(erielack) Re: Helpers and Train Length

["Cynthia Brookshire" <curtis.brookshire_@_verizon.net>]

If I remember correctly east of Scranton:
Pacific 7 cars
Hudson 9 cars
Pocono 11 cars

West of Scranton:
Pacific 9 cars
Hudson 11 cars
Pocono 13 cars.

Now as soon as I say this, we can point to photos of number 47 running with
24 cars and one 4-8-4, so I'll shrug my shoulders and say that the helper
threshold was for maintaining schedule time and the milk trains were
allotted a slower speed(?)

Helpers ran from Gravel Place to Pocono Summit and from Scranton to Clark's
Summit.  Don't know about Dansville Hill, someone else will have to help
there.  Also not sure about the 4-8-2s.  They would either be rated equal to
the Poconos or one car less.  Wish I could weight my models to do as well.
Tabor's book shows a 2100 class 2-8-2 working as a helper with a Pacific out
of Gravel Place (I would assume the helpers were actually added in East
Stroudsburg), so a helper would not necessarily be a 4-8-4 as a 2-8-2 could
meet the schedule on the grade with its restricted curves.

I'm trying to remember where I saw that written in either the Tabor books or
"Eastern Steam Pictorial" (an old Carleton book).

I'm not sure as far as train length, but it seemed the Lackawanna liked to
limit them to the 10-13 car range.  I would speculate that this is both due
to helper requirements and to avoid hanging out beyond the platforms at
Hoboken.  There were additional trains scheduled to run between Scranton and
Hoboken on summer weekends.  On Labor Day number 6 would have a section
originating in East Stroudsburg, one in Scranton and one in Buffalo to
handle the tourist traffic.  Exceptions would be the night trains with their
heavy head end traffic and aforementioned milk trains.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.  I'm too young to have witnessed this and
have to rely on written material and photographs.

Curtis Brookshire
Manassas, VA

> From Archives_@_Railfan.net
> Message-ID: <c19.43e1260b.35d3426b_@_aol.com>
> Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:45:47 EDT
> From: RJFlei_@_aol.com
> Subject: (erielack) Lackawanna Hudson Questions
>
> Since this is one of my favorite engines I'd like to ask these  questions.
>
> 1. What was the maximum train length assigned to these engines? (passenger
> cars)
>
> 2. At what point were these engines (train length) double headed or other
> power substituted? (Pocono)
>
> Thanks
>
> Rick Fleischer
> Cortland, OH.
>
>
>
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