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(erielack) Creepy characters & ghosts along the EL



Interesting comments about the 'ghost' on the Greenwood Lakes line & at 
Blairstown station.
       There have been times when the hair has stood up on the back of my 
neck when I was on a lonely stretch of track making a cut, or cutting our 
engines off a train....you're by yourself, it's 3am on a cold, wet morning in 
the middle of a forest in the Pocono mountains or a lonely stretch of the NJ 
cutoff. The mind is a funny thing, but reality is scary enough.......
       Firing BH4 or one of the E/Bs & the old engineer wasn't sure if all 
the units were loading. "Hey, kid, go on back and check to see if they're all 
loading". So, up off the firemans' seat & back through the engine rooms, 
deafened by the roaring GMs and in the dim light of the room bulbs. As I 
stepped between the 2nd & third units - carefully -  - I thought I saw 
movement out of the corner of my eye at the other end of the engine block. I 
ran [as well as I could with the train swaying] the length of the engineblock 
and crossed to the other side of the engineroom only to see someone or 
something disappear around the other end of the engine. I ran up there - same 
thing . Finally I stopped & was almost trampled by a colored guy who had 
taken refuge from the cold.
"Man, it's mighty cold in them gondolas" he said. No doubt!!! I told him he 
could sit in the rear cab, but NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING!!. "Thank you boss" he 
said.....I felt sorry for him, it was cold & a foot or 2 of snow. NOBODY 
should have to ride a gon in those conditions. Another time leaving Hoboken, 
I did a walkthrough the units when we got by Port Morris and in the trailing 
cab, I opened the door to the nose where the toilet was & there were about 8 
or 10 colored guys in there. I don't know how they all fit in that little 
space, but it beat being in a gon or boxcar. Same instructions - don't touch 
anything & look out for the RR cops when we get to Scranton.
    Some crews were pretty blase about hobos and some conductors were mean & 
would throw them off even when we were moving. Taylor yard had a huge 
Culmdump fire on the North side of the tracks when you left the yard for 
Scranton. I don't know how long it had been burning, but my father told me 
that the West Pittston Hose Company #1 used to take the new American La 
France pumper up there to practice & it didn't have ANY effect on the fire at 
all, since it was burning in the veins of coal deep down - this was in the 
1920s!!. Hobos hanging around Taylor yard would lay down near the fire in the 
winter because the rocks there were warm even in bitter cold weather. We were 
leaving Taylor with an Eastbound one night & I remarked on the blue flames 
coming out of the rocks near the track. The engineer enlightened me "Yeah, 
they found 2 bums there last week COOKED!!, They laydown to keep warm & the 
gasses overcame them & the heat slowcooked them." He further told me that 
"when they went to pick them up, the one guys' arm fell off", WELL DONE!!
About 1963 or so, the Company had to stop using the Northernmost track of the 
3 tracks, because the fire had burned beneath it & the roadbed was unstable. 
Scary stuff. Imagine having your locomotive topple into something like that. 
If you think I'm kidding, HISTORY OF THE LEHIGH VALLEY - Archer, has a foto 
of a LV camelback switcher completely in a cave-in in Pittston Junction. All 
you can see is part of the cab & the steamdome.
     Anybody know if the Taylor culmdump is still burning near the yard???
Regards,
Walter E. Smith

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