I'm here at the abandoned Brilliant branch somewhere between East Liberty and Larimer in the east end of Pittsburgh.

This is a walk that I've been wanting to do for a while, but I've had an entirely packed summer schedule and I wasn't able to.

Now that we're getting into fall, I finally have some free time.

So I just entered from the southern end of the brilliant Branch down at, I think it's in Point Breeze.

I'll be completely honest.

I don't really know where the the neighborhoods end around here, but, I'm walking northward.

Come with me on the walk.

We'll see if we can find anything interesting along the way.

If not, it's a nice stroll.

You get some nice footage of the Pittsburgh area that you might not have seen before.

I'm north.

I'm here to explore and explain.

This first section is.

It's pretty interesting.

I didn't really know what to expect up here.

I do know that the the rails are abandoned, so I'm in no danger of getting hit by a train.

Unsuspectingly.

But it doesn't really feel abandoned.

I don't know if you can hear any of that noise in the background, but, I am basically at yard level with with houses right now.

Oh, that's, really washed out.

I'm at yard level with houses right now, so I can hear people.

I can hear vehicles, I can hear music and traffic and whatever else.

And, and yet I'm in this, this space that, is totally devoid of of people for the time being.

But we'll get into that later.

Look at the wildlife up here.

No, don't run for me.

I'm friendly.

Oh, hey, look at you.

Oh, it's a fine.

I don't know if you guys can see the, the white spots on the side from here, but that is a young adolescent deer.

Probably the fastest thing that's been up here in a while.

Oh, okay.

So it turns out all that noise that I was hearing, I thought it was just a big block party.

It's actually a football game going on over it.

I think that's the school in Garfield.

If I'm not mistaken.

I actually could be totally wrong about that.

But, we're here at one of the the first features that makes the brilliant branch so interesting.

And unfortunately, you know, the downside of being up on top of it is that you can't see what you can't see it from down below.

And that's what really makes the brilliant branch stand out.

Because certainly, even if you haven't heard of it, you have seen it before.

Right now, we over the U-Haul, store, for lack of a better term, right next to, Washington Run Boulevard.

If I go over here where there used to be other tracks, I think this used to probably be 2 or 3 tracks.

And up here, that's, Larimer Avenue over there.

That's Washington Run Boulevard down below.

And these stone, arch bridges are what really makes the brilliant branch stand out.

You can see a little bit of it over on the side there.

These giant arches.

So I've always been attracted to this, this railroad, just because of how it looks from down below.

And, so I'm finally getting a chance to come up here and explore it.

I'm pretty psyched about that.

And honestly, it meant it's peaceful because I'm the only person up here.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person that's going to be up here today, or at least at the same time that I am.

And yet the city's kind of moving around me, so I just, I like this feeling.

brings up fourth down at eight.

We're coming up on the bridge, spanning Larimer Avenue right now.

And I always think these are interesting.

I've been on a few abandoned railroads before, and I, you know, see them sometimes that, you see pictures or you drive over them or something, and you come across things like this where there used to be multiple tracks.

And for some reason, there is this what looks like the edge of a bridge right in the middle of the line.

I just looked behind me like a train is going to be coming.

But this is strange to me because I know that the brilliant branch was built as one giant infrastructure project, and yet this makes it look like it was built in multiple sections, like they built.

This happened and they built that half.

So if anybody has any idea why railroads tend to do that, maybe it's a structural thing to make sure it's strong enough.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, actually, about how it was built, but let me know in the comments what you think about that, because it's it's like the edge of the bridges over there, the middle of the bridges here.

The other edge is kind of hidden in the reeds over there.

I just find that pretty interesting.

Okay, so we're coming up on a section.

I'm going to be a little quiet here, but where we're going to be at yard height again with these houses, this is actually surprisingly one of the worst sections I've seen so far because previously, I mean, you saw it too.

There's no weeds in the line until it's all right up there and all of a sudden these weeds, they just populate out of nowhere.

But I'm going to put the camera down and walk past these houses just as quickly as I can.

Filming this is going to be a little bit harder than I thought, because apparently I came at the absolute worst time of day for position of sun.

Hitting me right in the face and right in the camera so you can't really see me, but I'm doing my best and finding these shady spots to to record.

So bear with me.

I can tell you the footage is going to be better than what I recorded when I was out in new Jersey.

