Railroads of Pennsylvania

by Treese, Lorett

  We asked the park ranger inside the station how many trains went by each day, but he wasn’t quite sure. We had not been chatting with him for five minutes when we heard a diesel horn. We rushed out onto the platform, but the train was moving too fast for me to get my camera out in time. It continued to surge westbound at a speed that did not even allow me to count the cars, and then it was around the bend and gone.

  Railroad Hall at the Franklin Institute

  When the Franklin Institute opened its new museum in 1934, one of its largest exhibits was the Baldwin steam locomotive called the Number 60,000, built in 1926 as an experimental model. After it was retired from testing on some of the nation’s leading railroads, Samuel M. Vauclain, chairman of the board of the Baldwin Locomotive Works and a member of the institute’s board of managers, offered it to the Franklin Institute. Matthias Baldwin, founder of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, had been an original member of the Franklin Institute.

  Getting the locomotive into the museum was a monumental project that fascinated the citizens of Philadelphia in the autumn of 1933. While the museum was still under construction, the builders left an enormous hole in one of its walls through which the train could pass. However, getting the Number 60,000 to the museum from the nearest set of railroad tracks, which was four blocks away at Twenty-fourth and Vine Streets, was still a problem. The John Eichleay Jr. Company was hired to move the locomotive.

  To keep the streets of Philadelphia from collapsing under the locomotive’s 709,000 pounds, the movers distributed its weight by carpeting the streets with planks over which they laid temporary tracks. A contemporary report illustrates the slow progress of the Number 60,000: “An ordinary size truck has been pulling it,” writes Laura Lee in the September 22, 1933, Evening Bulletin. “One day, on account of the truck strike, a horse was used, much to the amusement of the crowds of onlookers who have lined the streets ever since maneuvers began.” The Number 60,000 finally reached the hole in the museum’s wall and rolled in. According to Lee, its smokestack “just grazed through,” to sighs of relief from the museum director and movers.

  A 1937 Franklin Institute newsletter reports that “of the more than 4,000 action exhibits at the Museum of the Franklin Institute, the famous giant locomotive, is perhaps the most representative of the spirit of the entire building.” Visitors loved climbing into its cab and working the levers, which caused it to roll forward or backward a single rotation of its wheels. The Franklin Institute had pioneered the hands-on interactive science exhibit, and the largest object with which visitors interacted was the Number 60,000.

  The Baldwin Number 60,000 represented modern technology back in 1934 and made an interesting contrast with another locomotive in the same exhibit hall, called the Rocket. The Rocket had been built in Britain for the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad. When it arrived in Philadelphia in 1838, it accidentally plunged into the Delaware River, where it remained until a crane capable of fishing it out could be found. Nevertheless, the Rocket served its railroad for forty-one years before being retired to a display area at the Reading Terminal. The railroad lent the engine to the Franklin Institute in 1933.

  The Franklin Institute has refurbished its Railroad Hall several times, most recently in 2001 with a project that changed its name to the Train Factory. Curators were not able to move the enormous Baldwin Number 60,000, whose weight is supported by special scaffolding beneath the floor, so they chose to give it historical perspective by building a circa 1926 locomotive erecting hall around it. Today visitors enter the engine’s darkened cab, where recorded voices and train noises suggest that it is on its trial run. Another installation adds drama by inviting visitors to figure out why a different experimental locomotive crashed when it was being similarly tested at the same factory. The Baldwin Number 60,000 begins to move, traveling the same few feet it has traveled for more than seventy years, but the new installation gives this feat the same level of excitement it generated when the museum opened.

  Thomas Leiper’s House

  Those living today who know anything about Thomas Leiper know of him primarily from two artifacts he left behind. One is the elegant Federal-style country house he built in 1785, which still stands in Wallingford and is open for tours during the summer months. The other is an archive of letters he exchanged with Thomas Jefferson beginning in 1791, when the then secretary of state rented a home in Philadelphia from Leiper.

