An engine at the Laurel Run Railroad, a unique miniature line.
In the 1930s, a group of model railroaders began building locomotives and cars from kits that they set up in the basement of a men’s store on Reading’s Penn Street. They subsequently moved to a warehouse and then to a basement and garage. At Christmastime, they organized special displays at a volunteer fire company. By 1945, they had fifteen locomotives, sixty freight cars, and twenty-five passenger cars that drew hundreds of visitors each month. The group incorporated in 1948 as the Reading Society of Model Engineers, and today it operates on property outside Reading on the appropriately named Ironhorse Lane.
The Reading Society of Model Engineers owns an entire building filled with model railroad layouts, but its most fascinating models operate on the grounds outside. The Laurel Run Railroad is a miniature railroad, or a cross between a model railroad and a tourist line. Its rails are fifteen inches apart, and its locomotives and other cars are proportionately sized. Passengers sit on seats mounted on, not in, its miniature boxcars, and on any given ride, most of the passengers are not children.
Society members laid the tracks, which run through a pleasant copse and over a miniature trestle bridge spanning a brook. They also built or adapted the rolling stock, which includes a steam engine and a replica of a Reading Company diesel engine that runs on a car motor fueled by gasoline. They may have taken the name Laurel Run from Franklin B. Gowen’s Laurel Run Improvement Company (whose name was later changed to the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company), which he employed to get the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad into the coal-mining business. The society also operates what members call their light-rail division, with both 7¼-inch- and 4¾-inch-gauge railroads. The society hosts several open houses each year.
An early member of the Reading Society of Model Engineers, Laurence Gieringer, held a deep interest in model railroading, inspired by the scenery he had witnessed during childhood rambles with his brother Paul in and around the city of Reading. The two started building models at a small workbench in their cellar. After many years of working together, Paul became a priest but encouraged Laurence to continue with his hobby. At Christmastime in 1935, the Reading Eagle reported on the miniatures Gieringer had set up for the enjoyment of his own children. Gieringer began using a local fire company to house the display, and by 1938, his miniatures were being featured in magazines and newsreels, where they were called the “World’s Largest Miniature Village.” After a brief stay near Hamburg, the village was relocated to its current home in Shartlesville and officially named Roadside America.
Signs proclaiming, “You have to see it!” guide visitors to the eight-thousand-square-foot Roadside America, where models re-create scenes of American life from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. A constant hum of moving trains permeates the building, but the trains are almost incidental to the landscaping and tiny figures and buildings, some of which can be manually operated by buttons on a partition that separates tourists from the layout. Roadside America has rivers, canals, and even a waterfall cascading from a mountain that rises up the side of a wall. Cable cars climb to the summit of this peak, where tiny skiers and skaters are perpetually enjoying winter weather. From time to time, a loudspeaker announces the “night scene,” and the sun sets behind the Statue of Liberty before the red dawn heralds a new day for the enduring little citizens of Roadside America, who have remained in place since their creator’s death in 1963.
Catawissa–Caboosenut Country
Located on the eastern shore of the northern branch of the Susquehanna River, Catawissa was originally established in 1787. By the 1850s, it was served by a railroad that eventually became part of the Reading system after changing hands a number of times. In 1979, Walt Gosciminski purchased the Catawissa train station and later a number of cabooses, which he relocated on a lot between the station and the railroad tracks that line the shore of the river. He now has eight cabooses fitted out as motel rooms that can handle parties of various sizes. The 1910 train station is open year-round, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner daily, with chicken and waffles on Tuesdays. Rent a caboose and during the day you can watch for Canadian Pacific trains on the tracks adjacent to the complex or visit the nearby Knoebels Amusement Resort.
The caboose motel in Catawissa.
