Behind the museum, in the area that used to be the busy terminus of both the D&H Canal and the Gravity railroad, there are still railroad tracks where the Stourbridge Line tourist railroad boards its passengers. Operated by the Wayne County Chamber of Commerce, its trains travel from Honesdale to Hawley or Lackawaxen. Besides its popular Great Train Robbery runs and fall foliage expeditions, the Stourbridge Line offers a Bavarian Festival trip and the Grape Express to a wine-tasting event. The scenery frequently includes deer and even bears along the rural route on the Lackawaxen River, as well as glimpses of the remains of the old D&H Canal and stonework of the gravity railroad built by the Pennsylvania Coal Company near Hawley.
When the ride includes a stopover in Hawley, passengers can explore this town, which saw new growth as a tourist destination after 1925, when the Pennsylvania Power & Light Company dammed Wallenpaupack Creek to create hydroelectric power. The company also created Pennsylvania’s largest man-made lake, which still attracts many tourists for its fishing, boating, and other water recreation opportunities. Downtown Hawley’s Bingham Park, donated to the borough by the family of Albert W. Bingham in 1929, used to be a basin for the canal system. Just down the road, visitors can view the Pioneer Coach, a passenger car that was used on the Pennsylvania Coal Company’s gravity railroad.
Stourbridge Line passengers disembarking in the village of Lackawaxen can view and tour the artifact of the D&H Canal now known as the Delaware Aqueduct or Roebling Bridge. It has spanned the Delaware ever since the beginning of canal season in 1848. The structure is the only surviving example of the four suspension aqueducts designed by John Roebling. Roebling’s suspension design was particularly suitable for the location because it allowed for a larger span and fewer piers, which meant fewer impediments to timber being floated down the Delaware. This alleviated some of the conflict between the coal and lumber industries that had previously arisen when rafts of logs rammed coal boats and vice versa.
The Roebling Bridge continued to be used as an aqueduct until 1898, when the canal was closed and drained. It was then converted to a private toll bridge. The National Park Service purchased the artifact in 1980 to become part of its Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River project. In 1995, those portions of the aqueduct that had been dismantled as unnecessary for a toll bridge were reconstructed so that it would look more like what Roebling had originally designed.
The Stourbridge Line prepared to depart for a tour.
An artifact of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company has been reconstructed in Lackawaxen, illustrating how a canal was once built across the Delaware River.
Visitors can use the bridge to cross the Delaware River, which is surprisingly narrow this far north. On the New York side, you can visit the toll house that was added in 1900 and view some photos and other materials relating to the structure’s history as both aqueduct and toll bridge. You can also watch cars cross the one-lane structure, most of their drivers unaware that this narrow bridge with sides too high to see over was once filled with water and boats loaded with coal heading for New York.
Lorett Treese Travels
The last time we visited the town of Jim Thorpe was in 2005; then, as in our previous visits, we found it a quiet place where the main attraction was the ability to walk its few streets and admire what was virtually a catalog of nineteenthcentury styles of domestic architecture. In some cases, the adaptation of what was meant to be an effusive and flamboyant style to fit the confines of a diminutive building lot was amusing and inventive. We used to dine in the homey comfort of the Hotel Switzerland or the everybody-knows-everybody atmosphere of the neighboring Sunrise Diner. I can also recall sitting with Mat on the porch of the Harry Packer mansion, sipping brandy while we watched the sun disappear behind the surrounding mountains and a peaceful hush fell over the town.
On July Fourth weekend in 2011, when we revisited Jim Thorpe, we knew right away that things had changed when it took us close to twenty minutes just to reach the town’s main intersection because of backed-up traffic. We used to park in the public lot near the train station. Though the lot had been expanded to stretch all the way south on Route 209 to the junction with Route 903, it was filled to capacity. Hoping we’d have better luck on the town streets, we drove up Broadway and parked at the first free place we could find—which was near the town’s Old Jail Museum.
