkill and the Philadelphia markets.

Brobst persuaded Stephen Girard, Philadelphia capitalist, and Moncure Robinson, engineer, to tour the route with him; they were favorably impressed.

March 31, 1831, the legislature granted a charter to the Little Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad. The road was eventually built along the original line that Brobst surevyed in 1825.  Construction occurred from 1835 to 1838, when it was halted due to the failure of the Bank of America, Philadelphia.  Work was resumed in 1853, under a new name, Catawissa, Williamsport, Erie Railroad.  It was not until 1854, that the first train navigated the line to Milton.  The line became the Catawissa Railroad in 1860. In 1872, the line became part of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad.  This fine, wooden trestle took the train across the narrows at the Mainville Gap.  Remnants of the stone foundations can be seen today on the facing hillsides.

The Catawissa Railroad is also famous in Molly Maguire history.  In 1875, during the long strike, undercover Pinkerton agent, James McParlan, tried to incite striking miners to burn down one of the high wooden trestles that the Catawissa line was famous for.  The striking miners were too smart for the agent provocateur, and no one showed up on the arranged night.

. . . excerpted from Hard Coal Times, Vol. 3, Pennsylvania Anthracite Stories copyright 2004 by Coal Hole Productions, Bloomsburg, PA.  Used with permission.