Peter's Model Railroading | The PRR Chartiers Branch
Maps

S-scale Map

I created this track diagram to give me an idea what stop was where, and to offer a sense of how far each one was from the next one. Each horizontal line represents 6,400 feet (1.21 miles), or 100 feet if I were to model it in S-scale. Each orange dot is a stop marked on the PRR C.T. Listed are towns, stops, passing sidings (not indicative of their position relative to the track), and mileposts (blue numbers; not finished). Not included are bridges and the Bells tunnel. Click the image for a larger view.

Period Map

1902 map showing the upper portion of the Chartiers branch with its own Bridgeville & McDonald branch, from the book published in 1909 The Pennsylvania System of railroads in Greater Pittsburgh and Vicinity.

Detailed Satellite Views

The objective with the rest of this page is to have screen captures of the entire branch line based on satellite views that are available of the Chartiers branch as it stands today. The line hasn't changed too much since it was originally built. It was double-tracked for a number of decades for a significant part of its run, but that doesn't affect its overall location. It was disconnected from the PRR mainline sometime after the era I model, but we can still get a glimpse of where that was. It also was cut off at some point in time near Washington, PA, especially the Tylerdale Connecting RR disconnection, but, again, we can still get an idea of where the line used to be. We will start north, where the Chartiers creek empties out into the Ohio River, southwest of Pittsburgh, PA, just south of McKees Rocks, opposite the Brundis Island. The screen captures are from the Bing Maps. Click on the images to see a larger view. The texts in orange are my edifications of the map. You can follow the dashed line in the map to see where the Chartiers branch goes. I tried to capture a bit of the previous screen capture in the next one, so that you can visually tie them together.