(erielack) Hurricane Diane: Last Installment...

["KS3YLiam_@_aol.com"]

Hello,All !

Note: Hurricane Diane was the 'third' Hurricane of the 1955 season...the first
was an oddball in December of 1954...

The DL&W had so many locomotives tied up on the damaged sections that they had
to lease 15 diesels from the US Army Transportation Corps to maintain their
schedules.

Anyway, here goes...


The Poconos.	This is the final installment of a four-part series.  


As devastating as the damage in the Lackawanna Valley may have been, there was
minimal loss of life. Several people were killed by the rushing waters,
including one hapless women swept from the arms of her husband as he tried to
keep them hanging on to the edge of their home's roof. Her body would be found
where the two streams met, held there by the same pressure that held the flows
apart.

On the other side of Mount Pocono, however, Scranton's damage pales in
comparison to the savage ferocity of the storm's aftermath.

In the 1950's, the Pocono Mountains were a tranquil place to escape the heat
and noise of the City. As Miss Phoebe said:

It's time to go
                   Where Records show
                                      It's cooler ten degrees or so
                                                   By Fahrenheit
                                                            Each Summer Night
                                                     Upon the Road of
Anthracite.


There were many resorts and hundred of campgrounds located throughout the
mountains…along the banks of the Swiftwater Creek, Pocono and Toby's Creeks,
the popular Brodheads Creek, and the majestic Delaware River and the Water
Gap.

Tens of thousands of people flocked to the area, some by private automobile,
but many, many more on Miss Phoebe's streamlined coaches. 

Due to the unbearable swelter of that summer in the city, hundreds of summer
camps were temporary homes to thousands of kids who came to 'beat the heat'.

August was always a popular wedding month…and the Poconos were the "Honeymoon
Capital of the East."

When it began raining on Thursday afternoon, most people looked forward to the
refreshing change that a summer shower in the woods would bring to the area.

A change was indeed coming, but it would not be the refreshing one hoped for.
In the mountains, the folks are used to short, violent summer storms. They
spend their fury in fifteen minutes or half-an-hour, and everything is made
clean and fresh. The residents were the first to feel it…creeks and dams that
had never been full before were suddenly spilling over, and the rain kept
falling.

When the first reports of flooding were received it appeared that Scranton had
borne the brunt of the storm's fury.

The devastation in the Pocono Mountains was hidden from general view for many
hours because the infrastructure and communications capabilities of the area
had simply ceased to exist.

As reports began to trickle through, however, it was to become obvious that
the popular resort area had suffered terribly at the hands of Diane.

All attempts at contact with the Stroudsburgs met with failure.
Scores of traffic bottlenecks developed between Scranton and Mount Pocono.
Efforts to get aid to the area were unsuccessful due to the roadblocks and
collapsed bridges.In Stroudsburg, the damaged area...hugging the banks for
almost a mile, and extending half-a-mile inland... was thickly populated.
There were perhaps fifteen hundred homes in the flood zone, and many of these
were flooded to their second story roofs. Many people were rescued from their
attic windows by powerboats.
On the other side of the Brodhead...in East Stroudsburg...the damaged
residential area extended for three miles, and inland for almost a mile.

Beyond East Stroudsburg lay Paradise and Analomink, where the river made a
turn at Route 90 and the massive DL&W classification yards.
Hundreds of automobiles and railroad cars were piled along the banks of the
creek for several miles below that point. At Pocono Gardens, one of the cars
was planted squarely in the middle of the swimming pool.

The Brodhead Creek, normally about a hundred feet wide and two feet deep,
became, in the space of about 30 minutes, a wall of water two thousand feet
wide and thirty feet high.

The mighty onslaught obliterated everything in its path.

Every bridge leading to East Stroudsburg was washed away, cutting off the town
and its hospital.

At the Lincoln Avenue section, 32 people died. Those saved were rescued from
attic windows and roofs thirty feet above the street.

The Lackawanna suffered incredible damage and destruction throughout the
entire area.

On the Lackawanna, seven bridges and culverts were washed out and landslides
covered the track at seven other points. Some of the washouts were reported to
be from 1000 to 1600 feet long and from fifty to seventy feet deep. In some
locations the main line was completely dislocated, leaving only twisted rail
and ties dangling five stories in the air.

Between Scranton and the Delaware Water Gap, the mainline and branches were
cut into eight-eight separate pieces. Almost seventy miles of track was
destroyed, and much more was rendered untenable.