If you haven't seen that video, by the way, check it out.

That was, you know, like the third time I filmed a video, so I didn't really know what I was doing.

I made an effort to, do the right thing, film the right way this time.

So I hope you can at least appreciate that.

Even if the sun is a little bright, I'm a little further down now.

There are still a lot of weeds, and unfortunately, it looks like kudzu vine to me.

That's really just taken over this whole area, whether this used to be houses in here or what this was exactly, I don't know.

But either way, you really hate to see it when these, these invasive species just come in and completely overtake an area that really has no natural defenses against it.

It's less severe on this side because of the hill, I think, but it's still pretty severe.

And you might be wondering, Mr.

Noles, I haven't heard of the brilliant Branch before.

Why are you so sure that there's not going to be any trains on it anymore?

Why is it there in the first place?

Well, lucky for you, I read Wikipedia before I came out here today, so I'm ready to speak that information right back at you.

The brilliant branch and I actually did allude to it.

Or I didn't allude.

I straight up mentioned it in a video that I made on the Wabash Railroad earlier this year.

And if you haven't seen that vid I mentioned this because it was one of the ways that the Pennsylvania Railroad, really tightened its grip over the city of Pittsburgh.

The Brilliant Branch was built in 1903, 1904.

It opened in October of 1904.

It was supposed to open earlier, but, there had been a lot of landslides in the area that prevented it.

And, this this seems like the spot that landslides would occur, doesn't it?

And basically the reason was because Pittsburgh is a chokepoint, as you know, if you've ever driven through Pittsburgh and the railroad would bring everything in from the east and from the west, and they'd all have to go through, downtown, the Golden Triangle, really tight area.

They'd have to make sharp turns.

And so finally, the Pennsylvania Railroad spent however many millions it was, I don't know, to build this bypass that takes trains up from East Liberty.

This is especially useful for, eastbound traveling trains or, I'm sorry, westbound traveling train starting in the east to leave from East Liberty, go north along Washington Run Boulevard, which I'm sure you can hear behind me.

And across the brilliant bridge over by Aspinwall, turn onto the, the north shore of the Allegheny River and continue down to the Fort Wayne station in Old Allegheny City.

And this was such a huge relief for congestion in the city.

They made their money back many, many times over.

This was a hugely successful railroad bypass, and it continued to operate until, I think 1976, when Penn Central Corporation shut down.

She Penn Central was the merger of the, New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968.

It operated for eight years, had the largest corporate bankruptcy of any company, and then had to get rid of a bunch of these assets that they purchased just a few years before.

And, so 1976, along with hundreds of miles of railroad across Pennsylvania, this was abandoned and lay dormant for 20 years.

There's another deer running up there.

And, then in 1995, sometime in the mid 90s, the, Allegheny Valley Railroad just purchased this because they wanted to start doing, local traffic operations.

And then in 2003, they actually switched their, their trains to be running on the the old an O line that goes through Junction Hollow down by the University of Pittsburgh and CMU.

So they didn't really have to use this line for anything except, highly local traffic.

And then in 2019, 2017, sometime in that time frame, their last customer shut down.

So they didn't have any use at all for this line anymore.

And it became abandoned once again.

So for going on 5 or 6 years now, this line has been totally devoid of traffic as is.

Yeah, you can probably tell by looking at the state of things.

And finally then the County of Allegheny bought this line, just, I think earlier this year, and they have a few plans for it that I will tell you about in a little bit.

Right now, I'm going to get some water.

I'm, check this out, film it on my phone.

It's not all that great.

I am standing underneath this bridge.

I don't know exactly what road this is or even what neighborhood I'm in right now, but it's very peaceful, I will tell you that.

So if you come out and check out this brilliant branch line, I hope that you will also find peace like I have.

So I walked up to this little, retaining wall underneath this bridge because, you know, it was there.

And this is an old telegraph pole.

You'll find these along a lot of old railroad lines.

And it's just cool that this one is the only one that seems to have remained.

I wonder if that has to do with it being underneath the bridge.

But there are some wires, hanging off of that.

I don't know how well you can see it.

Yeah, there you can, some old telegraph wires.

So that is pretty cool.

And over here, I am not the only person to come out here.

Got a beer bottle.