Knoebels Grove
Officially named Knoebels (the K is pronounced) Amusement Resort, this amusement park and picnic grove, located near Elysburg, is home to two popular miniature train rides that have been in operation for about fifty years. The Pioneer was installed around 1960 on narrow-gauge tracks that took passengers through what was then Pennsylvania woodland embellished to suggest the Old West. The little gas engine traveled past a covered wagon, an Indian village, and a coal mine disguised as a gold mine. Today the same train winds its way among other attractions that have sprung up along its tracks. Knoebels also has the appropriately named Old Smokey, a miniature steam engine train ride with a locomotive that burns anthracite coal. It replaced an earlier miniature train ride installed in 1946, called the Nickel Plate. With these trains and some of its other attractions, Knoebels still manages to suggest a bygone era.
The vintage Pioneer Train still rides the rails at Knoebels Grove.
Lorett Treese Travels
Since it had rained buckets the night before, everyone attending the Anthracite Heritage Festival in Shamokin was glad to see the sun come out when it did around 9:30 a.m. on the Saturday before Memorial Day 2011. It was the fourth time Mat and I had participated in this demonstration of civic pride in the town where he grew up and where a number of his siblings still lived. We missed the ringing of the church bells and the sounding of the colliery whistle that traditionally open this event but arrived in time to hear a lively gospel group performing on the stage that blocked off Arch Street. We strolled among the three blocks of vendors, noticing that many of them that particular year were church groups, either raising money with games and bake sales or handing out literature intended to bring in new members.
The annual festival involves the entire town. Just about every church in Shamokin has some historic feature, like the Coal Altar at Mother Cabrini, and they all open their doors on festival day. Other years, we had attended a cleverly produced Cemetery Tour in which costumed interpreters played the parts of citizens buried on a hill above Shamokin, dramatizing the history of the town.
In 2011, we were anticipating doing something that no one had done in Shamokin in many years; we were going to ride a passenger train. We spotted a train waiting to be boarded on Water Street, terminated at both ends by SEDACOG locomotives, one from the Lycoming Valley Railroad, the other from the North Shore Railroad. In between were five passenger cars, a caboose, and a baggage car that seemed to have been fitted out as a lounge or office car for the train crew, from what we could see through its open doors. As passengers embarked, we found ourselves seated in the sort of car I remembered riding on the Pennsy in my childhood, with seats whose backs could be shifted so that riders could face either direction and windows that we used to call guillotine windows, which incurred a warning over the speaker system that passengers keep their arms, heads, and legs inside the car.
With a double blast of the diesel horn, we were off on rails still embedded in the streets of Shamokin. The train moved very slowly, and local police stopped traffic at intersections. We passed beneath the new Route 61 overpass, and then we were out of town and riding through the wooded area surrounding the Cameron Culm Bank, a giant slag heap that has long dominated the local scenery but over the last several years has become covered with vegetation and now looks like a real mountain.
In 2011 Shamokin’s annual Anthracite Heritage Festival featured a passenger train on the tracks of the Shamokin Valley Railroad.
There’s a reason why Water Street got its name: it hugs the side of Shamokin Creek (pronounced “crick” here, according to Mat). Thanks to the rain the previous evening, this fast-moving creek had turned into a m
uddy torrent, and in some places the rails were so close to the embankment that we overheard at least one child anxiously ask his parents if we were in any danger of falling in.
We passed through Uniontown, where Mat often stops to wash our car when we come up to visit family. I recalled the one time I had been waiting behind the car wash for him to finish up and heard pulsing engine noises and flange squealing from across the creek, where dense vegetation hid a passing freight train from my view. It was the first time in more than twenty years of visiting Shamokin that I had had any indication these tracks were ever used, and because I could not actually see the moving train, it felt like a psychic experience. Now our train passed by other commercial establishments that backed up to the tracks, and we saw some evidence that they presently might be doing business with the Shamokin Valley Railroad. We halted near Durdach Brothers, a beverage distributor, which is also a regular stop for us on any given visit to Shamokin.
