You may have visited the near by Bell's Gap Rails to Trails. This section of woods is what we locals call the "Storage Yards". Rail cars were stored and repaired in this area at one time. This area is part of the Bellwood Freight Station. Talking to a local man in his 70's, he told me as kids, they could run on top on the rail cars from this location to Root's Crossing, near the Rail to Trail parking area is now. He said there were so many cars just sitting there for years. This cache is located at all that remains as evidence of a once booming industry lost in the woods.
The Bells Gap Railroad was introduced as a narrow gauge spur line in the 1850’s with the intention of connecting the Pennsylvania Railroad Mainline to the people and resources in the northern portions of Pennsylvania. It would move people and goods northwest and would help the coal and lumber industry to the west move their goods to the cities along the Mainline and beyond. The spur line connected to the Mainline in the center of Bellwood, near where the Bellwood-Antis Community Park is now located. Eventually, the spur would be converted to a standard gauge line in 1872, allowing easy exchange of cars and the goods they carried. Though the slope was steep and the ascent of the Allegheny Front was slow and difficult, the line was an important transportation artery for both goods and people until the current Route 865 was improved in the 1930's.
The Bells Gap Railroad was incorporated in 1871 to connect Bells Mills (Bellwood) to Lloydville, near Blandburg, in Cambria County. Within a few years, the line would be built to connect Mountaindale and Glasgow in northern Cambria County and continue northwesterly to Utahville, Coalport, Berwindale, LaJose and McGees Mills in Clearfield County, before reaching Punxsutawney in Jefferson County. Once these locales were connected by rail, cargos of lumber, coal and hemlock bark (for tanneries) could move back and forth from a stop on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main trans state route in Bellwood to the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh rail lines in Punxsutawney and points northward. The Bells Gap railroad did, indeed, fill a gap in order to more easily ship rail freight between northern and southern Pennsylvania.
(((A reader may be confused by the overuse of the Bell family name. Bell Township, in Clearfield County was named for the Greenwood Bell family, who were early settlers there and prominent in the timber and lumber trade. Bellwood, once known as Tuckahoe, was named for the Edward Bell family who settled in northern Blair County. It is unknown and perhaps unlikely that the two families were related.)))
Anyone who leaves Clearfield County to drive state Route 865, down Blandburg Mountain to Rootville, near Bellwood today, has to be careful. The road is steep and full of curves. Winter driving there can be frightening. One can imagine the danger of heavily-laden rail cars making their way down the once nearly paralleling railway line that had nearly seven miles of a 3.0 grade drop of 158 feet to the mile. Engines would likewise have to slowly chug their way up the grade to reach the heights of the Allegheny Front.
Like most rail lines of the time, the builder and original owners, the Bells Gap Railroad Company, kept the incline below four percent. This could only be accomplished by wrapping around some of the stream valleys on the escarpment to lengthen the horizontal distance of the climb. At four percent, the slope of the right-of-way provides for a gradual ascent well suited not just for the railroads of leaving Bellwood Borough, the trail goes westward toward Roots Crossing. The grade was very heavy, the maximum of 158.4 feet to the mile (3.0 %) being continuous for 6 3⁄4 miles (10 km). The sharpest curvature was 28° with a 206 feet (63 m) radius. There were ten of these curves on the maximum grade, two of which were 600 feet (180 m) long with a turning an angle of 168°. The weight of rail was 35 pounds to the yard (17.5 kg/m). The weight of the engines was 15 tons.
The following rolling stock was used in 1875:
2 locomotives
2 passenger cars
78 freight cars
The Bell's Gap Railroad Company was incorporated under the general law of Pennsylvania on 11 May 1871, to construct a railway from Bell’s Mills, on the Pennsylvania Railroad, to Lloyds in Cambria County. The construction began in 1872, and the 8 1⁄2 miles (13.7 km) long line was put in operation in June 1873. The Pennsylvania & North Western Railroad Company became the successor by change of name of the Bell's Gap Railroad Company on 9 May 1874.
Operations for year ending 31 December 1875 were as follows:
Gross earnings: $38,146.42
Operating expenses: $18,504.85 (48.49 %)
Net earnings, $19,641.57
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This cache has part of an archived cache, called Maple. You may remember this area and cache, i left the original maple log book in this cache as part of its history.
*******Please sign the book that is not labeled maple.