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Re: (erielack) Scranton "Bridge 60"

 
In a message dated 8/6/2007 7:54:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
raildata_@_comcast.net writes:

I no  longer have any DL&W or EL employee's timetables. Can anyone tell me if 
 anywhere in DL&W or El official operating documents there is any reference  
to "Bridge 60"?

Everyone (including Tabor refers to it by that  nomenclature. Also says it 
was so called becaseu it was 60 miles from the  Delaware River (which isn't 
correct).

The only engineering reference I  can find calls it "Bridge 133.82", which is 
the normal way of railroads  identifying bridges.

Any comments?


 
Hi Chuck,
 
    Having never heard a real answer to that question,  I researched this 
years ago and found that the Bridge 60 moniker dates  to DL&W's biblical times 
(1853) when the mileposts started at  Great Bend. DL&W got to Binghamton over 
the Erie.  After Sam Sloan  joined the DL&W late in the Civil War years and had 
risen to president late  in 1867, completing his own line to Binghamton (ca. 
1869-1870), the  mileposts began at the Susquehanna River which is almost 
exactly 60 miles  from the Lackawanna River (before the Nicholson Cut-off was 
built). A year  or two after the Civil War the Lackawanna River bridge in  Scranton 
was being upgraded from wooden trestle to stone arch; it is likely  during 
this project that it got the name Bridge 60.  
 
    In Taber the 1857 timetable shows Scranton 48  miles from Great Bend, and 
the 1878 issue shows Scranton station to be 62 miles  from Binghamton 
station, confirming the mileage. In both timetables and the  others of similar 
vintage at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania the  mileposts begin at the north end.
 
    I've never seen Bridge 60 in a modern employee  timetable and don't 
recall seeing it in a bulletin order.  So, Chuck, since  you grew up in Scranton, 
do you remember calling it Bridge 60, or  hearing trainmen call it that, in the 
1940s and '50s?  If not, could  it be possible that Taber-the-father had 
heard the term from the early  railroaders he knew and TTTIII used it in his book 
enough to make it stick  today?
 
Mike Del Vecchio
veni - vidi - vici
 
 



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