It has been three years since there was a holiday edition of the longest running road enthusiast meets in southwestern Pennsylvania.\u00a0 That and the streak of Saturday-only meets came to an end today with the Winter 2010 SWPA Meet.\u00a0 I’d like to thank all who traveled both near and far to attend.\u00a0 They did so even with the snow falling in the area and the winter storm churning up the Eastern Seaboard.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The meet began at 12 PM at the Route 40 Classic Diner<\/a> on what is now Business US 40<\/a> in Brownsville.\u00a0 Food was good as well as the conversations.\u00a0 My Maryland counterpart, Mike Pruett, brought a copy of an old trails guide book.\u00a0 It is a precursor to the modern road atlas, from the late 1920s, for everyone to peruse.\u00a0 I brought some recent Pennsylvania official maps from 2006 to 2010.\u00a0 Just in case anyone needed to fill gaps in their collections.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Since these holiday meets are on a smaller scale than the ones during warmer months, the tour was not too extensive.\u00a0 After lunch, we headed down Business US 40 into Brownsville for a taste of the old National Road and to check out the work on connecting PA Turnpike 43<\/a> to the PA 88<\/a> expressway in West Brownsville.\u00a0 The new alignment, which leaves PA 88, is quite evident as it swings east to cross the Monongahela River.\u00a0 The former intersection of old and new PA 88 has been reconfigured to be a continual route through the future interchange.\u00a0 This leaves up for debate whether PA 88 will be moved back to its former route into West Brownsville, or join with PA Turnpike 43 to US 40.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The cloverleaf at PA Turnpike 43 and US 40 is temporarily a partial one.\u00a0 This is due to ongoing construction to upgrade the segment of PA 88 that will be incorporated into the expressway.\u00a0 The northbound lanes are being rebuilt.\u00a0 What is interesting is that the overhead gantry that was before the cloverleaf has been replaced with a blue, mono-tube gantry that is seemingly becoming standard on the roadway.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n