Demolition work is underway at historic Pittsburgh locomotive works.
For more than 50 years, in the dozen or so red brick buildings at the Pittsburgh Locomotive Works on the North Side, men made steam engines for railway companies all across America and beyond.
In the carpenter and pattern shop, iron and brass foundries, machine shop, engine room, smith shop, paint shop, flask shop, cupola house, boiler shop and other smaller buildings, men worked to design and produce locomotive engines — some 2,400 of them by the time the company merged with seven other plants to form American Locomotive Co. in 1901.
Now demolition has begun on the former locomotive works buildings, long owned by Duquesne Light, and this year all of them will come down. The utility, which had used them for storage and office space, moved its employees out last summer.
“It is in a very poor state of disrepair,” said company spokesman Joseph Vallarian. “It’s becoming dangerous” for employees.
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