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Allegheny Valley Railroad plans to reopen nine miles of track this summer that were damaged during the September flooding.

	Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette The rail line near Bridge Street in Etna is still undermined six months after it was damaged by the Sept. 17 flood from nearby Pine Creek. Trains have not run on the line since the flood, caused by remnants of Hurricane Ivan. Click photo for larger image.

The track is a portion of a line that runs along Route 8 and Pine Creek from Pittsburgh to Richland. It was closed Sept. 17 when the remnants of Hurricane Ivan put it under 8 feet of water, marooned freight cars and washed away the rail bed.

The track is leased by Allegheny Valley from CSX Transportation and had been gaining business. Russell Peterson, president of Allegheny Valley's parent company, Carload Express, said he signed an agreement with a new customer the day of the flooding but hasn't been able to start service.

Allegheny Valley owns 70 miles of track radiating from Pittsburgh and is one of three short-rail lines operated by Carload Express, based in Verona.

Three sections of Allegheny Valley rails were damaged in September. Service on tracks from Pittsburgh to Washington, Pa., and on part of the line damaged by a landslide was restored shortly after the flooding.

At the Richland junction, the rail switches to Buffalo & Pittsburgh Railroad, a subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming Inc. It continues north to Evans City, where the rail line forks.

One fork leads to Canadian National Railways at Buffalo, N.Y. While local traffic is important, Peterson said, the access to Canada makes restoring service vital.

Especially near Etna, the track was too damaged to be repaired immediately. In some spots, the track hangs in the air, the supporting rail bed washed away.

Allegheny Valley awarded contracts to restore the track from Pittsburgh to Richland and to do more repairs on the other two sections of tracks. It submitted them for approval to the insurance company Feb. 15. When repairs begin, the contracts give each contractor 120 days to complete the work, Peterson said.

Ohio Track Inc., of Youngstown, Ohio, received the contract for the Pittsburgh to Richland section.

All three contracts will cost slightly under $3.2 million, Peterson said, noting that the cap on the insurance policy is $2.5 million.

In February, the state released $687,689 in grant money to Allegheny Valley to re-establish service to the Richland junction and for repairs in Allegheny and Washington counties, said Kirk Wilson, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.

Once traffic resumes, Allegheny Valley will restore the previous schedule of one train each way five days per week, Peterson said.

Through traffic to Evans City is contingent upon the Buffalo & Pittsburgh line opening. Craig MacQueen, spokesman for Genesee & Wyoming, said no date for opening that line has been set.

September's floods were the first to damage the rail since Allegheny Valley signed a 20-year lease in 2003, and Peterson said he hopes it will be the last. As part of an Etna flood-relief plan drafted by the state Department of Environmental Protection, the state Department of Transportation, Etna and Allegheny Valley, the bottom of a railroad bridge across Pine Creek will be raised.

Etna Manager Mary Ellen Ramage said less debris will get caught against the railroad bridge and two other bridges that will be raised, reducing the risk of damming the creek.

Betsy Mallison, DEP spokeswoman, said the railroad bridge work is expected to be completed in six to nine months and isn't expected to disrupt traffic for more than a week.

The project also will change the bridge and crossing from two tracks to a single track. One of the tracks is no longer in use.

Peterson said after service resumes, which he hopes will happen in August, he plans to aggressively market the rail line to get new customers.

By Philip A. Stephenson

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It's almost 9 on a typical Sunday morning. A crowd mills around a room in the Sewickley Country Inn enjoying free pastry and coffee, wearing name tags and introducing themselves to one another. It's like so many hotel lobbies filled with conventioneers enjoying complimentary continental breakfasts.

Until the church service begins.

When the Rev. Bill Hausen started Christ Hope Ecumenical Catholic Church last year, he wanted it to be distinctly different from the Roman Catholic services that marked his 67 years as a Catholic.

After all, when he conducted that first service -- a year ago this month -- he effectively excommunicated himself from the Roman Catholic Church, according to the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese.

It was quite a change for someone who spent 47 years of his life in the priesthood. Yet change, Hausen said, is what establishing his church was all about.

"That's why I left the Roman church," he said, "because it's just so hard to change an institution that is built on the Roman Empire. ... I felt that there were so many things that needed to be changed that it got to where I just had no hope of it changing in my lifetime."

Hausen decided to start his own church after the diocese placed him on administrative leave. That action came after he delivered a homily on Easter 2002 in St. James Church in Sewickley in which he advocated the ordination of women and married men and said Catholics should be angry about the sex-abuse scandals in the church. After his transfer, the diocese said Hausen's drinking had become a problem, which Hausen attributed to boredom at the time and which he speaks about publicly.

His new church has about 200 members, he said, and is closing on a lease to rent a North Side church as its new home.

Hausen believes an individual's challenges and experiences give context and meaning to a person's spirituality and that change is necessary for people and for the church, primarily in reflecting the backgrounds and beliefs of its members.

"I was hoping that on that balcony [when Pope Benedict XVI first addressed the crowds in Rome] a man of color would have come out. ... [The church] is still ruled by the Europeans. But a man of color from South America or Africa -- I just would have cried with joy. The paradigm has changed."

In many ways, the service led by Hausen is similar to a Catholic Mass. The rhythm of hymn and homily, genuflection, meditation and absolution figure prominently. Hausen wears the traditional garb of a Catholic priest and distributes Communion. Readings from the Gospel are read by those in attendance.

But there are differences.

The service includes an open comment period in which Hausen walks the aisle and asks those in attendance for their thoughts.

During that period one Sunday, a woman named Sandy raised her hand and said she thought that Catholic children would do far better in an environment focusing on the love in the Bible rather than on the fearful aspects of doctrine.

A man named John agreed.

"We all grew up in fear," he said. He said he started coming to Christ Hope because he felt forced away from the Catholic church after his divorce and remarriage.

Hausen believes that "agapic love" -- from the Greek word agape, meaning either altruistic love or God's love of man -- is the central tenet of Christianity.

Others attending Christ Hope find Hausen himself at least as compelling as his message. Tom Assad, of Baldwin Borough, was a member at St. Joseph Church in Mount Oliver, where Hausen used to serve.

"The strength he was to our community -- his love was unconditional. He knew everyone's names and families," Assad said.

Love is a recurring theme at the church.

"I'm comfortable any place the message is love," said Lynda Bayer, of Ross, who attended her first Christ Hope service in April.

Growing up during the papacy of Pius XII, with one parent Catholic and one Protestant, Bayer said the contention between Catholics and Protestants and what she saw as anti-Jewish sentiments of many in the Catholic Church bothered her until John XXIII became pope.

"I was thrilled because it was to bring people together," she said. But "then that seemed to disintegrate."

Karen Dickman, of North Charleroi, Washington County, was raised Catholic, but she wanted to worship with more emphasis on a spiritual journey than on rigid tradition. Like Bayer, Dickman tried attending different churches, Unitarian and Presbyterian among them, but she missed some aspects of Catholicism.

"When they started this church, it was an opportunity to get plugged back in to the richness of the Catholic heritage and theology without the rigidity ... a church that was intellectually free enough to go out and see God in [different] ways. Maybe this path doesn't work, maybe we go out and find a different one," Dickman said.

Philip A. Stephenson can be reached at pstephenson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1419.