A Tragic Day in Echo: The Southern Cambria Railway Trolley Accident

Posted by on Mar 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on A Tragic Day in Echo: The Southern Cambria Railway Trolley Accident There are few hot days during the summer in Johnstown, Cambria County, but this day, Saturday, August 12, 1916, would be one of them. It was a good time to live in this bustling mill town nestled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. Newspapers were reporting appalling numbers of soldiers killed and wounded in the Battle of the Somme, an ocean away, but the war was not yet a local...
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Trails for the Holidays

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Trails for the Holidays As summer turns to fall and you start to wonder where the time went, rest assured that the Pennsylvania Trails of History still have much to offer before 2014 winds down. Take some time to explore your favorite site – or make a first visit – and see if the pace doesn’t slow just a bit. Between changing exhibits, special events and our regular offerings, it isn’t difficult to find...
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The Big Engines That Could

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Big Engines That Could On a blustery, chilly day in autumn of 1939, a dapper-looking man in his mid-forties climbed onto a railway station platform in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to watch the approach of a train. Amid billowing steam, shrouds of smoke, and rumbling loud enough to unnerve him, he watched an enormous locomotive scream past his vantage point. The sleek, sculpted machine, effortlessly pulling a passenger train,...
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