In September, a post in the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Interest Group on Facebook featured a scan of a 1928 publication showing small photos of various P&LE stations, including one labeled “McKeesport”. It was hard to see any detail, but it certainly wasn’t the B&O station I was familiar with. That’s when it struck me: I had been so focused on B&O passenger trains serving the B&O station in McKeesport that I gave very little thought to the possibility of the P&LE having their own station in McKeesport. I just assumed the P&LE and B&O both used the B&O station I saw in so many photos. Considering the age of the photo, I wondered if the station was still in use in 1949. Google searches kept showing me the B&O station while trying to find a P&LE station.
Today, it occurred to me to search that Facebook group for the word McKeesport, which turned up a better photo of the P&LE station, from a postcard postmarked in 1910. Mixed among comments of people mis-identifying its location as that of the B&O station was one guy saying it was located at the southwest corner of 4th Avenue & Walnut Street (site of present-day JFK Memorial Park). He also mentioned that the tracks in the foreground led to the freight depot. I had been wondering where that was, too.
Another photo in the group (below) seemed to corroborate the location of the freight depot, but the passenger station was just outside the frame.
Having run out of McKeesport photos in that group, I browsed through my own collection of McKeesport photos again, and realized that the P&LE McKeesport passenger station had been staring me in the face for three years, in a photo I found on tubecityonline.com.
Previously, I couldn’t identify anything in the photo, and just assumed it was a part of town I’m not modeling. I was wrong. The photo was taken from above the Tube Works, looking south, almost straight down Walnut Street, with the P&LE passenger station in the middle of the photo. It was easy to spot once I knew what the station looked like, and suddenly I was able to identify other buildings in the photo.
Why there are so few photos of P&LE’s McKeesport passenger station on the internet remains a mystery. Even the P&LE company records on Historic Pittsburgh have none. I hope to find a photo that better shows the tracks in front of the station. In the 1950 photo above, it looks like the station might be right on the main line, without a passing track for the platform.