The train ride was narrated, but excited children on a very crowded train prevented us from hearing much of the commentary. We did learn that steam locomotives were used on these tracks until 1957, and it had been a regular custom for housewives to run out and take their wash off the line when they heard a train approaching in order to protect it from cinders and smoke. We learned that miners had been able to ride for free, the “chit” they used to enter the mines acting as a perpetual ticket. We also learned that the little hamlet named Weigh Scales got its name from the scales used to weigh coal cars at the rail yard that used to be located here. A restaurant in Weigh Scales called the Wayside Inn used to be one of our favorite dining establishments, until they took pierogies off the menu.
Everybody waved at our train. People driving in cars along the adjacent Route 61 waved out their windows. In Uniontown, folks came out of their houses to snap pictures. We spotted one rail fan with a camera at least three times, since he was able to drive his car along our route much faster than our slow-moving train.
That the Shamokin Valley Railroad had known better days was obvious when I looked down out of the window of our passenger car. Although plant life had nearly succeeded in obscuring them, I could see the remains of a second set of rails. Here and there, I also spotted several large piles of old, rotting railroad ties. This line that was beginning to see traffic again once had been double-tracked. Silently I thanked SEDACOG JRA for its preservation efforts.
The Region’s Rail-Trails
Three sections of the Schuylkill River Trail extend into this region: Pottstown to Reading, Reading to Hamburg, and Hamburg to Pottsville. An organization called the Schuylkill River Heritage Area maintains the trail once it crosses the border into Berks County. The Pottstown-to-Reading section is interrupted by an on-road portion between the towns of Birdsboro and Gibraltar. Outside Reading, over a right-of-way acquired from Conrail, the trail follows the earlier Thun Trail (named for local industrialist Ferdinand K. Thun, pronounced “tune”), now the Thun Section of the Schuylkill River Trail. Here trail users cross several large railroad bridges that offer dramatic views of the Schuylkill River. The Schuylkill River Heritage Area plans to install signage on an on-road route between Reading and Hamburg until all issues involving property owners and community partnerships can be resolved and the actual trail can be opened. The Hamburg-to-Pottsville section is also a work in progress, with a six-mile section along Blue Mountain above the Schuylkill River open between Hamburg and Auburn. There’s a trailhead just outside the Reading Railroad Heritage Museum.
Outside Tamaqua, users can access the Lehigh and New England Trail, which runs parallel to Route 309 on a former section of the Lehigh and New England Railroad southeast of the town. Extending southwest from Tamaqua to Middleport is the Schuylkill Valley Heritage Trail, which runs parallel to Route 209 through several former coal patch towns. Near the Tamaqua trailhead, users can witness the baleful entrance to the Newkirk Tunnel, a coal mine originally opened in 1868 and expanded in the twentieth century by the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company. A gate prevents the curious from any potentially dangerous exploration of the mine.
Other rail-trails in the region include the J. Manley Robbins Trail, JFK Walking Trail, and Muhlenberg Rail Trail.
SECTION FOUR
Pennsylvania Wilds
Great and Growing Railways of the Region
The New York Central
The New York Central Railroad (NYC) was not the result of a grand scheme or ambitious plan on the part of an individual or a group. Instead, it was a consolidation of smaller railroads, including the first railroad to operate in the state of New York, whose managers came to see the wisdom of joining their lines together.
In his history of the New York Central, Aaron E. Klein tells the story of the Mohawk & Hudson Rail Road, the oldest of the tiny lines that would become the NYC. In the 1820s, George Featherstonaugh of Duanesburgh traveled to Albany, where he persuaded the wealthy and politically powerful Stephen Van Rensselaer to support the concept of a railroad running seven miles between the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, linking the cities of Albany and Schenectady. Opposition was expected from promoters and supporters of the Erie Canal, but it was also raised by certain citizens of Albany and by the Albany & Schenectady Turnpike Company. However, the New York legislature granted a charter in 1826, and opening day came in August 1831.
The Mohawk & Hudson was followed by the creation of other small passenger lines connecting the cities all along the Erie Canal, such as the Schenectady & Troy, the Rochester & Syracuse, and the Buffalo & Rochester. By the 1850s, it seemed logical to consolidate these individual operations, creating a single railroad that could stand up to competition from the New York & Erie Railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The legislature permitted the railroads to merge in 1853 as the New York Central Railroad, running between Albany and Buffalo. The key promoter of the merger, Erastus Corning, a manufacturer who had also served as mayor of Albany and president of the Utica & Schenectady Railroad, was president of the new railroad until 1864.