We got a suitcase, got a sleeping mat, and, and obviously we have, you know, quote unquote art and, so this is a popular spot, I guess.

And it is a nice one.

I mean, the shade is nice, especially it's not super hot today, but it's just really bright.

And, it's a nice spot.

So this railroad just continues to get more covered with weeds the further north I go.

And as you can see, I mean, the kudzu vine is just taken over these trees as well.

But along here it's almost hard to see the the rails at this point.

And I come around this bend and there's this very imposing cell tower just kind of looming over everything.

It makes it feel a little less private in here.

But otherwise, I mean, I'm I'm completely away now from from civilization.

You can still hear the cars down below at that bridge behind me, but we're really out here.

Here's the second telegraph pole, this one without any wires and in much worse shape than that one underneath the bridge.

I'm now getting into the straight away section, with Washington Road and Boulevard still down the hill on my left and the hill up to the old VA hospital in that area on my right.

This goes straight for as far as I can see now.

And this is is interesting.

This is the second or third sand pile that I've seen along here.

And they they seem to be at regular intervals.

So I have no idea what that's about.

That sand didn't feel particularly hard or soft, so I don't know how old that has.

Know how long that's been there?

Do you have any ideas on why it might be piles of sand at regularly spaced intervals on an old railroad line?

In the comments down below.

I don't know what I'm looking at.

I've been walking on that straight section for a while now.

There's this big power line crossing.

It's these kind of things.

You know, I've driven on Washington Run Boulevard a bunch of times, which is just down the hill.

I've never even noticed those power lines.

So when you actually take a minute to just walk in area and you see you're kind of forced to look at your surroundings, you notice a lot more than you do when you're you're driving.

So this is why I like taking these walks, as well as seeing an area that, you know, I never be able to see this railroad if it wasn't for my own two feet right now.

So if you're looking for a reason to go out there and adventure, see, and power lines, that's at the top of your list.

Now we're up over another road.

There's a cemetery way up there.

I think this is still Lincoln, Lemington, Delmar, that area.

But we are way up above this road, whichever road that may be.

And it's kind of crazy that unless it was for that.

Well, for the view, of course.

But if you look at this side, you know, I can't even tell.

I'm on a bridge right now.

That's just pretty amazing.

I just scared something really big out of the brush over here besides me.

And it ran into the woods that way.

I wasn't filming that part of it because I'm not filming this entire thing.

But it was so loud, it almost gave me a heart attack, thinking what was about to come out of the woods towards me.

But you know, they're more scared of you than you are of them type of thing.

And it it's interesting because it makes this whole dichotomy of this, this railroad line more evident because on one hand you've got this is huge deep woods that go way back and you've got whatever enormous animal that was honestly, probably just a deer living in there.

And that same time you've got this old little switching tower or another switching tower, a light tower and a little electric box next to it right here.

So I mean, marks of, of human civilization, in the midst of, of this whole emptiness, it's just interesting.

I'm really enjoying my walk.

I think we're almost to the brilliant Branch Bridge.

Or I guess it's just the brilliant bridge over by Aspinwall.

I'm excited to show you that part.

I'm excited to see it for myself as well.

So talk to you over there.

I decided though first to walk over this way, just to see this whole electric panel up close and this cool little tower.

I wish that ladder came down further.

I'd like to go up there, even though I'm sure I couldn't really see much more than I can see from right here.

But look at this.

This is an old and older electric box.

I assume that this one over here, this newer one, replaced this.

You know, I don't know exactly how all this stuff works for signals and and switches and whatnot, but in this, that's all.

It's not 1904 old, but that's old.

This is why I absolutely love abandoned places.

And I think I misspoke just back then when I said I'm in the middle of nothing.

Clearly, I'm in the middle of a city.

I know that.

And yet it's so cool that that these things, that are so industrial, that are so manmade, are just out here and nobody bothered to clean them up or do anything about them.

They're here and they're going to be here assuming, you know, that nobody they're just going to be out here forever is my point.

So I find that pretty interesting when it comes to abandoned places, that there once meant something and now they mean nothing.

This is an unexpected find.

I thought I spied a stop sign up there and I thought, no, that can't be right.

And yet it is right because there's this road and this gate over to the side.

I don't know.

Jeez, this these are not fun to walk through.

Whatever these are, I'll tell you that much.

