Grassroots Railroad Sports?

A neat little D5-sf class 4-4-0 Camelback at Slatedale, Pennsylvania. The Reading's Schuylkill & Lehigh Branch ran as far as Slatedale and then hopped on the Lehigh Valley for further service into Slatington. The #269 was a 1901 Burnham, Williams & Co. product, and by the time of this photo was headed towards it's fourth decade of service. Most of the D5-sfs were retired between 1930 and 1935, so the fact that this one was still going in 1940 is quite impressive. Likely it was due to the fact that the "Slow & Lonesome" branch was pretty lightly trafficked, lightly railed, and not terribly profitable, warranting assignment of an old, lightweight engine. An isolated part of the Schuylkill & Lehigh branch actually does survive today, operated by the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern, who bought the line off of the Reading in the mid-'60s to operate as a tourist line.

A big K1-sa 2-10-2, the heaviest of that wheel arrangement, throws up a massive plume of smoke at Annville, PA. The first ten K1-sas, #3001-#3011, were rebuilt from some of the N1-sa Mallets, although no one is quite certain how much of the N1-sa was used, perhaps the firebox and the first couple boiler courses.

The odd couple of an I8 Camelback Consolidation and semi-streamlined G2-sa Pacific #178 with a Rail Ramble over the Catawissa Branch on October 19th, 1941. Even before the Iron Horse Rambles of 1959-1964, the Reading was known as a a railroad that was easy to cooperate with on hosting railfan excursions. After a railfan group approached the PRR about running excursions over some of their less-traveled branch lines and was turned away, they went to the Reading, who was more than happy to accomodate their wishes. (PRR, seeing the popularity of the Reading trips, later changed their mind and ran their series of Off The Beaten Path excursions through the '40s and early '50s). And when I say accomodate it, I mean it. Bert Pennypacker talked about the Reading willingly assigning one of the streamlined Crusader Pacifics for a run over the isolated Tremont & Minehill Branch, and the locomotive coming back with quite a few dents in the stainless-steel cladding from the tight rock cut clearances of that line.

A brand-new FT set at Tamaqua in May of '46. It's odd to think that there were FTs on the property in '45, and yet the Reading was still turning out T-1s from the Reading Locomotive Shops at the same time, and would be building brand-new Pacifics just a few years later. Perhaps like so many other coal-hauling railroads at the time, they were concerned about being perceived as biting the hand that fed them.

An A-B set of F3s hauling coal on the Catawissa Branch, with an M1-sb Mikado somewhere at the back shoving away.

Reading T-1 #2100, the first of her class, wheels a freight through VN Interlocking at Allentown, PA with a freight train, some ten years before she would be one of the lucky ones chose for a rebirth hauling excursions. After retirement in '64, she and the #2101 were sold to Streigel Supply & Equipment, a scrapyard in Baltimore, Maryland, and sat there until 1975, when Ross Rowland rescued the two.  It subsequently went through several ownership changes, at least one overhaul and restoration that never actually saw any runtime, and spent more time in storage or being towed than it did operating under its own power. It ended up being given an ill-advised oil-burning conversion, went west to Tacoma, Washington where it ran for about a minute (and not very well at that) before Golden Pacific Railroad went under, and then spent years in storage. It has since been moved back to Cleveland, where it is undergoing another operational restoration, this time with a much better-designed oil-firing system.

A very rare photo of doubleheaded Reading T-1s in revenue service. Official Reading doctrine was to "right-size" their trains for a single T-1, rather than doublehead them, either with other motive power or another T-1. Clearly, that rule was disregarded for this freight headed over the Bethlehem Branch, since it has the #2126 and #2125 on the head end. Doubleheaded T-1s did become fairly common on the Iron Horse Rambles, when #2124 was paired up with either #2102 or #2100 on a fairly regular basis. The Iron Horse Rambles were also the first real sightings of T-1s hauling passengers. Although #2121 through #2130 were equipped with roller bearings on the drive axles and steam heat lines for passenger car heating, the consensus is that, other than maybe a few post-WWII troop trains, T-1s were never used for revenue passenger-hauling.

