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Re: (erielack) pecking order/members ages
- Subject: Re: (erielack) pecking order/members ages
- From: RAILDATA_@_aol.com
- Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 22:31:31 EDT
Being 76, I might qualify for the oldest EL fan on this list!
I was born and raised about 5 city blocks from the the DL&W passenger station
in Scranton. Wasted msot of my youth hanging around there during WW2 and
eventually talked my way into East End Tower and spent most Sunday afternoons
there with the operator there. Can recall many "five baggers" which was what he
called those coal trains with a 1600 as road powere, a 2100 on the front as a
helpre and three 2200s on the back pushing.
The first deisel I can remember was DL&W 425 which for many years switched
the
passenger station. In those days there was enough passenger traffic to assign
a switcher full time to the station. During 1946 there was a lot of older
staem power coming into Scanton for scarpping....it was then I found out the DL&W
had 0-6-0, 4-4-0s, 2-6-0, and 2-8-0 engines still in serve. We never saw
these operating (except for a 2-8-0 once in awhile) in Scranton. Just big power
and 0-8-0s. Have to think my favorites were thaose 2200 claos thre cylinder
4-8-2s.
One of my best recolections was a 4th of July when the holiday fell such to
make a three day weekend. On the last morning of the weekend \...must have been
around 1944....there were FIVE section of Train #2 east bound in the morning
to take all the vacioners back to NY. There was the regular train out of
Buffalo, a second section out of Buffalo, a section leaving from Binghamton, and
two sections from Scranton.
When this type of activity took place commuter coashes were braoguht to
Scranton and 2100 class 2-8-2 engines equipped with train signal lines were pressed
into passenger service.
Although the D&H, Erie, CNJ, and NYO&W plus the L&WV electric all came into
town, the Lackawanna was the "big show". from my youthful perspective the Erie
was a pretty sad excuse for a railroad, except for those USRA 2-10-2s than ran
on the D&H from Avoca to Susquehanna. Everything else just couldn't compete
with those DL 4-8-4s and 4-6-4s. Although my grandmother lived very close to
the E&WV I saw very few trains there since I think most of the coal moved at
night at about 10 mph.
Visited the Dunmore shop area quite often and it was crammed full of cars
waiting for repair. The enginehouse was quite small and only seemed to ahve a
2-8-0 and a 2-8-2 or so around.
Well, I could go on and on. Would love to do a detailed book about Scranton
railorads during steam but there just aren't any photos around of stuff like
Hampton Yard, Taylor Yard, Winton Branch, Diamond Branch, Keyser Valley Shops,
etc. There just were hardly any rail photographers in the area except for Ed
Miller and one or two others. There were lots of guys who came up from the NY
and NJ area but as far as they ever got was the DL&W passenger station and
enginehouse.plus all they took were roster shots of locos and wedge views of train
with big power. And I did pretty much the same...
Chuck Yungkurth
Boulder CO
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