Vintage 1944 Pittsburgh Cincinnati Chicago & St. Louis Railroad $1,000 Bond 🚂 Pan Handle Route, Pennsylvania

Why Was It Called the Pan Handle Route? 🚂 A Vintage 1944 Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad $1,000 Bond

Size: 15" x 10"

A big engraved railroad bond from THE PITTSBURGH, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO AND ST. LOUIS RAILROAD COMPANY: a GENERAL MORTGAGE 3 3/8% BOND, SERIES E, for One Thousand Dollars, dated as of the first day of October, 1944, and DUE OCTOBER 1, 1975. A steam locomotive comes at you with a track gang beside the rails and smokestacks behind, in black inside a deep green frame, with P.C.C. & ST.L. printed across the body of the text. The trustee was THE UNION TRUST COMPANY OF PITTSBURGH, it was payable in Philadelphia or the Borough of Manhattan, the American Bank Note Company engraved it, and on the back The Pennsylvania Railroad Company signed on as guarantor. These were cancelled when they were retired, so they carry the cancellation punches.

🚂 The Pan Handle Route

Everybody called it the Pan Handle Route, because its main line ran out of Pittsburgh straight across the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia on its way west. It was stitched together out of little railroads: the Steubenville and Indiana, chartered in Ohio in 1848, the Pittsburgh and Steubenville, chartered in Pennsylvania in 1849, and the Holliday's Cove Rail Road, chartered in Virginia on March 30, 1860, to cross that narrow strip of land. Old-timers along the Ohio River still tell how Virginia, before West Virginia broke away, had no great love for letting a Pennsylvania railroad across its ground, and it took that little Holliday's Cove charter to get the line through.

Those three merged on April 30, 1868, into the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway; a bigger consolidation on September 30, 1890, added Chicago to the name; and on January 1, 1917, it merged with the Vandalia Railroad and others into the Railroad company named on this bond. From Pittsburgh the main line ran through Columbus and Indianapolis to East St. Louis, with lines to Chicago, Logansport and Cincinnati. Rail buffs along the route still talk about the double-tracking of the 1890s and early 1900s, when crews straightened the curves around towns like Logansport.

🏦 The Pennsy and the Mellons

The Pennsylvania Railroad leased the whole system on January 1, 1921, which is why the Pennsy's guarantee is on the back of this bond. The trustee on the front, Union Trust, was the Mellon family's bank: Andrew Mellon and his brother organized it in October 1889, and in 1946 it merged with Mellon National Bank to become Mellon National Bank and Trust Company. The bond was dated in October 1944, with the war on and the railroads hauling steel, coal and troops through exactly this country.

The company itself didn't make it to 1975. On April 2, 1956, the Pennsy merged it into its Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad; the Pennsy merged with the New York Central in 1968 to make Penn Central, and what was left ended up in Conrail.

📅 How old is it?

1944 is printed right on it - dated as of October 1, 1944, due October 1, 1975. I have a number of these, so the one you get will carry its own number and may differ a little from the one in my pictures.

🚂 About these bonds

They're 15 by 10 inches, engraved on heavy bond paper, a great size for framing. It's a natural for a train room, an office, anybody from Pittsburgh, Steubenville, Columbus, Indianapolis or Logansport, or a Pennsylvania Railroad fan. The supply is finite - this railroad hasn't existed since 1956, nobody's issuing its bonds again, and once these last ones are framed, they'll be very difficult to acquire.