In 1867, Cornelius Vanderbilt (known as “the Commodore,” thanks to his steamship fortune) took over the New York Central, and two years later, he consolidated it with two other railroads into the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. For the first time, passengers could travel between New York City and Buffalo via a single line. The Commodore formally extended his railroad’s reach to Chicago in 1873 by taking over the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway and later the Michigan Central Railroad, which had been serving as the NYC’s link with that city since through service was established in 1849. His son William added the New York, West Shore & Buffalo Railroad in 1885 and eventually extended the company’s reach to Boston and St. Louis.
As early as the 1830s, semibituminous coal had been discovered in several areas of Pennsylvania’s Tioga and Lycoming Counties, prompting the NYC to extend its operations into the Commonwealth in order to gain ready access to its locomotive fuel. The NYC leased the Fall Brook Railway in 1899, merging it into the parent company in 1914. The earliest portion of this line had opened in 1840 as the Tioga Railroad, connecting the coalfields near Blossburg, Pennsylvania, with Corning, New York. It had become the Corning, Cowanesque & Antrim Railway after a merger with another railroad in 1873. An 1892 reorganization then combined it with three other railways, renaming it the Fall Brook Railway after Fall Brook Creek, a tributary of the Tioga River, which had significant deposits of coal. The New York Central had also promoted the creation of the Beech Creek Railroad, running from the Clearfield area to the Pennsylvania town of Jersey Shore near Williamsport, where it would connect with the Fall Brook Railway. The New York Central leased this line in 1890 and made it part of its Pennsylvania Division in 1899. By the twentieth century, NYC lines served the Pennsylvania counties of Cambria, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Crawford, Erie, Indiana, Jefferson, Lycoming, Mercer, Tioga, Venango, and Warren.
While Pennsylvania enjoyed its oil boom in the 1860s, the Lake
Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, soon to become part of the New York Central system, extended a branch from Ashtabula, Ohio, to the Pennsylvania towns of Franklin and Oil City. John D. Rockefeller shipped his oil over these tracks to refineries in Cleveland. The Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway also took over several smaller lines built along the southern shore of Lake Erie, which resulted in the placement of this port city on the NYC’s main line. In 1877, the New York Central purchased stock that would give it control of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad, linking its main line with the river valleys of the Pittsburgh region.
The New York Central’s nineteenthcentury invasion of the Commonwealth resulted in a long rivalry with the Pennsy. By the twentieth century, both railroads offered high-speed luxury train service between New York City and Chicago, with schedules that placed the trains on parallel tracks for a portion of the distance. In 1913, the NYC opened its Grand Central Terminal in New York City to compete with the magnificent Pennsylvania Station.
Unfortunately, the New York Central and the Pennsy also shared the same twentieth-century problems. Business declined after World War II, resulting in the elimination of scores of intercity and local passenger trains. The two rivals were forced into an uneasy alliance as the ill-fated Penn Central in 1968.
The National New York Central Railroad Museum was founded in 1987 in Elkhart, Indiana, to preserve the histories of the NYC, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, and other affiliates. The New York Central System Historical Society, begun in 1970 by former employees of the NYC, is located in Gates Mills, Ohio.
The Wellsboro & Corning Railroad
In the late 2000s, the Wellsboro & Corning Railroad (WCOR) got a new nickname: Main Line to the Marcellus. The thirty-five-mile short line operating between Corning, New York, and Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, became an important distributor of hydraulic fracturing sand from Norfolk Southern Corporation’s Southern Tier Line deep into Tioga County, where it can be loaded onto trucks and hauled to natural gas rigs in Pennsylvania’s busiest region of natural gas exploration and development. The railroad’s revenues doubled in 2009 and 2010, and hauling sand became 80 percent of its business.
Railroads of Pennsylvania Page 17