Half a dozen trains, including passenger trains 5  (nine cars -five coaches, a
sleeper and a diner) and 44 (two coaches, six milk cars, and three mail cars)
were trapped on high ground between Tannersville and Paradise. When the
railroad realized that bridges and miles of right of way had been washed out
ahead of the trains, they were stopped as soon as possible. One of the
passenger trains made it as far as Cresco, where it was halted.  The
Lackawanna dispatched buses from Scranton to pick up the stranded passengers,
but they were unable to reach the Poconos and were forced to turn back. Since
the train had sufficient food and fuel to remain stationary for quite some
time, it was determined that rescue of the passengers could wait until
conditions were a little more settled.  In the words of railroad officials,
the passengers were in no danger, and "in fact, safer than if they were in
their own living rooms." The approximately two hundred and fifty people on
board number five were finally rescued by helicopter late the next day, and
the folks on train 44 were bussed from Tobyhanna to Pocono Manor where
additional transport was furnished the next day. The milk was delivered to
Tobyhanna Army Depot, where it was used for flood victims' relief.

At Analomink, about four miles north of Stroudsburg, the DL&W yards were
erased. Perhaps a hundred yards away stood Camp Davis. The roiling waters
swept away all fourteen buildings in the camp, carrying 38 campers to their
doom. On Saturday morning, a helicopter rescued the crew of one of the freight
locomotives, which was cab-deep in the muck at Analomink. The crew had been
stranded for some forty hours without food or water. They told a horrifying
story of hearing the screams of the doomed campers over the roar of the water,
yet being unable to help them.

Train 5 departed Hoboken at about 4:45 on Thursday afternoon.  It was flagged
down at Cresco at about 7:15 on Thursday night, and the crew was instructed to
use caution in proceeding. The crew had almost reached Devil's Cut when they
realized that much of the road didn't exist beyond that point. They wisely
chose to back the to the Cresco station and wait out the storm in relative
safety. On Saturday afternoon, two Army helicopters flew the several hundred
people aboard to the

 Mount Pocono Station, where most were bused to Scranton on six Price Bus
Company coaches. At Scranton, they rejoined a continuation of their train,
with replacement equipment. Train 5 would be stranded at Cresco for almost a
month.

 Train 44 left Scranton at 7 P.M. with about 90 people aboard. She just barely
made it to the Tobyhanna station before the railroad was washed out on both
sides of her.

'Tinkertown' is an area about a mile east of the Stroudsburg freight station.
Through this area, one would find Parker's bridge, several small rock cuts,
and a larger cut (Forge cut) leading to the banks of the Brodhead Creek. This
area was washed out right down to the level of the creekbed, some thirty feet!

At Tinkertown, the Brodhead makes a short turn at a spot the railroad called
Slide Curve. It had been formed some hundred years earlier by a rockslide and
formed a perfect, natural cribwork along the banks of the creek. The DL&W had
taken advantage of nature's gift, topping the slide with riprap, and laying
their tracks right on top of the resulting embankment. The furious waters
utterly obliterated the curve, stripping the entire area down twenty-five feet
and forever changing the path of the creekbed.

Also at Tinkertown, Bell's Bridge...which was actually four one-hundred foot
bridges...was sucked into the boiling stream.  Without the weight of the
bridges to 
anchor them, the force of the rushing waters removed all of the piers from the
creek-bed.  Since the path of the stream had shifted over a hundred feet from
the original course, it would prove impossible to rebuild the bridge to its
original configuration.

Between Cresco and Mount Pocono, the right of way straddled the top of the
'high ground', anywhere from thirty to a hundred feet above the streams below.
In a space of about three-quarters of a mile, there were several embankments
where the streams traveled through concrete culverts far below the roadbed.
Two of these, unable to allow the passage of the mountain of water, caused the
flood to back up to a depth of forty feet, completely stripping away the
embankment. With the embankment gone, the water resumed it downward flow.

Just above the previous embankment was 'Devils Hole', where the track was some
eighty feet above the creek. The back up of the waters at the smaller culverts
caused the water to back up here, also. The water gouged the embankment for a
length of almost two hundred and fifty feet, and to the full eighty feet in
height. Luckily, the release of the water caused by the destruction of the
culverts downstream allowed the backflow to drain before the embankment was
breached...thus saving a week in repair time, since the second track was left
intact on the remaining embankment.


Along the Delaware River, the rise of the water, though rapid, was far less
violent than in the smaller streams. The gradual rise caused its share of
heartache, however. On the Sussex branch, the DL&W was stripped down to the
riverbed, and several bridges were damaged. It would be mid-October before the
branch was restored.

