The Pittsburgh Southern Railway was a railroad in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. It was formed in March 1879 by the merger of the

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structu ...

Pittsburgh Southern Railroad (which was the

''Pittsburgh, Castle Shannon and Washington Railroad''A Lost Road
/ref> from July 1877 to April 1878), Pittsburgh Railroad, and Washington Railroad. It ran from

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

to Castle Shannon, where it connected to the

Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Railroad The Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Railroad was a narrow-gauge railroad in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Originally built in 1871, it may have been the first American common-carrier narrow-gauge railroad. It purchased a rail line called the Co ...

. An attempt to use the

Little Saw Mill Run Railroad The Little Saw Mill Run Railroad was a coal railroad in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. It was incorporated July 23, 1850, and opened in April 1853. Originally, it was owned by the Harmony Society, and ran from Temperanceville, Pennsylvania on t ...

as a substitute connection to Pittsburgh using

dual gauge In railway engineering, "gauge" is the transverse distance between the inner surfaces of the heads of two rails, which for the vast majority of railway lines is the number of rails in place. However, it is sometimes necessary for track to c ...

track led to the Castle Shannon Railroad War of 1878. It was converted to in 1883, purchased by the

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States, with its first section opening in 1830. Merchants from Baltimore, which had benefited to some extent from the construction of ...

on November 20, 1884, and reorganized as the Baltimore & Ohio Short Line Railroad.

References

History of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Transportation in Washington County, Pennsylvania Defunct Pennsylvania railroads Transportation in Pittsburgh Narrow gauge railroads in Pennsylvania 3 ft gauge railways in the United States Predecessors of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Railway companies established in 1879 Railway companies disestablished in 1884 Defunct West Virginia railroads American companies disestablished in 1884 American companies established in 1879 {{US-rail-transport-stub