Rather than take a humdrum flight into Pittsburgh, I travelled by rail from Philadelphia in 2017 along what’s now called the Keystone Corridor.  It’s a much more meaningful experience.

The historic main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad from Philadelphia crosses the forbidding Allegheny Mountains, passing through formerly prosperous steel towns that, when they fell on hard times, were identified as part of the Rust Belt.

Altoona, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s railway town, is still an important centre bristling with the works and sidings of the PRR’s successor, the freight operator Norfolk & Southern, and also the location of the Railroaders’ Memorial Museum.

Five miles west of Altoona lies the Horseshoe Curve, opened in 1854, a 220° curve which is so spectacular it’s a tourist attraction.  The purpose-built observation park opened in 1879.  On the train, the attendant alerts passengers with a PA announcement. 

The Horseshoe Curve was part of a scheme to replace the Allegheny Portage Railroad, opened in 1834 to transport barges on the Pennsylvania Canal over the watershed.  Unlike British canal inclines, such as Anderton and Foxton, the vessels were lifted out of the water and conveyed by rail on flat cars:  Old Portage Railroad by George W. Storm – Allegheny Portage Railroad – Wikipedia.  Charles Dickens described riding the Portage Railroad in American Notes for General Circulation (1842):  Conquering the Alleghenies | Pennsylvania Center for the Book (psu.edu). 

Johnstown has a powerful history – home of the Cambria Steel Company (founded 1852), the site of the notorious Johnstown Flood of 1889, a dam-failure which killed well over two thousand people, and the location of the Johnstown Inclined Plane of 1891, a funicular like Saltburn’s but big enough to carry a car.

Further on there are stops at Latrobe, birthplace of the banana split according to Wikipedia, and Greensburg, a coal town that seems to have reinvented itself more successfully than most, partly perhaps because it has a university campus.

Arrival in Pittsburgh is less than dignified:  the two daily arrivals and two corresponding departures run into an annex beside Daniel H Burman’s magnificent Penn Station (1898-1902) which is now an apartment block.

However, a five-minute taxi transfer took me to the Omni William Penn Hotel, where I was speedily installed in a spacious and comfortable room with a vast bed, a generous bathroom and a walk-in closet (wardrobe) which could itself almost have taken a single bed. 

The William Penn is an illustrious, civilised landmark in Pittsburgh, opened in 1916 by a consortium that included the much-disliked Henry Clay Frick, and host to a succession of US Presidents from Hoover onwards:  https://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/pittsburgh-william-penn. 

Barack Obama, apparently, was the first president to be barred from the top-floor presidential suite because his security people insist on occupying the floors above and below him. 

His successor appears never to have darkened the doorstep.  Perhaps he owns or leases some place else.