Reading #2102 pounds out of Allentown, PA with a 1962 Iron Horse Ramble, towing 12 passenger cars that appear to be pretty well loaded. Today, the #2102 is running in the same appearance and hauling trains that are even longer and heavier, and equally well-ridden, on the Reading & Northern. I'll admit, I was never a big fan of the T-1 originally. The headlight that was slightly above the smokebox center, the big firebox that protruded through the running board skirts, the boiler tube pilot with footboards, it was all just slightly off aesthetically. But, seeing #2102 in action personally last year made me a believer.

Reading T-1 #2106 is pouring down the sand at East Penn Junction at Allentown. The running gear is dusted a ghostly white from sand that has been ground up and stuck to the oil and grease that has accumulated on the wheels. The T-1s didn't have a terribly long career on the Reading, but they were an impressive machine in terms of performance. The 70" drivers meant they could dig in and haul, while not being slow-pokes out on the main.

In 1956, a surge in Great Lakes coal traffic brought steam power out of storage on the PRR's Susquehanna Division (present-day NS Buffalo and Sunbury Lines). In addition to M1/M1as, I1sas, and H8/9/10ss being brought out of storage after years spent dormant, the PRR leased several locomotives from the Reading, the Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Potomac, and the Santa Fe to make up for power shortfalls both on the Susquehanna and other divisions.

In Renovo, PA on a hot mid-August day, Reading #2128 and an unidentified sister wait for work hauling mineral trains. The nominal cost of running a T-1 out of Renovo was $1 per day. The PRR leased nine of these engines; very hard use and Pennsy's virtually nonexistent maintenance regime meant that only one of these engines lasted until 1960. Most were scrapped upon return to the Reading in 1957. The general consensus from the Pennsy crews was that the T-1 was one helluva engine, and there were many who wonder if the PRR would have been better off building a batch of these than some of the other power that they tinkered with.

It's pretty amazing just how many tourist lines in PA operate over former Reading trackage as well. 

• Colebrookdale Railroad operates the former Colebrookdale Branch from Boyertown from around Pine Forge up to Boyertown (the northernmost 4.5 miles to Barto were abandoned in '65)
• Allentown & Auburn operates four miles of the former Allentown Branch from Kutztown to Topton.
• Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern operates 4.2 miles of the former Schuylkill & Lehigh Branch from North Albany to Kempton. They actually wanted the full 11.5 miles of track from Kempton to Germansville but ran into issues where Reading had officially abandoned the trackage and they would have to buy out the land from the landowners, and a landowner near Wanamakers (yes, the railroad says Wanamaker but the town is Wanamakers, because the Reading station was named Wanamaker) refused to sell.
• The New Hope Railroad, formerly and colloquially known as the New Hope & and Ivyland Railroad operates 11.5 miles of the former New Hope Branch from New Hope, PA to Johnsonville.
• Reading & Northern operates huge chunks of the Reading, including the main line from Reading to Tamaqua, as well as the lines west to Donaldson, Minersville, Pottsville, Locust Summit and Middleport.
• SMS Rail Line's Woodstown Central recently began operating on the ex-Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines Salem Branch between Swedesboro and Woodstown, but while Reading was part owner/operator of the PRSL, that segment of line actually came from the Pennsylvania Railroad side of things. So it gets an asterisk.
• Long defunct, but worth mentioning, the Valley Forge Scenic operated about 4 miles of the former Pickering Valley Branch, from Phoenixville to Kimberton, using 4-6-2 #425 that now famously lives on the Reading & Northern. Like the WK&S, they ran into the issue that Reading had abandoned the line, and then sold it to Valley Forge Scenic, despite no longer legally owning it. Valley Forge Scenic was required to buy out the right of way from the adjoining landowners, to whose possession it had reverted to, and the landowners wanted the VFSR out and refused to sell.

And then of course you have SEPTA, CSX, and Norfolk Southern who all operate Reading trackage (and even some ex-Reading equipment), and Penn Eastern also operates a bunch of disjointed section of the Reading as well, as do a bunch of other short lines, like North Shore Railroad System's Shamokin Valley and Lycoming Valley Railroads.

Finger Lakes Railway, a Class III shortline operating 167 miles of pre-Conrail trackage in the Finger Lakes Region, obviously, got back into the passenger excursion business this summer. They had previously run trips from 2001 to 2013, before selling off the ex-VIA coaches and ceasing excursion service. This year they leased a Budd RDC-1 that had spent time on CN, VIA and Trinity Rail Express, and began running trips over the old New York Central "Auburn Road". 