Police firing range.

And then this road just, disappears into the trash.

But I'm not.

I don't really want to.

I'm not going to trespass on there.

I don't really want to walk on the road either, but it's a lot easier.

But I didn't know this existed.

The police firing range out here by Highland Park, right next to the old railroad line.

So this is a much easier walk than I have been having through the weeds.

And I am curious to see what happens at the end of the road there where that road goes after the stop sign.

I'll pick back up when I get down there.

As usual, I've gotten sidetracked by something along the way.

There is this giant concrete platforms building over here on the, the west side of the railroad.

There's the steps going up, and I don't feel I feel safe enough stepping up here, but but look at this.

There's the rebar sticking out.

There's a couple of holes in the roof.

So this is pretty interesting.

I, I'm guessing maybe a switching tower I've got.

Oh, nice.

I've got bruises in my leg.

That's fun.

Oh, wow.

That is kind of creepy.

You never know what you're going to find out here.

Here's a mattress.

There is, these look like vines, but it's just the rebar coming out.

I don't really want to go back in there.

That's, I'm seeing all I can see.

I think I'm going to guess that this is the bottom of a switching tower.

But if you know any different, make sure to tell me so it looks like this road coming up here off of Washington Boulevard is the road that comes up here and continues to the police firing range.

Because it looks like it just dog ears after crossing the railroad tracks here, I guess that's the best way to do it.

So it's a private crossing.

You know, I asked my friend to come out here with me today, and he wasn't able to.

Or I guess it was a case of more.

He didn't want to, but he is missing out.

This is a pretty cool place.

Private crossing.

Cross that pass at own risk.

What does that mean?

Private crossings.

I mean, it's a private railroad.

I did not expect to find a little building and a road all the way out here.

This is cool.

We're almost to the bridge once again.

You can see the tracks start to split down there to the right.

Takes you towards, Verona and Oakmont.

And that way.

And if you go straight, that would take you across the bridge to Aspinwall.

So we're going to go as far as we can.

I don't know how I feel about crossing that bridge.

I guess we'll literally cross that bridge when we get to it.

But I will update you when I get down there.

We're up here at the the Y in the track now, I've seen one of these before out in Beaver County.

Oh, this one is like, here's what you can do.

This is just a handle pull.

So if I were to pull it that way, that would change the track from being switched.

Because right now let's see if so lines to that.

Which way is that aligned?

Well, either way it would switch to allow the other other way to pass.

But it is unfortunately locked, which I find kind of odd for a railroad that is not in use and hasn't been for a few years.

But for some reason they felt it was important to stop people from using that because they're the fun police.

I wanted to point this out before we get to the bridge, because I haven't seen something like this before.

So you've got the, oh, here we go.

The normal setup with the tie plate on the tie and bolted in twice.

That seems pretty normal.

Have the rail sitting on top.

Then you've got this, like, pigtail looking thing.

I guess that's for extra tension, maybe.

Or for extra support.

I don't know, I haven't seen that before, but every single tie plate on this section of track be getting it that way back there.

How's this?

Okay, I finally made it to the bridge.

I think I read that the rail is 3.6 miles long, but I didn't really feel like 3.6 miles of walking.

So I don't know if it's actually that long, but I just crossed over.

Route eight will get you River Boulevard, and now I'm here at the, the brilliant pumping station down there.

That's where your water comes from.

Most likely, if you live in Pittsburgh or, you know, it might be that building across the river.

I might have just misspoken.

So we're up on the bridge here.

I feel like I could walk across this and I might a little bit, but honestly, I just really don't feel like taking the chance of falling into the Allegheny River today.

And I know you might be disappointed thinking that that's where this whole video is leading to, but I never promised that.

Regardless, this is a really impressive bridge, especially when you're down in the river or if you're on the, Sharpsburg Bridge or, I'm sorry, the Highland Park Bridge.

And you can see this thing in all its glory.

And I think this is a perfect opportunity to tell you about the plans that, may be for this railroad in the future.

So I'm going to spin the camera around here and and tell you about that.

Okay.

So as I said, this railroad has been abandoned for 5 or 6 years now.

And just earlier this year, it was sold to the county from the Allegheny Valley Railroad for like $4.5 million, something like that.

And what Rich Fitzgerald's administration wanted to do here was the previous, county, I that his title just slipped my mind.

