Derry Railroad Days Information

Mark your cal­en­dars for this year’s Derry Rail­road Days on Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 24, 2011! The event will be held in Down­town Derry, PA and will run from 11am to 7pm. You will be treated to a parade, excel­lent food and craft ven­dors, and great enter­tain­ment the whole fam­ily will enjoy right up until sun­set that day!
Pics from last year.

Derry Rail­road Days
Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 24
Derry, West­more­land County, Penn­syl­va­nia
www.DerryRailroadDays.com

10:30am — Parade

Free Out­door Enter­tain­ment Stage:
11:00am — Derry Area midget Cheer­lead­ers
11:15am — Zumba by Build­ing Bodeez Fit­ness Cen­ter
12:00pm — Latrobe Choral Soci­ety
1:00pm — Moun­tain­view Squares — square danc­ing demon­stra­tion
2:00pm — Unbri­dled — coun­try band
3:00pm — Metro — 80s cover band
4:00pm — Sounds of Sina­tra by Mickey Orange
5:00pm — Girlz in Black Hats — coun­try band

Food ven­dors, crafts booths, mini­ture train rides, PA CHIP ID pro­gram, Caboose Tours/Gift Shop, Cival War Encamp­ment, Juve­nile Junc­tion children’s area, and more!

Free park­ing avail­able at Derry Area School com­plex with free Shut­tle rides pro­vided by Smith Bus and Derry Rail­road Days Com­mit­tee, Inc.
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Derry

Is a bor­ough in West­more­land County in the Com­mon­wealth of Penn­syl­va­nia, 45 miles (72 km) east of Pitts­burgh. The Bor­ough of Derry, con­sist­ing of the town area, should not be con­fused with Derry Town­ship, which is a sep­a­rate munic­i­pal­ity sur­round­ing the bor­ough. In 1900, the pop­u­la­tion num­bered 2,347, and in 1910, 2,954. The pop­u­la­tion was 2,991 at the 2000 census.

His­tory

Derry, orig­i­nally known as Derry Sta­tion, was cre­ated in 1852 to serve the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road. It was named after the vil­lage on PA Route 982 orig­i­nally known as Derry and now known as New Derry (even though it is older than the com­mu­nity being dis­cussed here). The orig­i­nal “Derry” in West­more­land County, Penn­syl­va­nia was named after the city Derry in North­ern Ire­land, because the area’s first non-Indian inhab­i­tants were Scotch-Irish.

Derry was ide­ally suited for major rail­road facil­i­ties because of its ready access to water from McGee Run (essen­tial in the era of steam loco­mo­tives) and because it sits atop a slight sum­mit along the rail­road right-of-way. In Derry’s hey­day in the late 1800s, it had four hotels, mainly to serve rail­road work­ers, as well as a round­house for loco­mo­tive main­te­nance and a mas­sive rail­road yard. Derry was incor­po­rated as a bor­ough on Octo­ber 22, 1881.

Also, Derry served as the ter­mi­nal for Pitts­burgh com­muter trains until 1964, when the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road ceased oper­at­ing its com­muter ser­vice. The annual Rail­road Days Fes­ti­val serves to remind res­i­dents of Derry’s rail­road­ing heritage.

Lit­tle remains of Derry’s rail­road­ing boom, although some might notice an unused rail­road right-of-way that extends from Derry west­ward to PA Route 981, run­ning slightly north but par­al­lel to the currently-used rail­road tracks. This was an ill-fated project known as the Derry-Donohue-Jeannette (DDJ) bypass, in which the Penn­syl­va­nia Rail­road attempted to build a new main line that would avoid the curves and slopes of the exist­ing main line, bypass­ing Latrobe and Greens­burg. Con­struc­tion of the bypass began in the 1920s, includ­ing a large tres­tle near Bradenville, but the new route was never completed.

A tragic heli­copter crash into a crowd assem­bled for a fes­ti­val at St; Joseph’s Catholic Church in Derry killed eight peo­ple and injured 18 oth­ers on Labor Day, 1978. The rail­road cross­ing in down­town Derry has also been the site of other tragic fatal accidents.

Geog­ra­phy

Derry is located at 40°19′59″N 79°18′4″W / 40.33306°N 79.30111°W / 40.33306; –79.30111 (40.333037, –79.301011)[4]. Accord­ing to the United States Cen­sus Bureau, the bor­ough has a total area of 0.8 square miles (2.1 km²), of which, 0.8 square miles (2.1 km²) of it is land and 0.04 square miles (0.1 km²) of it (2.41%) is water.

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