The Erie had her share of problems along the river, too. At Port Jervis, the
yards and turntable were under water for two days, and much of the roadbed had
to be replaced. On the branches, especially near Honesdale, Pennsylvania and
Narrowsburg, New York, the Dyberry and Lackawaxen creeks caused mayhem to the
road. There was little damage to the Delaware and Hudson, however, so much of
the Erie's traffic was diverted over the D&H, bypassing the Wyoming Branch,
and the damaged part of the Jefferson branch, finally to reconnecting to the
Erie over Ararat Summit. (The Erie would sell this section of track to the D&H
later in the year to finance the repairs necessitated by the flood.) The
mainline was then rejoined at Elmira, New York.

The Lackawaxen River overflowed it banks in Honesdale, joined shortly
thereafter by the Dyberry River just north of the city. At one point, the 12th
Street Bridge -the highest point in town- was within three feet of being
inundated.

Major damage along the Erie occurred in the fourteen-mile stretch between
Parker's Glen and Mast Hope, Pennsylvania, west of Port Jervis, New York.

Three stone arch bridges, built as part of the original railroad over a
century earlier, were swept away. The fact that all three bridges had survived
a hundred
years of nature's wrath, yet were obliterated by Diane stood as mute testimony
to the violence of the storm. One of the spans was that was knocked out was
over three hundred feet long, and the foundation below was gouged out to a
depth of seventy feet. A new trestle had to be built, because none of the
original structure remained.

There were also several major washouts in the area of Shohola, Pa.

The freight traffic not re-routed over the D&H was moved over the New York,
Ontario, and Western. Passenger trains were detoured from the Erie Terminal in
Jersey City to Elmira via the Pennsylvania Railroad. Once in Elmira, they
could then proceed to Cleveland and Chicago over the undamaged Erie Mainline.

Erie's lifeblood…the anthracite coal shipments…were being routed to the east
via the Jersey Central connection in Ashley.

The Jersey Central herself had lost a section of track between Jim Thorpe and
White Haven, PA, but the road had been doing line repair work in the area, and
they were able to get a single line up and running over the first weekend
after the storm. Within a week, Maintenance-of-Way crews had full service
restored within the stricken area.

The Lehigh Valley lost two lines between Tannery and Penn Haven Junction, but
around-the-clock effort had one line restored by Saturday afternoon, and
another by Monday night.

Telephone and telegraph service to and between Moscow, Daleville, Mount
Pocono, Cresco, Stroudsburg, Milford, Port Jervis, and the Hawley and
Honesdale areas was disrupted completely, including the railroads' radio
repeater systems. For days, the only communications into or out of the
affected areas were by means of Ham radio operators, or the State Police and
military radio systems.

In total, in the Poconos, 42 highway bridges, 17 railroad bridges, most water
mains, telephone and electric lines, and gas mains were destroyed. More than
twenty thousand homes were destroyed, and five resorts were completely ruined.
No less than 8,500 people lost their jobs as a result of the catastrophe, and
close to a hundred lost their lives.



The Recovery:

By noon on Friday, a tenuous route had been opened to Mount Pocono via the
Scranton-Pocono highway, but there was only one bridge left in Scranton
leading to that highway, and numerous washouts and slides limited traffic to
one-way for most of the distance. 

Travel beyond Mt. Pocono was virtually impossible, with highways and railways
devastated from Swiftwater (several miles east of Mt. Pocono) through
Tannersville, and southeast through Paradise, Analomink, and the Stroudsburgs.

The giant Tobyhanna Army Signal Corp Depot became a center of mercy and the
base for helicopter operations in the stricken area…a first for land based
choppers…

The 48,000 quarts of milk on marooned train 44 were sent to the depot for
distribution to survivors of the flooding.

Even in the throes of the worst catastrophe to ever hit the Lackawanna,
'Lackawanna Men' came to the aid of the stricken.

Paul  Moore, from Convent, New Jersey, a member of the Board of Manager of the
Railroad made a donation to the Scranton Chapter of the American Red Cross in
the amount of fifty-thousand dollars to help with flood clean-up.

The Lackawanna began transporting bailey bridges into the devastated area for
the Army Corps of Engineers even before the water had receded. Trainloads of
gravel began moving by Friday morning, and much of the material brought in was
used for road restoration even before the railroad began to repair itself.

Before noon on Friday, the DL&W had secured the services of no less than
fifteen different contractors to assist the engineering department in
reconstruction of the right-of-way. It was determined that complete removal
and reconstruction 
of the road would take about three weeks, but the old three and four line main
would be replaced with a heavily signaled, state of the art two line road. The
bridges at Tinkertown would be replaced with a single structure, and the
washout at Nay Aug Gorge would be crossed with a span salvaged from the
destroyed bridge.