The county executive.

Anyway, he wanted to build a, rails to trails across here, or possibly a rail, with trail, meaning that one of these would be taken up and the other one would be, turned over to be a biking and pedestrian trail.

And since there's only one line here, I have to imagine that that would remain if that plan were to go through.

And as far as I'm aware, Sara Innamorato and her executive team have, picked up the mantle and want to do the same idea.

And then there's this guy named Henry Posner the third, who, you know, if you have the third in your name, you're probably pretty well off.

And this guy is he's made a lot of his money in the railroad industry.

He knows his stuff.

And he has this idea.

He says, well, we could do the rail with trail, or we could just leave the rails in place and do a battery powered electric passenger train that would travel between Aspinwall and East Liberty.

And we really help people out in the Allegheny River Valley who commute into the city for work.

Now, personally, I really like that idea.

I think that, I mean, I like rails to trails.

I like walking on them, I like biking on them.

But when you get rid of that rail infrastructure entirely, it really makes it a lot harder to put that rail infrastructure back into place at a time when finally, we're starting to invest in public infrastructure and public transit across this country, I think it's important to at least leave the lines here in some state.

If nothing else, to remind people that there are other options besides just driving or or taking your bike and taking your bike.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But I think a train is a really good idea.

I think you could connect that to a much wider system of of commuter rails in the city.

Maybe that's a little idealist of me.

Maybe, you know, not everybody agrees with that.

That's okay.

That's just something I think I'd like to see here.

And, I actually wrote to Sara Innamorato and her team to at least consider this idea.

As much as the other ideas are being considered, who knows?

You know what they think about that.

But, if you feel the same, you know, you can do the same.

Anyway, that's the history and the future of the brilliant branch on the Allegheny Valley Railroad.

I'm going to start walking back now.

I didn't capture the beginning of the walk when I was kind of getting on.

And by the, the Y area down in East Liberty.

So I'll probably get a little bit of that when I get back down there just to kind of show you how this thing, integrates itself into the existing system.

I really hope that you enjoyed this walk so far.

And, I'm sure I'll find a few other things along the way to show you.

This is like the sixth deer I've seen today.

It feels like I'm out in the middle of the national forest or something.

I mean, they're just perfect park, for that matter.

But this.

She's just standing there.

And how close I can get that?

It's okay.

I'm not going to hurt you.

I just want to film you, you are so pretty.

She keeps.

She keeps jerking me like she's going to move away.

I don't know if you see her head move like that.

It's hilarious.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Youre gonna run?

Oh, yeah.

One half step is all it took.

So I'm back more or less where I started at where the track splits.

And if you continue on the track that I'm on here and you take it out this way, it'll take you towards Bakery Square.

If you go on that track over there and go that way, it'll take you towards, Homewood and, east out of the city.

And I think that this section is used.

I could be wrong if it's this far up, but the Amtrak trains turn around when they, are either going into or coming out of Pittsburgh.

I don't remember which direction it is, but yep, that's the the end of the line going south.

So I'm going to walk up this way because I came in on that line.

I'm going to walk up this way a little bit, and I'll probably end up just crossing over, but I kind of want to see how far I can go.

And if I pan over that way, I mean, you really can't tell through the trees, but that's, East Liberty, that direction over that way.

In fact, you can just see the steeple of the, Presbyterian Church.

Well, it doesn't show up in here, but I can see it.

And anyway, I'm going to continue walking up this way, and I'll let you know what I find.

This isn't terribly exciting, but this is where the the tracks come together.

So there's the, the bus way elevated up over this, and then that's going towards Homewood.

This is the end of the brilliant branch looking down towards the old main line of Pennsylvania Railroad.

Not very interesting, but it is how this line begins and or ends based on how you're walking it.

So I think I'm going to end the video here.

I hope that you found something interesting out of this.

I know I had a good time walking.

I hope that you picked on, you picked up on the.

Interesting, I keep saying interesting.

The nice, the the great, the fantastic walk that this was.

And, if you're encouraged to come out here and go on an adventure, go for it.

Right?

Because it's not going to be here forever.

This likely will be a rails to trails in the coming years, whether that's in addition to something else or not, I don't know, but I hope you had a good time watching this video.

I know I had a good time making it and I will see you in the next one.