The "Auburn Road", as New York Central hands called it, was a secondary single-track line on the Rochester Division that ran south of the original Water Level Route mainline from Syracuse to Rochester. It took a more southerly routing across the tops of the Finger Lakes and before the New York Central acquisition it was the Rochester & Syracuse Railroad, which in turn had been comprised of the Auburn & Rochester Railroad and the Auburn & Syracuse Railroad (New York Central early history is extremely confusing, because it's a mess of buyouts of various small railroads with similar railroads, which controlled other railroads with similar names).

The trips they had offered this summer were all run between Clifton Springs and Canandaguia (pronounced Can-in-day-gwuh), but they announced that on October 8th, and October 8th only, they are running a rare-mileage RDC trip over the old Auburn Road from Syracuse to Auburn, NY, with a layover at the preserved Auburn depot, and then back to Syracuse. Well, the ad said rare mileage, which are the magic words for me, and Syracuse is only an hour west, plus I love me some RDCs, so I bought myself a ticket at $35. They are running two trips that day, so I'm going to ride the first trip and then chase the second. 

From what I can find, the last regular passenger service over the Auburn Road was in 1958, and I don't believe they've ever run passenger service over the Syracuse-Auburn section since, so it is indeed rare mileage (most of the original Finger Lakes Railway excursions operated down on the old Lehigh Valley line out of Watkins Glen, or the Geneva-Canandaigua segment). Interestingly, it did at one point offer sleeper service connections during it's heyday, as the December 1944 Official Guide shows two 12-1 sleepers out of Rochester on the night train: one for Washington, set out for the PRR at Canandaigua (that was the old PRR Elmira Branch), and the other connecting with the NYC mainline at Syracuse and heading to Grand Central Terminal in New York City, but those were dropped in 1955. And those passenger trains were not Budd stainless steel cars and Hudsons, they were usually one of the old Pacifics, or an RS-3 at the end, and regular clerestory-roof coaches.

A map of the New York Central Rochester Division, showing just how confusing the situation really is. Keep in mind, this doesn't include the 4-track Water Level Route main line or the parallel double-tracked West Shore Line, because those were considered the Syracuse Division, despite both serving Rochester as well. Confused yet?

The single-track line from Rochester to Syracuse is the Auburn Road, or Auburn Branch. Conrail placed what had been the NYC Auburn Branch, Canandaigua-Victor, about 8 miles, "out of service effective 00:01 hours Wednesday, 28 March 1979". This segment was removed by late September, 1980. They also abandoned the Pittsford Running Track, Pittsford-Brighton, 5.1 miles, on August 4th, 1982. But the eastern end remains intact and active under Finger Lakes Railway, and they use that to interchange with the New York, Susquehanna & Western (who uses the old DL&W line from Syracuse down to Chenango Forks) and CSX (who uses the NYC Main Line)

The single-track line running along the very edge of Lake Ontario from Suspension Bridge, NY to Oswego, NY was the old Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg, known variously as the RW&O Division, St. Lawrence Division, and simply "The Hojack". It actually continued further northeast to Massena Springs, and also has that little leg that runs southeast to Syracuse and it also had a line from Richland to Rome through Altmar, Williamstown, Westdale, Camden and Mcconnellsville, and in Rome it rejoined with the Water Level Route. That segment from Richland to Rome is long gone, but the rest of the RW&O is pretty intact under CSX.

The double-track segment that drops south at Charlotte and heads east to GD is the Falls Road or Falls Branch. The Falls Branch was a shortcut to Detroit, MI, going thru Canada, north of Lake Erie. Passenger service stopped on that in 1957. A lot of auto carriers went that way into Rochester where they hooked up with the mainline thru to Albany where there was a large auto distribution yard. Conrail took up the tracks from Brockport to Elmgrove area to reduce the value of the branch line and make sure no one else could compete with them if and when they sold the line as it was no longer producing a lot of freight. They sold the section from Lockport to Brockport in 1995 to Genesee Valley Transportation, and GVT set it up as the Falls Road Railroad Company. 