Passenger service was suspended between Scranton and Hoboken for a week, while
the Central of New Jersey and Lehigh Valley restored their lines.

When those lines were reopened, Lackawanna trains began using trackage rights
over those roads. Traffic between Scranton and Moscow was handled by truck,
and shipments into the mountains, except for emergency supplies, were
embargoed.

Passenger service to the west continued on a limited basis from Scranton to
Buffalo, on the schedule of the Phoebe Snow.

Commuter service continued almost without fail, except that only one round
trip a day was run from Blairstown, New Jersey.

The Erie was in almost as bad a state as the Lackawanna. The Delaware and
Neversink Rivers had trammeled her mainline through Port Jervis, and trackage
throughout the Honesdale, Lackawaxen, and Hawley areas was either heavily
damaged or destroyed.

The massive car-building complex at Dunmore had been battered, bridges washed
out, yard tracks erased from the face of the earth. The Jefferson between
Dunmore and Avoca was virtually impassable. Bridges and right-of-way had been
ruined at Springbrook, Moosic, Duryea, and Avoca.

The New York, Ontario and Western had seen her line underscoured from
Carbondale all the way to end-of-line in Scranton. It was a financial blow
that the road would not recover from.

 The Central of New Jersey was damaged not only in the Scranton area, but had
taken heavy losses throughout Eastern Pennsylvania and Western New Jersey. It
would be several weeks of round-the-clock work to reopen all of her lines.
Major sleight-of-hand was needed for the road's management to transfer funds
from the CNJ's coffers to her Central Railroad of Pennsylvania's accounts.
(This was due to CNJ's board of directors 'splitting' the company into two to
avoid ruinous (and illegal) taxation by New Jersey State.) The Central would
never again achieve a position of power in the local market, and would quit
the state completely in 1972, never having turned a profit after Diane.

The Lehigh Valley suffered some losses, but was able to recover very quickly.
The lines of that company were restored within a week of the deluge.

In the long run, neither the Erie nor the Lackawanna could afford the repairs
that were made necessary by the storm. The Erie sold some property (through
Forest City and over Ararat Summit) to cover the short-term losses. The sale
of the trackage meant loss of long-term income to the road, and additional
expenses in the form of rent to the new owners…the Delaware and Hudson, which
had escaped the carnage relatively unscathed.

Overtures were made between the Nickel Plate and the DL&W, but the NKP
directors didn't want to be saddled with the huge debt of the ailing (yet
solvent) Lackawanna.

Shortly thereafter, the Lackawanna, the Erie, and the D&H joined together in
discussions of merger. Again, the Delaware and Hudson did not want to become
saddled with the strangling debt of the Erie…the Lackawanna was back into
black ink (barely) at the time of the talks…and they backed out leaving the
Erie-Lackawanna merger the only rational outcome.

One wonders what the rail scene in the entire northeast would have looked like
had the three roads combined forces.

The entire central Pocono region, from Milford clear through to Shawnee, was
purchased by the US Government for the Tock's Island Dam project. Thousand of
people, dozens of towns, were absorbed for this massive undertaking. Families
that had lived in the area for two hundred and fifty years were displaced.
Ultimately, it was all for naught. The Department of the Interior surrendered
the land to the Park Service in the early 70's, and the entire area became a
National Park.

Over time, Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg rebuilt…albeit with some
protection  against future flooding…but should conditions like Diane ever
occur again, those who have forgotten or ignored the story of disaster are
poised to repeat it.

EPILOGUE:


In the greater scheme of things, Diane changed the face of Northeastern
Pennsylvania forever. In Scranton, two sections of city had ceased to exist.
The South side flats were stripped clean for several square miles and remain
to this day a commercial area. The Little England section was simply
bulldozed…hundreds of families displaced…and no homes will ever be constructed
in that area again.  Never again would the Erie car shops churn out a thousand
cars a year…never again would coal trains ply the Jefferson Branch at the rate
of one every ten minutes twenty four hours a day. Never again would a three or
four track mainline carry the traffic of the Route of Anthracite over the
Pocono Mountains … never again…never again.

And in spite of the lessons learned from the tragedy wrought by Diane, the
greater irony is that another similar storm seventeen years…Agnes… later would
again change the face of the area, and forever alter the industrial base and
the railroads of the area.





Copyright ©1998 William J. Gallagher. All rights reserved.



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