As promised I am offering a narrative of my visit to Steamtown (and the adjacent Electric City Trolley Museum) over the weekend of September 12. The original plan had been to ride the 9/12 Norfolk Southern NKP #765 excursion round-trip from Scranton to Binghamton and to follow up the next day, but that trip sadly was cancelled due to the delayed hand-over from the Canadian Pacific to Norfolk Southern of the former Delaware and Hudson lines south of Schenectady.The photo links below go to pictures I took at Steamtown. Sadly TRAINS site rules seem to prevent their direct upload, although I admit I'm also not too adept at this sort of link/transfer.
The Hunter Harrison management at the CPR demanded a $100,000,000 liability insurance "cover" and the local sponsor, the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valley Chapter of the NRHS, was forced on only ten days notice to cancel two virtually sold-out departures. As will be seen below, this was a blow not only to the L&WV NRHS, but also to the return of regular steam at Steamtown.
But faced with otherwise non-refundable hotel arrangements I decided to go anyway. I'm glad I did, although the visit left me with a sense that things are not as they might be at Steamtown.
In quick summary, Steamtown remains steamless. No large engines are even near operational status in the Steamtown collection. The little former Baldwin shop switcher 0-6-0 #26 was test fired earlier in the summer. I had hoped Steamtown management would have completed her renovations for the NKP #765 visit, but this was not the case. Rangers advised me that at a minimum work is still needed on the ash-pan, but on Friday afternoon September 11 I could see no sign of anyone working on her in shops. Perhaps they're waiting for parts, but no one who would talk to me seemed to know and I was unable to get a useable photo.
As you enter the Steamtown site you pass a vast and largely empty parking area, but the drive in is not without visual comfort, as you pass the beautifully painted (but inoperable) Reading T1 4-8-4 #2124 and a matched set of Reading F Units in pristine paint. The far side of the parking area hosts the collosal UP "Big Boy" 4-8-8-4 #4012, in chipping paint and the just repainted and not yet fully lettered Grand Trunk 4-8-2 #6039. The impression is exciting in terms of size, but everything on a Friday afternoon was quiet and still.
The center-piece of the site is the restored Delawware, Lackawanna and Western Scranton roundhouse and shops complex. Here the results of the $80,000,000 the National Park Service invested into Steamtown after taking over management are most obvious. The complete circle of stalls is almost fully restored, along with the turntable and approach tracks. Everything is spotless to an almost Swiss degree, and the few pieces of equipment that were outside and on-display were in perfect (I suspect new) paint, but that included notably only former IC 2-8-0 #790 and just outside the stalls on the approach tracks the #765's sister, NKP Berkshire #759.
For a more railroad centered experience you enter the buildings themselves. Many stalls are converted into history exhibits, with typical NPS Visitor Center state of the art displays. The focus sweeps over the full history of rail, highlights the DL&W and offers interesting material on railway employees as well as on equipment. But there was for me a sense that Steamtown was trying to superficially "cover it all", rather than focusing on the story of steam in real depth, or on the very specific story of railroads in the mountains of Pennsylvania.
In a very real sense the region was a birthplace of US railroading, from the D&H Canal Company's pioneering Stourbridge Lion steam engine and gravity railroad to the anthracite coal empire of not only the DL&W, but also the Lehigh Valley, Jersey Central, Erie and New York, Ontario and Western, to site only roads that came into the Scranton area. These topics are covered lighly here, which for me was the problem!
In the center of the complex is the area where active engines are stabled--except that at present Steamtown has no steam engines in operable condition. The last two mainline engines to run were a big former CPR 4-6-2 Pacific #2317 and one of the last engines acquired by the NPS, former Canadian national (CNR) 2-8-2 Mikado #3254. These rest side by side, in partially torn down condition.
Also in this area is the only true Lackawanna RR steam engine in the collection, 2-6-0 #565, also in partially torn down condition. It appears this engine underwent asbestos removal, but now awaits the restoration of its siding and paint. There are also several inactive tank engines hiding behind the larger power.
The problem here is that again all is quiet, nothing is moving and on a Friday afternoon at least there was not a single NPS worker or volunteer in the building doing any work on any of these units. Everything seems to be "awaiting" something, much like the #565.
Probably the most important work, aside from the nearly completed work to restore Baldwin #26, is the long-underway (over 20 years in the making) effort to restore former Boston and Maine 4-6-2 Pacific #3713 to service. This engine was in the supposedly more active restoration shop area, but I could not get close enough to get a photo and in the brief moment I was able to peak in no one was actively visible doing anything here either.
The B&M engine was to have been the benefactor of the profits from the 9/12 and 13 #NKP 765 trips. Their sudden and forced cancellation dealt a terrible blow to this project. Not only were there no profits to be assigned, but the organizers incurred marketing and ticket broker costs that could not be recovered. The trip would also have been the first run with meals served on the accurately restored former Lackawanna RR "Phoebe Snow" diner, which the Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation group has been working on for over a decade.
If any reader wants to help donations to the #3713 project can be made to http://www.project3713.com/ and the EL Dining Car Society accepts donations at https://www.eldcps.org/pages/donation_overview.html . Given Steamtown's lack of money for its own restoration needs this debacle was a triple barrelled tragedy!
I will continue this report in further postings, including a tour of the deadline in the yards, a ride on the Electric City Trolley and thoughts on a possible way forward from what has too long been, to use an obvious irony, "Steamlesstown". As it is what there now is more possibility than reality.
Carl Fowler
President, Rail Travel Adventures
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