The two disconnected bits from North Tonawanda east to Caledonia, and then on the eastern side of the Genesee River from Canandaigua was the Batavia Branch, but often called the Peanut Branch, the Peanut Line or simply "the Peanut", but it was originally one connected piece of traffic and it was the Canandaigua & Niagara Falls Railroad, incorporated under the new general incorporation law for railroads passed by the state legislature in 1850. It was built to connect Niagara Falls to the Erie, but it failed two years later and was sold by European investors to the NYC, who were glad to eliminate a potential competitor. Where the "Peanut" nickname came from, nobody really knows, but that line's best days were behind it by the 20th century. This line just became redundant with the parallel track the NYC already had with the Main Line that connected with the Niagara Branch at Buffalo, the Auburn Road also served Canandaigua, and the Falls Road Branch connected with Niagara Falls. The Holcomb to Caledonia segment was removed somewhere about 1939, severing the line, and then NYC slowly rolled up the rest of the line over the years. Amazingly, on Sunday, July 21, 1946, the Buffalo Chapter NRHS did sponsor a special excursion aboard the the line, traveling from Buffalo's Central Terminal to North Tonawanda NY and then along the Peanut line to Caledonia NY. Today, there's a few bits and pieces still in use by Finger Lakes Railway and Rochester & Southern, but most of it is long gone and the right of way has even been obliterated by time and highway construction, and photos of it when it was intact or in service are nigh non-existent. 

And if that seems like a lot of trackage in one area, just consider that that is all only one railroad. The Erie, DL&W, Lehigh Valley, and Baltimore & Ohio (Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh and Buffalo & Susquehanna) were also all competing in that region 

In reply to NickD :

If you want to see the TX version of that look at old maps of Denison Tx.  You had the MKT, T&NO (southern pacific), T&P, KO&G all trying to have a TX presence just south of the Red River.  The Ray yard is still one of the largest yards UP has today.  

Nick, thanks for the great run of Reading photos, info & stories! As a life-long Philadelphia suburbs resident the remnants of the Reading are everywhere. Sometimes overshadowed by the Pennsy in its home area, the Reading nevertheless was one of the most important big little railroads in the country. Great to see it get its due here. Long may the T1s run! (we're looking at you B&O museum...#2101)

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

I actually read that the state with the highest rail density in the US, at the peak of US railroads, was not New York, Illinois or Pennsylvania like you would expect, or even Missouri (St. Louis was served by seventeen Class Is!), but actually Iowa. Iowa was spiderwebbed with rails from all the granger roads running to every farming settlement in the state.

There was an explosion at UP's Bailey yard yesterday. 

Explosion at world's largest railyard in Nebraska prompts evacuations because of heavy toxic smoke (msn.com)

In reply to Recon1342 :

Interesting. Sounds like cargo exploded randomly in the container, so not UP's fault. I was expecting it to be a case like East Palestine, where they derailed cars and set something on fire.

My great-grandfather was an engineer, and ended his career on the Buffalo. Rochester and Pittsburgh around 1910 or so.  Before that he was on the Erie, and before that on the ancient Atlantic and Great Western in western Pennsylvania and Ohio.

On my RDC trip over the Reading & Northern this spring, while traveling the old Reading line to Tremont (and what an isolated piece of trackage that is), I struck up a conversation with an older gentleman who was riding in the vestibule at the same time. He had lived in Harrisburg and had worked for Conrail in the early days, right after formation in 1976, and had been hired on to work in the accounting department. But at the time, Conrail had the headquarters of over a half-dozen railroads, and was trying to consolidate everything and figure out what and who they had and what the condition of everything was, and so until they sorted that out, they stuck him in the Maintenance of Way department. He said he didn't know a damn thing about MoW and it wasn't going to be a permanent position, so he was tossed the keys to a Hi-Rail truck and was told "Go drive around the system and report what the condition of where you go is." He said, well that wasn't hard, because it didn't matter where you went, the condition of the track was bad.

Since he was a railfan, and he knew that Conrail was going to be casting off as much as they could, and he wasn't told to stay in a specific area or check out specific trackage, he took it as carte blanche to go wherever he wanted, and he decided to go explore the rarest trackage he could before it was gone. He said he was all over the system and rattled off a list of some of the real rare mileage he explored, including