By the time we had hiked back into the center of town, we were pretty thirsty. The Hotel Switzerland was still there, and so was its ornate Victorian bar, but the building now housed the Molly Maguires Pub, a steak-house whose outdoor bar and deck occupied the former site of the Sunrise Diner, which had been moved, we learned, to a location in Ohio in 2008. We took a seat and refreshed ourselves with beer while we marveled at Jim Thorpe’s new amusement park atmosphere. You could now hire a horse and carriage or a Segway (and we considered both options for getting back to our parked car) or catch one of the school buses that were shuttling people to and from Lehigh River access points. In the past, we had enjoyed staying at the Inn at Jim Thorpe, but if we did so again, we’d be sure to ask for a room at the rear of the hotel, as far as possible from the traffic on Broadway.
An excursion underway on the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway.
We had come to ride the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway, and the train gave ample warning that it had arrived back in town with multiple deafening blasts of its diesel horn, necessary to warn folks who were crossing the tracks back and forth to the parking lot. From our seats at the deck bar, we watched the locomotive being switched back to the front of the train. Several lucky children were helped up the ladder into the cab while the train was prepared for its next run.
We found seats in the last passenger car before the caboose, choosing the running right—the right-hand side when one faces the direction the train will move—which would afford the best views of the river. While we waited to depart, our narrator introduced himself on the speaker system. He mentioned that Jim Thorpe had a tourism tradition, curiously adding that it had avoided suburban sprawl, “since there’s no room to build a Walmart.” Maybe not, but current-day Jim Thorpe on a holiday weekend has more cars and traffic than I’ve ever seen at a Walmart.
We waited about six minutes after our scheduled departure time, when the narrator informed us that the conductor had called, “All aboard!” Then we were off with the diesel horn blaring again as we passed the parking lot. We entered the rail yard, which the narrator informed us held an operating turntable that the railroad used when it was running excursions with a steam locomotive. Here we could see another diesel locomotive and quite a few pieces of rolling stock. Some examples were obviously awaiting restoration, but other nicely restored passenger cars were apparently waiting until they were needed to handle a larger crowd on a longer train. Here we could also spot the beginning of the twenty-six-mile trail extending from Jim Thorpe to White Haven, which ran parallel to the tracks and was thronged that day with hikers and bikers—even beyond the point where a sign informed them that they were entering bear country. Here and there through the trees, we could see people enjoying the river in rafts, tubes, and kayaks. The narrator told us about the wildlife in the area as well as the features along the tracks, such as the solar panels that powered the signals for the train. He told us when we were entering Ox-bow Curve, where we in the last car could clearly see the locomotive far up ahead.
We stopped when we reached what was left of the rail junction at Penn Haven. While we waited, the locomotive passed us on a parallel track. We were able to watch through the open doors of the caboose as a conductor in uniform manually pulled the switch that allowed the locomotive to move to our track, where it carefully backed up to couple with the caboose. Unlike many trips we have taken on Amtrak, this time we barely felt the bump.
On the way back, as we passed the parking lot near Glen Onoko, we noticed the flashing lights of an ambulance and fire truck. Not to worry, our narrator explained. It was just that some folks went places they shou
ld not have or tried things that were not particularly wise, making the ambulance a fairly common sight at this location. Sometimes the train even stopped to take injured or exhausted tourists back to town.
The Region’s Rail-Trails
Mauch Chunk’s old Switchback Railroad lives on as the Switch Back Trail, an eighteen-mile loop with a number of access points. The best place to start a Switch Back trek is not on the trail at all, but in downtown Jim Thorpe at the Mauch Chunk Museum and Cultural Center, where a well-crafted operating model of the original railroad illustrates the Switchback’s route and demonstrates how it worked.
Hikers can reach the trail from an access point with a parking area on Hill Road, just off Jim Thorpe’s Broadway, or in the town of Summit Hill, which grew up around the area’s original mine. Those seeking more of a nature walk than a hike will prefer the gently sloping topography in a section called the “home stretch” because cars once returned to Mauch Chunk over its tracks. Not far from the parking lot of pleasant Mauch Chunk Lake Park, a replica Switchback car has been installed for visitors to inspect.
