The Pennsylvania Railroad’s Altoona Works was, at its height, widely described as the largest railroad shop complex in the world. For roughly a century, Altoona’s shops built, repaired, and overhauled the railroad’s locomotives and cars, and for most of that time asbestos was part of the work, above all in the insulation, called lagging, that wrapped every steam locomotive boiler. Generations of Blair County families earned their living in those shops, and some of them are paying for it now with asbestos disease.
The shops that built a city
The Pennsylvania Railroad located its shops at Altoona in the 1850s, at the foot of the mountain grade that made the town a natural service point. The complex grew into a sprawl of erecting shops, machine shops, foundries, and car shops, including the Juniata shops, and Altoona grew with it; the city existed, in a real sense, because of the railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad merged into Penn Central in 1968, Conrail took over its operations in 1976, and shop work continues at Juniata today under Norfolk Southern. The exposure era this page describes belongs mostly to the steam and early diesel decades before and just after mid-century.
Where asbestos was used in locomotive work
A steam locomotive boiler ran at temperatures that demanded insulation, and for decades that insulation was asbestos lagging, applied over the boiler and jacketed with sheet metal. Asbestos also appeared in pipe insulation, insulating cements, boards, gaskets, packing, and some friction materials. Building a locomotive meant applying it. Repairing one meant stripping the old, dried-out lagging first, which produced exactly the kind of dust that asbestos disease traces back to.
Diesels replaced steam in the 1950s, but the exposure did not end on a single date. Older equipment still had to be stripped and serviced, steam-heat systems and insulated shop piping remained, and the shop buildings themselves carried decades of accumulated material.
The shop crafts with the heaviest exposure
Boilermakers worked directly on lagged boilers. Machinists, pipefitters, and sheet metal workers handled insulated components and the jacketing over the lagging. Laborers swept the shops and hauled the stripped material away. In the erecting shops, where locomotives were assembled and torn down under one roof, crafts worked side by side in shared air, so exposure was never confined to the person holding the lagging. The railroad-specific occupational picture is covered at railroad workers and asbestos.
FELA: a different law for railroad workers
Railroad workers do not go through workers’ compensation. Their injury and occupational disease claims are governed by the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, FELA, 45 U.S.C. § 51, which lets a railroad worker bring a claim against the railroad itself for negligence. FELA claims generally must be brought within three years (45 U.S.C. § 56). Claims against the manufacturers of asbestos products used in the shops can proceed alongside a FELA claim, and Pennsylvania’s ordinary two-year discovery period under 42 Pa. C.S. § 5524 governs those. The two tracks have different defendants and different clocks, which is a real reason to have the timing reviewed early.
The illness arrives decades after the roundhouse
Asbestos exposure is the primary cause of mesothelioma, and the disease typically develops 20 to 50 years after exposure, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI asbestos fact sheet). Shop workers from the 1950s through the 1970s, and the spouses who washed their work clothes, fall inside that window now. This is general medical background, not medical advice.
What this means for Altoona railroad families
Railroad employment is unusually well documented. Railroad Retirement Board records, craft union records, and the railroad’s own personnel files can establish where a worker was and in what craft, and decades of litigation have documented the materials used in locomotive shops. The Altoona Works is one entry in the larger map of Pennsylvania asbestos exposure sites, and household members exposed to shop dust at home have their own path, described at secondary asbestos exposure.
Families can sharpen a claim with details only they hold: which shop the worker reported to, whether he talked about boiler work or car work, the craft on his union card, and the names of the men he carpooled with. When the worker has already passed away, wrongful death and survival actions under 42 Pa. C.S. §§ 8301-8302 generally allow two years from the date of death.
If your family worked the Altoona shops and mesothelioma or another asbestos disease has been diagnosed, request a free case review and Michael Schafle will sort out the FELA and product claims and their deadlines with you.