Re: (erielack) WB&E Panther Creek

["Jim Guthrie" <jguthrie_@_pipeline.com>]

>> Recently was lent a 2003 book on the NYS&W who bot the WB&E and in
>> turn was controlled by the Erie...   long story...

Even longer than has generally been published <g>.

> The Wilkes-Barre and Eastern Railroad
> This, I think, is a paperback reprint of an earlier hardbound book.

No -- printed as a paperback.

>
> It looks to me as though there were two grades, one going over the
> viaduct and one just to the north that curved around  and went under the
> location of the viaduct.

But not a railroad grade.

For more photos of Panther Creek, see Lucas Hisory of the NYS&W, Fredricks 
Hisory of the WB&E, and various issues of the New Jersey 
Midlander/Trainsheet, including the longer article of the history of the 
WB&E puvlished in 1995.
>
> In the 1889 Topo map for Scranton southeast found at
> http://historical.maptech.com/getImage.cfm?fname=scrn91sw.jpg&state=PA
>
> there is a railroad that runs in the bed of Spring Brook Creek to
> Rockdale. If this was an early alignment of the WB&E it was relocated when
> the dam across Spring Brook  was built to make the Watres Reservoir.

That's the Spring Brook railroad -- originally one of those Pennsylvania
Narrow Guage (4' 3") deals and abandoned early. It was later rebuilt as
standard guage to help in the constrution of the reservoir. One of the
earlier planned alignments of a railroad to tidewater (pre-dating the
NYS&W/WB&E) folowed this route to work out of the Wyoming Valley. When the
NYS&W purchased the properties around Old Forge in 1887, the CNJ promptly
bought the remains to make sure this route would not be open to the NYS&W
for an extension.

Of course, the NYS&W extension was always something mostly promoted by those
go-getters in Scranton, not the insulated private clubbers of Wilkes Barre.
The actual WB&E alignment turned out to be something of an afterthought to
all this, as by the time the Susquehanna got its act together, the Scranton
people had arranged for the O&W to come in and thus say to heck with the
NYS&W.

In any case, for information on the railroads of Pennsylvania, Tom Taber's
Atlas is the best starting point, although the history is cursory.

Cheers,
Jim Guthrie
ELHS #1296



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