The town of Jim Thorpe marks the southern end of Lehigh Gorge State Park, administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Lying along the Lehigh River, the park is located in the northern region of the Delaware and Lehigh Natural Heritage Corridor, extending between the Pennsylvania towns of Wilkes-Barre and Bristol along the routes of the Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad and the Lehigh and Delaware Canals. The big attraction on the Lehigh River is whitewater rafting and canoeing, at their best from late March through June. Jim Thorpe has a number of licensed outfitters who provide water craft, guides, and safety equipment to visitors of various skill levels.
Bicyclists along the Lehigh Gorge State Park Trail. Trains run on the adjacent tracks.
CNJ artifacts along the Lehigh Gorge State Park Trail, including an old railroad tunnel and the pier for a viaduct across the Lehigh River.
The Lehigh Gorge’s scenery continues to attract a crowd, just as it did a century ago, but modern visitors have to make do without certain amenities that their ancestors enjoyed. The Hotel Wahnetah, with its wilderness dance pavilion and tennis courts, was closed after a number of fires during the 1910s, effectively ending the resort era in the gorge. Gone, too, are the rustic bridges and railings that once guided guests to Glen Onoko.
A modern Glen Onoko excursion begins with a drive through Lehigh Gorge State Park along a road that runs parallel to railroad tracks still in use and a renovated iron bridge. Another new bridge allows cars to cross the Lehigh to reach a small parking lot near where the Hotel Wahnetah used to stand. Signs leading to the trail are emblazoned with warnings that there have been serious injuries and even deaths along the rocky and narrow trail. The cliff on the opposite side of the river has an intriguing hole that can be identified as a railroad tunnel because of the way it is lined up with a still-standing pier that must have once supported a bridge. These are the remains of the CNJ route to the hotel. So romantic an artifact can’t help but draw its share of explorers, and hikers can sometimes be spotted peering out of the hole down the sheer drop to the river.
Only the stouthearted can endure the entire distance of about a mile and half to Glen Onoko, where there are two waterfalls. The first waterfall is about forty feet high; water plunges straight down for half the distance, then tumbles over rocky steps the rest of the way. At the second waterfall, the stream pours over a wide ledge with enough overhang to make the water appear to be coming out of nowhere. The now-remote Glen Onoko waterfalls are some of the biggest in the entire Poconos region.
The D&H Trail runs from the town of Simpson through Lanesboro to the New York border along the old railbed of the D&H’s Jefferson branch. It forms a recreation system with the first eight miles of the O&W Rail Trail, which also begins in Simpson and runs parallel to the D&H, but on the east side of the Lackawanna River to Stillwater Lake, along the former route of the New York, Ontario & Western Railroad out of Scranton. The trail then veers east to the Delware River and Hancock, New York.
Other rail-trails in this region include the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail, Greater Hazleton Rails to Trails, Susquehanna Warrior Trail, Back Mountain Trail, Conservancy Narrow Gauge Rail Trail, and Endless Mountain Riding Trail.
SECTION SIX
The Alleghenies
Great and Growing Railways of the Region
The Baltimore & Ohio
Baltimore’s business leaders, who were no less threatened by the Erie Canal than were the leaders of Philadelphia, made their city the scene of familiar discussions regarding the relative merits of canals and railroads during the winter of 1826–27. A committee took relatively little time to recommend proceeding with a railroad rather than a canal, and the business leaders proposed a line across the Allegheny Mountains, with its western terminus suggested by its proposed name: the Baltimore & Ohio Railway Company. Once the entity was incorporated by Maryland’s legislature on February 28, 1827, it officially became known as the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company.
