Scranton Area Odds and Ends

Some neat stuff in and around Scranton that you might not have noticed

Along Ash Street in east Scranton is a set of three light-weight commuter coaches.   I believe these are off the Reading, but I could be mistaken.  Don't let the grey and maroon color scheme fool you, they are definitly not Lackawanna cars.  They were painted this way about 15 years ago.  The three cars are parked side by side with several large sections cut away from the sides to accommodate a center room between them.  Although currently vacant, this unusual set-up has been used variously as a bar, restaurant and Elks club.

Another unusual restaurant is this steam locomotive and coach combination located adjacent to Interstate 80 in Tannersville, PA.  While the place was closed at the time of my visit, I'm told that it is still in business.  The locomotive was employeed by Bethleham steel and came to the resturant in the mid 60's.  I've heard several stories about the passenger car, including one theory that it was part of an Erie Lackawanna wreck train that was based in nearby Stroudsburg, PA.  Being somehwhat learned in steam locomotive technology, the engine appears to be from the earliest years years of the 20th century or the closing years of the 19th.  Its also possible that the steamer began life as a tender engine, it does have that look about it

This tank engine is certainly less of a mystery than the one above.  .It does however have one unusual distinction in that it is the only steam locomotive in Scranton not owned by Steamtown.  This former Hudson Coal Company narrow gauge  lokie is owned by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and is on display near the Pennsylvania Anthercite Heritage Museum, an excellent interpretive facility located adjacent to the Lackawanna Coal Mine tour in Scranton.

Another coal company tank engine called northeast Pennsylvania home for a number of years.  This standard guage machine was employeed by the Lehigh Valley Coal Co.  It was stored for a number of years in the remains of the massive D&H roundhouse in Carbondale PA.   The intent here was a tourist operation that never came to pass.  Legend has it that the locomotive was actually steamed into the building in the late 1960's. Another legend has it that during this steam-up, the brakes failed and the locomotive ran through the back wall of the building, to be retrieved by tractors later.   Carbondale was the southern terminus for the Delaware & Hudson's  Challenger locomotives and accordingly had a 135 foot turntable and quite a few bays that were lengthened to 140 feet to accommodate these beasts.  The roundhouse was torn down in the late '90's to make way for an industrial park.  The tank engine was rescued by a midwest group and a restoration to steam is underway.  Visit the website: www.geocities.com/Yosemite/8738 for more info from the group restoring this engine.

Here is another roundhouse in northeast Pennsylvania.   This is the former DL& W Kingston, PA roundhouse.  Students of DL& W architecture will find that this structure retains much more of its historic character than the sterized 13 stall DL&W roundhouse at Steamtown.  This one retains its original wooden doors and even some windows.  Even though the turntable is long gone, the building is in remakable shape for an unmaintained warehouse

Railroading in the northeast began with the introduction of "Gravity" railroads. This involved a stationary steam engine pulling a string of four wheel cars up one side of a mountain and letting gravity propel them down the other side.  This was repeated over several slopes to get coal from the mines to waiting canal barges.  Eventually these lines were put to use as sight-seeing thrill rides, in effect the first roller coasters.   While the gravity slopes became obsolete with the advent of the steam locomotive, many of the passenger cars have been saved.   The top photo shows a preserved example at Nay Aug park in Scranton.  Other cars are perserved in the Pennsylvania towns of Honesdale and Hamlin.  Another car found its way into a restaurant in Blakely, Pennsylvania, as shown in the lower photo.

It would seem that restaurants and taverns have lead to a number of historic cars being "preserved" as it were.  Trolley cars are no exception.  A rare Osgood Bradley car from Scranton transit was entombed for a number of years in a building in Daleville, Pa.  When the building was being torn down this trolley car was "re-discovered" and has since been aquired by the Electric City Trolley Museum.  The first photo shows the building before demolition began, while the second shows the tarped car after the rest of the building had been razed.  Amazingly enough, with all the additions and modifications to the trolley body, the windows still opened and closed! One piece of Scranton's trolley heritage that was not saved however was the Scranton Transit car barn.  The building ended its life as a DPW garage and was finally torn down in 2000.

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