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The Five Star Trail is a seven mile rail-with-trail in Westmoreland County. It leaves Lynch Field in Greensburg through a railroad tunnel, runs south beside the active Southwest Pennsylvania Railroad through South Greensburg, Southwest Greensburg, and Hempfield Township, and reaches Depot Street in Youngwood. From Youngwood a paved branch turns east through a wetland, crosses the Westmoreland County Community College campus, and ends near Armbrust at Sewickley Creek. The corridor is rail-grade flat, mostly packed crushed limestone with paved stretches, and about a mile follows a quiet road. Trains still pass a few times a day on the unfenced line, so portions of the trail feel like a working railroad corridor rather than a park path.
Five Star Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Five Star Trail has about 112 to 152 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, e-biking, birding, biking, running, and walking, with April, May, and October the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Five Star Trail!
In half of past years, color along the Five Star Trail peaks October 22 to November 1, typically around October 26. The trail has 34% deciduous coverage, with the majority being black cherry, red maple, sugar maple, white ash, and northern red oak.
One seventh of the nation's coal and coke once rolled through Youngwood, and the line that carried it still runs beside this trail. The corridor belonged to the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose Southwest Branch left the main line at Greensburg and ran south through Youngwood toward the Connellsville coke region. The Pennsylvania Railroad folded into Penn Central and then Conrail. In 1995 the Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corporation bought the corridor from Conrail. That June a new short line, the Southwest Pennsylvania Railroad, took over freight service on the branch and still runs two to four trains a day past the trail. The five municipalities along the line, Greensburg, South Greensburg, Southwest Greensburg, Hempfield Township, and Youngwood, then joined to build a trail on the unused half of the right of way, which gave the trail its name. A chapter of the Regional Trail Corporation runs it today with about 200 members, Westmoreland County Parks, and the Westmoreland Conservation District. The chapter works under a lease with the railroad rather than owning the corridor. A branch up Sewickley Creek later carried the trail east from Depot Street across the community college campus to Armbrust. In 2023 the chapter reopened clogged drainage ditches, resurfaced the South Greensburg section with fresh limestone, restained three bridges, and painted a new mural through the Lynch Field tunnel.
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