• Pretty much the entirety of the Lehigh Valley mainline across New York. That was pretty much a goner, since it was in wretched condition and it was pretty much the worst mainline from NYC to Buffalo. Conrail also wanted nothing to do with it because of a derailment in Leroy, NY that poisoned all the wells with trichloroethylene in 1970. They were afraid that if they took ownership, they could be held responsible, since the townsfolk had tried to sue the Lehigh Valley but that was squeezing blood from a stone. He also traveled the branch line all the way down to Seneca Army Depot, but was sure to hide his camera behind the Hi-Rail truck seat, so as not to get shot by Army personnel, since they had loads of nuclear weapons stored there.
• As much of the Northern Central as still existed at the time. This was the grand old line from Sunbury to Baltimore that had been built in 1858, and over which Abraham Lincoln had traveled to give the Gettysburg Address, as well as his funeral train on it's way back to Illinois. One of the oldest lines in the US, a chunk of it was blown out during Hurricane Agnes in '72 and Penn Central, which wanted to rid itself of the line at the time, never rebuilt it.
• The remaining chunk of the New York, Ontario & Western's Northern Division main line from Oswego to Fulton, which was ex-Penn Central/exx-New York Central at that point. That section actually did survive the big Conrail purge, and is actually still extant under CSX, although I believe "active" would be too strong a description for it. That was the line that my eyes really lit up when he mentioned it, as a big NYO&W fan.

He said Conrail was such a mess in the early days that nobody ever questioned why the hell he was poking around those odd corners of the sytem, and he's not sure anybody ever even read the reports that he wrote up.

He also told a tale of needing to get back to Harrisburg from Buffalo, since he and his wife were moving from Harrisburg to Buffalo, after things settled down and Conrail assigned him to Buffalo. He said that they had moved one vehicle and their belongings up to Buffalo and he needed to go back to Harrisburg and get their other car, and he had a system pass to ride any train on the system. So he went down to the yard, talked to the dispatcher, and selected a train off the dispatch list that was going through where he needed to go. He said it was a really weird train symbol that he didn't recognize, but the time and route matched what he needed. The dispatcher told him "Okay, I'll pass orders that they need to pick you up, you go stand by this track, that's where they're coming in."

He went out and stood at that track and is waiting for the train to come in, expecting them to stop or slow down on their way through Buffalo yard. Well, he sees a train coming, it's got a ton of power on the front and they're absolutely flying, and there's no sign of them even letting off the throttle. As it comes by he throws his bag aboard the running board of the first engine and by the time he goes to swing on, it's the fourth or fifth, and last, engine passing by. He snags it, just about has his arms yanked out of his shoulders, but hangs on. He heads forward, grabs his bag off the running board, get sup in the cab of the lead engine, and nobody even looks at him or acknowledges him, and they seem pissed. He rides there for like two hours and finally the engineer goes "Do you know what train this is?" He says, Yeah, and rattles off the symbol mark. The engineer goes "Yeah, this is the overnight mail and express train from Chicago. And we don't slow down or stop for anyone or anything." The engineer looked over at the conductor and adds "And did we slow down for this guy?" The conductor goes "No, we did not." He said they warmed up to him after a little while, but they were not happy that he hitched a ride with them and expected them to slow down or stop to pick him up.

Colin Wood said:

Apologies in advance if it's been mentioned before, but the Shay locomotive is one of my personal favorites. It's super cool to see run in person.

I've seen the one in Cass, West Virginia, in action, but I haven't had the chance to ride it yet.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TbsbcZKCWDY?rel=0

 

The good news, related to Shay locomotives, is that Cass has just gotten Western Maryland #6, the last Shay built and the second-largest built, back up and running after it's FRA 1472-day inspection. She's been out of service since 2017, and after some shakedown runs, they hope to put her in regular service again. They are saying the “Big Six” will most likely start out on the shorter 8-mile excursions from Cass to Whittaker Station after everything is made certain to be in good working order, but she has previously run the trips all the way to Durbin (before the bridge washed out in 1985) so she might make appearances there.

Western Maryland #6 working the colliery at Vindex, Maryland on the Chaffee Branch, shortly after delivery. This 162-ton Class C (three-truck) Lima-built locomotive was in service only four years when the colliery at Vindex closed down, and with it, the Chaffee Branch lost it's sole reason for existence. The Chaffee Branch was an insane piece of engineering, with 9% grades, a switchback and numerous tight curves, and the Vindex Mine produced 228,000 tons of coal in 1947, all of which was hauled down that mountain by Western Maryland Shay #6. Strip mines had opened up nearby that same year though, taking business away from deep coal mines. In 1949, a bit less than half the tonnage of just two years ago was taken from the deep mine.