  Not long after he arrived from Scotland in 1763, Leiper opened a tobacco shop in Philadelphia. He dealt with southern plantation owners such as Jefferson and James Madison and soon became a prominent city merchant. In the 1770s, he began buying property outside Philadelphia, where he became the proprietor of a number of other industries. Crum Creek flowed through his estate and powered the mills of a factory community he named Avondale.

  The Leiper estate also included several quarries on Crum Creek that had been in operation since the 1740s. Granite was much in demand for construction in the city, and Leiper constructed a mill where large blocks of granite were sawn into curbing and coping. Since Crum Creek was not easily navigable and the country roads were not in the best condition to support heavily laden wagons in all seasons of the year, getting his product to market was a significant challenge for Thomas Leiper. He requested permission to construct a canal, but the Pennsylvania legislature denied it because the other Crum Creek mill owners objected. When the technology became available, Leiper built his railroad instead.

  The Wallingford home of Thomas Leiper.

  Today Thomas Leiper’s country home is nestled practically beneath the Blue Route, whose construction nearly caused its demolition. A plaque near the front door attests to his accomplishments as an early railroader. A guide provides additional details during tours and directs visitors to a state historical marker not far from the railroad’s Ridley Creek terminus. The Friends of the Thomas Leiper House possess a map drawn in 1971, which identifies the precise route of the railroad, but attempting to locate and walk it today would result in trespassing through a great deal of private property.

  After Leiper’s death, his son finally got permission to construct a canal on Crum Creek by which the stone was subsequently shipped. In 1852, a spur was laid between the quarries and what became the B&O line between Philadelphia and Baltimore, and it remained open until 1942.

  The Newtown Square Railroad Museum

  In 1894, the Pennsylvania Railroad took over an as-yet-unopened line called the Philadelphia & Delaware County Railroad and turned it into what became known as its Newtown Square branch, which brought both freight and passenger rail into the heart of Delaware County. Passenger service continued until 1908, when it succumbed to competition from trolleys, but freight service continued as far west as Haverford until 1985.

  Equipment undergoing restoration at the Newtown Square Railroad Museum.

  The Newtown Square freight station stood at the original end of the line from 1895 until the late twentieth century, when it seemed about to fall victim to a road construction project. Preservation-minded members of a local historical society made plans to save it by moving it to a small park called Drexel Lodge in 1999. Restoration began in 2000, and five years later, it became the hub of a new organization called the Newtown Square Railroad Museum. Once surrounded by lumber and coal yards and a livestock corral, the old railroad freight station now sits amid four railroad cars that the museum is restoring, two of them once used by the Pennsy. The station serves as a small museum of Pennsy memorabilia and the site is occasionally open June through September.

  Fountain Hill–Lehigh Valley Railroad Country

  “It’s a thrill to live on the hill” is the official motto of the borough of Fountain Hill, which stretches along the south bank of the Lehigh River below Bethlehem. In 1854, officers of the Lehigh Valley Railroad (LV) began buying land here for their mansions and their railroad’s headquarters, and here they nurtured the institutions founded by Asa Packer and other local entrepreneurs, such as Lehigh Univer
sity, St. Luke’s Hospital, and the Episcopal Church of the Nativity.

  In the 1860 History of the Lehigh Valley, M. S. Henry describes Bethlehem proper as historically the “principal settlement of the Moravians,” an isolated and insular religious community nestled in a sylvan rural landscape. But below the river, one could find “large manufacturing establishments” together with a “large number of dwellings erected for the accommodation of employees.” One of those manufacturing establishments would have been a plant founded in 1857 to produce iron rails so that the Lehigh Valley Railroad would not have to import them from England. This enterprise grew to become Bethlehem Steel, which by the 1930s covered 720 acres with a complex of steel mills and coke plants surrounded by the modest dwellings of thousands of Irish, Welsh, and Eastern European steel workers.

  The first edition of Railroads of Pennsylvania reported that Bethlehem Steel had ceased metal production at its South Bethlehem headquarters in 1995 but predicted that a museum called the National Museum of Industrial History, to be operated in affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution, would open on the site in 2004 or 2005. When we visited South Bethlehem in December 2010, we found a new skating rink, a casino, a branch of Northampton Community College—and a recently renovated building with a sign that said it was the National Museum of Industrial History, but it had nothing inside. Behind it, the ruins of the old plant still stood abandoned, and across the street, the official offices of the museum were closed.

