PA -- Scranton -- Steamtown NHS -- Interior Vehicles:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.133.112.73 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
|
[1]
STEAIV_031008_24.JPG
|
[2] STEAIV_031008_73.JPG
|
- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- STEAIV_031008_24.JPG: Louisville & Nashville #1100RPO
Railroad Mail Server grew quickly after the introduction of Railway Post Office (RPO) cars during the Civil War. Railroads entered into contracts with the Post Office to carry mail cars over a designated route. Postal clerks, experts in the geography of the country, traveled in crews aboard these cars to sort and pouch mail.
In 1914, the American Car and Foundry Company built the all-steel Railroad Post Office Car #1100 for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.
- AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
- Wikipedia Description: Steamtown National Historic Site
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Steamtown National Historic Site (NHS) is a railroad museum and heritage railroad located on 62 acres (0.25 kmē) in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the site of the former Scranton yards of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W). The museum is built around and incorporates a working replica turntable and roundhouse, which includes two original roundhouse sections built in 1902 and 1937.
History:
Established by an act of the United States Congress on October 30, 1986, Steamtown officially opened to the public in the summer of 1995, and celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2005. Congress established Steamtown to interpret the story of main line steam railroading between 1850 and 1950.
Much of the collection of steam (and a few diesel) locomotives and freight and passenger cars was originally part of 'Steamtown USA'. That collection was originally assembled by the late F. Nelson Blount and was located in several places in the northeast United States before moving from Bellows Falls, Vermont, to Scranton in 1984. Blount's death in an airplane accident in 1967 had cut off the main financial support for 'Steamtown USA', but much of his original dream to have a museum in a working railroad yard with excursions on steam trains and a functional locomotive shop has been realized at Steamtown NHS.
Museum and collection:
Steamtown NHS is located within a working railroad yard and incorporates the surviving elements of the DL&W Scranton roundhouse and locomotive repair shops. The new Visitor Center, Theater, Technology and History Museums are built in the style of and on the site of the missing portions of the original roundhouse, giving the impression of what the complete structure was like. (The 1902 roundhouse was originally a complete circle).
Visitors can see museum exhibits about the history and technology of steam railroads in the United States and Pennsylvania, as well as see many locomotives and freight and passenger cars on display. Some locomotives on display are open so that visitors can climb in and see the controls. A mail car, railroad executives' passenger car (with dining room and sleeping / lounge areas), a boxcar, two cabooses, and a recreated DL&W station with ticket window are also open to walk through. A steam locomotive with cutaway sections helps visitors understand the operation of steam engines better. Part of one of the 1865 roundhouse inspection pits uncovered in archaeological excavations is also preserved in situ, under glass.
Other exhibits include the history of early railroads, life on the railroad, the relationship between railroads in terms of business, labor, and government, and the history of the Lackawanna Railroad. There is a short film shown throughout the day in the theater.
The museum has a very interesting mix of rolling stock, with only a few pieces that are historically significant to the site. Some of those are a DL&W caboose, steam engine, boxcar, a former WWII troop sleeper that the DL&W converted to maintenance of way service, and numerous passenger cars. Former Oneida & Western/Rahaway Valley 2-8-0 engine #15 was overhauled by the DL&W during the steam era. Other noteworthy pieces are the popular Union Pacific Big Boy #4012, CPR #2929, a rare Jubilee 4-4-4, and Reading Company T-1 #2124. Other engines were owned by Steamtown NHS/Steamtown USA Foundation but have been traded or sold over the years. One of these includes Canadian Pacific Railway 4-6-4 Hudson engine #2816 which has been restored to working order and hauls trips for her original owner.
Engines CPR 2317, CN 3254, and Baldwin #26 are considered operable, although as of winter 2008, both 2317 is down for repairs and 3254 for inspection, and #26 is entering the final stages of a long rebuild. B&M #3713 is under restoration. When this is complete this will be the first American engine at either Steamtown USA or Steamtown NHS to be restored to working order. Engines NKP #759, CN #47, Trap Rock #43, Rahway Valley #17 have operated at Steamtown before, but not since the move to Pennsylvania.
The following engines have visited the site before: NYS&W 142, BM&R 425, a Lowville & Beaver River Shay, former Reading Company T-1 #2102 (not operable) and MILW 261.
Demonstrations, tours, and excursions:
Steamtown NHS offers a variety of demonstrations, tours, and excursions that show how railroads functioned in the age of steam. Park rangers give guided tours of the locomotive shop (where you can see work being done on the steam engines in the original roundhouse area), talks on the history of Steamtown, the Union Pacific Big Boy locomotive on display, and demonstrations of the turntable on a regular basis. The Scranton yard occupies about 0.16 kmē (40 acres).
Several working locomotives take visitors on short excursions through the Scranton yard in the spring, summer, and fall. Most are on passenger coaches, but there are also caboose and hand car rides offered. These rides are included in the admission, although reservations may be required.
Longer excursions are scheduled with separate tickets. These include a ride on a Pullman coach and longer trips to several nearby towns, including the Lackawanna River valley and Carbondale, Tobyhanna and Moscow, Pennsylvania. On rare occasions, excursions are run to the Delaware Water Gap or on the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Steamtown also plays host to RailCamp, a program put on by the National Park Service and National Railway Historical Society to train future railroad employees and fans of the industry in railroad operation and preservation.
Criticisms:
Allegations had been made, especially within the mass media, that Steamtown was a "pork barrel" project prior to its building. Some criticized the United States National Park Service, which runs Steamtown, for using mostly Canadian locomotives (inherited from the Steamtown USA operation in Bellows Falls, VT) as working locomotives, although many American locomotives and cars are on display. While the collection within the museum and the rolling stock for excursions have been restored, many pieces of rolling stock that are quite visible to the public are in deplorable condition and face an uncertain future. Some of the most significant pieces of rolling stock (i.e. DL&W 565, one of two surviving Lackawanna Railroad steam engines) have not been restored.
Nearby attractions:
The Electric City Trolley Museum is located at the other end of the Steamtown parking lot and offers trolley excursions. 'Electric City' is a nickname for Scranton, as it was the first city in the United States to have a completely electric streetcar system in 1886.
There is a walkway over the rail yard to the Mall at Steamtown, but this closes when Steamtown NHS does.
Also within walking distance is the 1908 Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Station, now a Radisson hotel. This is on the National Register of Historic Places, listed on October 30, 1986 (the date of its establishment), as are several other sites associated with railroads in Scranton.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].