[notes 1] Enacted while railroads were in their infancy, the Pennsylvania Canal was designed to create a canal system that was capable of carrying heavy ships carrying bulk goods, connecting the major metropolitan cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and reaching the new growth markets in the developing Northwest Territory over the Ohio River, now known as the Midwestern United States.

[1] The Main Line of Public Works and the Pennsylvania Canal system topped 2,100 feet (640 m) in elevation by erecting the Allegheny Portage Railroad, which used a system of five inclines and five planes on each side of the Eastern Continental Divide at Cresson Pass in Cambria County to actually haul wheeled flat cars, which had halved canal boats placed on them, up and over the Allegheny Front and connect Pittsburgh to the Susquehanna River.

In the fifty years before 1830, the new west was settled and steadily growing as people poured westwards along the various Emigrant Trails into the Midwest to destinations on a million new farms and towns throughout the watershed of the Mississippi Valley towards the lands organized in the Northwest Territory.

Instead of pouring money into building a ditch, permission was sought by the investors to use its 82-mile (132 km) right of way to replace it in the "main line of works" scheme by a railway, a new developing technology, which resulted in the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad (1834).

The plan also included a visionary scheme to build a ramp system which would roll canal boats over the Allegheny Mountains at an elevation over 2,100 feet (640 m) through the broad uneven saddle of Cresson Pass.

[1] By 1834, the Main Line of Public Works, a system of interlocking canals, railways, and inclined planes, was hauling passengers and freight up to 391 miles (629 km) between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

By 1850, steam engine technology had advanced to having the ability to produce locomotives with sufficient power to move freight, including bulk goods such as coal and grain, so railroads had already begun displacing canals as the preferred method of long-distance transportation, as they also offered speed.

In 1852, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) began offering rail service from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and in 1857, it bought the Main Line Canal from the state.