  An empty building in South Bethlehem whose sign identifies it as the future National Museum of Industrial History. Behind it are the abandoned remains of Bethlehem Steel.

  We learned that the old steel works had been turned over to the International Steel Group, which had sold the site in 2004 to a group locally known as BethlehemWorks (or BethWorks) Now. BethWorks Now had brought in the Las Vegas Sands Corporation as a partner and still planned to save the iconic steel works structures, such as the blast furnaces. The president and CEO of the as-yet-unopened National Museum of Industrial History was predicting a possible opening in 2011, but as of early 2012, the museum had yet to open its doors.

  Bethlehem Steel had once operated its own short-line railroad, called the Philadelphia, Bethlehem & New England Railroad, which served the steelmaking needs of the complex and interchanged with Class I railroads operating in the Lehigh Valley. It was succeeded by Lehigh Valley Rail Management, which developed a large brownfield farther east that had been formerly occupied by other steelwork facilities. Here Lehigh Valley Rail Management now operates BethIntermodal, which interchanges with Norfolk Southern and Canadian Pacific Railway. When Norfolk Southern fully opens its Crescent Corridor in 2012 or 2013, a daily train from Birmingham, Alabama, will terminate at BethIntermodal.

  While there’s no sign yet of the historic industrial machines at the National Museum of Industrial History, whose exhibits might include locomotives and railroad cars, real trains have returned to Bethlehem. We heard diesel horns several times per hour while strolling the shops of “Christmas City.” And we found a great place from which to view freight trains loaded with containers. The New Street Bridge, also called the Fahy Bridge, has a pedestrian sidewalk that seems as if it were custom made for looking down at the large rail yard on the south side of the river.

  Other Lehigh Valley Railroad relics on Fountain Hill include the mansion built by Robert H. Sayre, Asa Packer’s chief engineer, who later held a number of executive positions with both the Lehigh Valley Railroad and Bethlehem Steel. The mansion is a bed-and-breakfast that is a popular choice for wedding receptions. The old LV headquarters building now functions as an apartment complex called Brighton Court. Across the street, Elisha P. Wilbur’s mansion has been incorporated into a complex owned by the Free and Accepted Masons. Tour guides working for the Historic Bethlehem Partnership point out these sites on bus tours.

  Asa Packer’s will provided that health care for Lehigh Valley Railroad workers would be free at St. Luke’s Hospital. Elisha P. Wilbur served on the hospital’s board, and Robert H. Sayre became a major contributor. The institution has grown into St. Luke’s Hospital and Health Network, with about twelve hundred physicians in five hospitals.

  Both Sayre and Wilbur, together with the descendants of Asa Packer, contributed to Lehigh University, which Packer had founded, making it one of the best-endowed educational institutions in America for a time. The university is still known for producing excellent engineers and scientists, the sorts of professionals that Asa Packer believed were critical to the development of the nation and its major industries. Lehigh University now offers entrepreneurial and research support to the Southside Bethlehem Keystone Innovation Zone, promoting business expansion in this area.

  Model Railroading in the Region

  Toymakers marketed the first toy trains at about the same time that real railroads were transforming the world of the nineteenth century. German manufacturers made tin trains for wealthy customers and lead or wood toy trains for everyone else. British makers constructed tiny brass locomotives that were propelled by the steam created by burning fuel and often left a trail of water behind on the floor or carpet.

  During the late nineteenth century, manufacturers expanded their offerings from toy trains to model railroad systems consisting of different types of cars, railroad buildings, tracks that could be configured in a variety of ways, and figures to represent passengers and railroad personnel. Consumers could purchase the basic components and then spend a lifetime and a small fortune endlessly expanding their systems.

