Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad
former railway line in the United States
The Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, commonly called the Pan Handle Route (Panhandle Route in later days), was a railroad that was part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system. Its common name came from its main line, which began at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, crossed the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, and continued west to Bradford, Ohio, where it split into a northern line to Chicago and a southern one through Indianapolis, Indiana, to East St. Louis, Illinois.
History
Pittsburgh to Columbus (1848–1869)
The Steubenville and Indiana Railroad was chartered February 24, 1848, in Ohio to build west from the Ohio River at Steubenville to the Indiana state line between Willshire and Fort Recovery, via Mount Vernon. On March 12, 1849, it was authorized to build a bridge at Steubenville and a branch to Columbus.
The line began construction in late October 1851. Work occurred along the entire length of the line at the same time.
The first section opened December 22, 1853, from Steubenville west to Unionport. On February 2, 1854, an extension from Unionport west to Cadiz Junction opened; the branch to Cadiz opened June 12.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad” as former railway line in the United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as former railway line in the United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3389422. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1848, 1869, 1849 and 1851.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.