In his history of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O), John F. Stover relates how construction began on the Fourth of July in 1828. Charles Carroll, one of Baltimore’s most respected senior citizens, broke ground, proclaiming that this act was the second most important, after signing the Declaration of Independence, of his long life. Members of the Free and Accepted Masons positioned the B&O’s “first stone,” the sort of granite block also called a “sleeper,” used by early engineers to support a railroad’s rails.
By June 1830, horses were pulling railroad cars between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills. By December 1831, the line was operating between Baltimore and Frederick, and a little later, the railroad opened a branch between Baltimore and Washington. By 1842, the B&O’s main line west followed the Potomac River valley to Cumberland, and its next logical goal was Pittsburgh.
Not long after Horatio Allen tested the Stourbridge Lion in 1829, the B&O began operating locomotives. Engineers at the Canton Iron Works built an experimental locomotive called the Tom Thumb, which B&O executives tested on a thirteen-mile run in 1830. Although the Tom Thumb later lost a famous race against a horse, B&O management decided that steam was the motive power of the future for railroads. In August 1832, Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania reported that an anthracite-burning locomotive built in York, Pennsylvania, had been tested on the B&O, where it had conveyed seven railroad cars between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills.
Back in 1828, the B&O had obtained permission from Pennsylvania to lay its tracks through the Commonwealth, provided that its line was completed by 1843. In 1839, the Pennsylvania legislature extended the completion date to 1847, but before that year arrived, at a time when it appeared that the B&O had settled on a route through Pittsburgh, a number of Pennsylvania business leaders began to express misgivings. Residents of southwestern Pennsylvania were generally ready to welcome the B&O, but those residing east of the Alleghenies argued that the State Works would lose valuable traffic and Philadelphia would lose Pittsburgh’s trade to Baltimore.
In 1846, Pennsylvania’s governor signed a bill giving the B&O the right to build from Cumberland, Maryland, to Pittsburgh, but it contained an amendment that made the bill null and void if, within fifteen months, the Pennsylvania Railroad obtained a certain amount of cash and had under contract a specified number of railroad miles. The Pennsy met these conditions, giving the B&O no choice but to reach the Ohio River by a route running south of the Mason-Dixon line. The B&O main line west therefore was extended through Grafton, Virginia, to Wheeling (now in West Virginia, but then part of Virginia) by 1852. After a second line was built between Grafton and Parkersburg, the B&O extended its reach to Cincinnati, East St. Louis, and Chicago by the 1870s. In 1871, it entered Pittsburgh by leasing another railroad.
In 1886, the B&O opened a line linking Baltimore and Philadelphia via Wilmington. It acquired trackage rights over the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad and the Central
Railroad of New Jersey, giving its freight and passengers access to Jersey City, just across the Hudson from New York. The B&O expanded in western Pennsylvania during the early 1890s by acquiring control of other railroads operating there, including the Pittsburgh & Western Railroad.
While this competitor grew and expanded, the Pennsylvania Railroad had been busy purchasing B&O stock, resulting in the increasing representation of Pennsy executives on the B&O board, until they effectively controlled the railroad. In 1901, the Pennsy took direct control of the B&O by requesting the resignation of its president, John K. Cowen, and replacing him with Leonor F. Loree.
Despite declines in both revenue and traffic during the Depression, the B&O remained profitable through most of the 1950s. In 1963, the more profitable Chesapeake & Ohio Railway took control, folding the B&O into an eleven-thousand-mile “Chessie” system stretching from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. The B&O subsequently became part of CSX Corporation, which was created by the merger of the Chessie system with Seaboard Coast Line Industries. Today the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore preserves and interprets the history of the B&O and other Mid-Atlantic regional railroads, including the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway and the Western Maryland Railway. There is also a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Historical Society in Baltimore.
The Pennsy through the Alleghenies
In the spring of 1846, following the formal incorporation of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the race was on. Could the Commonwealth’s new railroad actually fulfill the terms of its charter, raise the required funds, and get thirty miles of roadbed under contract within about a year?
Railroads of Pennsylvania Page 25