  By the turn of the century, Americans were operating their model railroads with electric power, rather than having their cars hauled by steam or clockwork locomotives. In 1902, Joshua Lionel Cowen published the first catalog for the Lionel Company, which he founded in New York. As the twentieth century progressed, it became the trend for auxiliary pieces of the display to be powered to do something: lights flashed on and off, doors opened and closed, and figures performed some task that happened on or around a real railroad, such as loading coal.

  During the 1930s, when railroads began to experience financial difficulties, model railroading may have been one more way for Americans to preserve their railroad heritage. Hobbyists formed organizations like the National Model Railroad Association to promote their hobby and began publishing information. Today there are local clubs throughout Pennsylvania whose members may maintain a layout that they exhibit at shows or conventions. Museums and other institutions also acquire layouts, which sometimes are set up for viewing only on holidays or special occasions. This book limits coverage of Pennsylvania’s model railroad sites to those that are unique and outstanding, as well as open to the public on a regular basis.

  In the Philadelphia area, most of the model railroad clubs now have websites, and lately their sites have contained a link to a participatory venture called the Green Sheet, a green screen that lists the locations of all Philadelphia-area clubs as well as the dates and times they are open to the public. With the help of the Green Sheet, you can take the kiddies to a different model railroad almost every weekend from November to March.

  We had tried in prior years to see the Schuylkill Valley Model Railroad, located in the basement of a beautiful Beaux Arts mansion in Phoenixville that also houses medical offices, but the club was so popular that we usually left after twenty minutes of standing in line in the freezing holiday-season cold. Thanks to the Green Sheet, we were first in line in December 2010 and the first to be admitted through the mansion’s old delivery entrance to its basement. We immediately discovered why the waits were so long: the basement houses not only the Schuylkill Valley Model Railroad, but also the building’s furnace and a collection of pipes and fixtures normally associated with a basement’s ceiling. Let in too many people at a time and their safety is at risk.

  The Schuylkill Valley is one of the best model railroads if you like detailed scenery. You can look into the windows of its tiny shops and industries and see people at work. There’s
a drugstore with a working neon sign and a train station with a working clock. The scenery changes as you go from Philadelphia to the ’burbs to the coal towns to the mountains, where hillbillies make moonshine and take baths on the cabin porch.

  The St. Alban’s Railroad Fellowship got started about twenty years ago in the basement of the thrift shop of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Newtown Square. It gradually expanded, and now its members can run a very long train a very long way. They run their trains as if they were part of a real railroad when they get together for a session. The trains collect raw materials from one business and deliver them to another. The display has a model coke plant and steel mill that members can use with model trains to explain the whole steelmaking process. They also deal with the challenge of concurrently running freight and passenger trains, and even have waybills for the freight in cars at various locations. At a recent open house, one locomotive had a digital camera attached, which transmitted an engineer’s-eye view of the tracks to a monitor. The challenge of figuring out which train had the camera became simpler when we noticed that the club members waved to it when they saw it coming.

  We descended into another basement in the Borough Hall in Coopersburg to visit the Coopersburg Area Society of Model Engineers. This group has an extensive bench, and the scenery is interesting because it’s only half constructed, with the slats still visible in what one day will be a papier-mâché mountain. The description on the Green Sheet says that this layout will portray the Old Reading Railroad Bethlehem Branch, but note the use of the future tense and be prepared to use your imagination.

  The Logan Model Engineers have constructed a railroad depicting a route from northwestern Pennsylvania to Harrisburg.

  In Souderton, we found ourselves climbing up a steep, narrow staircase to view the layout of the Logan Model Engineers, located on the second floor of what used to be the town’s train station. This railroad runs from a fictional town called Logan in northwestern Pennsylvania across mountains to Harrisburg and a Pennsy connection. Members’ trains pass different sorts of businesses, including a logging operation that has its own railroad running up a steep incline with the help of a stationary steam engine. There’s also a meat-packing business where livestock is being led from railroad cars to a stockyard and thence to a slaughterhouse. Someone had fun naming the fictional businesses: there’s a Kranium Encyclopedia Company and Pluckinpick Feather Products, whose motto is “Our dusters pass muster.” The scenery looks 1950s-era, though the 1939 film Gone with the Wind was playing at the movie theater.