I'm still puzzled as to the layout of the track and concourse was in the old days. The old picture shows a big trainshed right behind the office tower. This picture I took in June 2021 shows that its gone.
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Yet having waited at the platform during a layover of a very late Capitol Limited, it seems that there's still some kind of trainshed at the station. It also looks like only 3 tracks run through the station -- the track to the far left for freight trains, the track with the platform used for through trains, and the track to the right which appears to be a stub track where, presumably, the Pennsylvanian trainset overnights, waiting to load passengers for its morning departure. Surely the station had more tracks back in its heyday. To the far right of the scene shown here, and outside of the picture, there's a busway. Is that where the old tracks and large trainshed were located?
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Kinda embarrassed 'cause I feel that this Yinzer and railfan should be sure of the answers, but I'm not. However...
The magnificent curved trainshed is, indeed, gone. I speculate that it vanished when the office portion of the building was converted to residential use, so that the second- and third-floor apartments facing that direction would have an unobstructed view. (A good view? Depends on whether you like trains! And dirty glass.) It's replaced by a lower, conservatory-type roof.
The limited-access busway, to the right of the picture, is the
Martin Luther King Busway that carries people swiftly between downtown Pittsburgh and East End neighborhoods. And I do mean swiftly...like, from downtown to East Liberty (or "'Sliberty" in Pittsburgh dialect) in 8 minutes versus 30-40 minutes on a poky local. The busway is a former rail right-of-way. But which railroad? The Wikipedia article linked above is ambiguous, implying that it might've been either a commuter (heavy)-rail or a streetcar route. But the Wikipedia article on
historic Wilkinsburg station, a 1916 gem, has more clues. (Dense Wilkinsburg is the last really big outer stop on the busway, though not the terminus.) "Some time after demolition of the nearby East Liberty station in 1963, the Wilkinsburg station was designated to assume its function as the satellite station for selected long-distance express trains serving passengers in the East End of Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Railroad commuter trains at Wilkinsburg were discontinued on Nov. 27, 1964; some of the long-distance trains continued to provide a limited commuter service even into the Amtrak era...Long-distance passenger-train service at Wilkinsburg ended on September 14, 1975 when Amtrak discontinued the stop, citing a total of 128 passengers boarding or alighting in the first six months of 1975, the lowest system-wide, a far cry from the Borough's and railroad's heyday."
In the late 1950s-early 1960s my uncle oversaw some kind of specialty steel plant in Wilkinsburg, before being transferred to NJ and then to (non-union) NC, and my favorite cousin distinctly remembers his dad taking him to work one day. To see a steam engine. "You won't see many of these anymore," Uncle Rudy told him.