Wow..Talk about screaming: Model me!!!

[LV LOU]

I'm sure I've mentioned here that the area where I reside is a railroad madhouse.Right now,there's five or six active lines withing a few miles of my house.All the CR roads were here,save for NH & NYC,plus MANY others,long forgotten.
 Well,little known,but the smallest  chartered railroad in the world used to be here,was active into the 80's under PNER.The West Pittston & Exeter Ran 3 miles from an Anthracite breaker in Exeter,Pa,owned by the Lehigh Valley Coal Company,to a coal fired powerplant a few miles up the Susquehanna River.There were other businesses along the way,and at mid point,it interchanged with the LV,and on the other side of the breaker,the DL&W.To add even more interest,until 15 years ago,there was a PRR Shark B-unit at the breaker!!It was used at one time as an electrical generator to power a dragline.
  I always kicked around the idea of modeling it,now I'm absolutely going to..I always thought of it as a diesel RR,[Orange & silver Alco S4..] But doing some research,I found THIS!!!..[Thank you,George Ellwood!!!]

 
  Their steam power was an almost out of the box Bachmann Dockside!!! They also had another that was pretty much a Bachmann 0-6-0.. I'll absolutely be building this in the future.The entire railroad could literally be built along my garage wall with hardly ANY compression!..Here's a link to the railroad on Ellwood's site..

http://gelwood.railfan.net/misc-w/wpe.html

[DKS]

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/misc-w/wpe.html

[6axlepwr]

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/misc-w/wpe.html

That is a very cool story.

[LV LOU]

I forgot one important tidbit..If you read the entire article,you'll see a mention of Celotex corporation..My father in law was a supervisor there,and was in charge of shipping & receiving anything that came in by rail at Celotex.He actually had a vegetable garden outside by the tracks,LOL!! I can have Fred on my little RR....

[VonRyan]

I still have Celotex ceiling tiles in my house, and if you snap them into strips, you can glue them together to make some darn good rock formations, or even use it to make your own rock mold.

-Cody F.

[LV LOU]

  Cody,where I live,EVERYBODY has Celotex ceiling tiles in their house,LOL!! Kinda cool for me,also,that that most of it,save for the power plant, made it well into Conrail,and the rest didn't change much from the late steam era up into the mid 70's.Helps too,that I have most of the motive power already.Heck,you could easily model everything they had.Not sure they even had rolling stock,not even a caboose..

[mmagliaro]

At that page that David linked, there are links to photos of the locos that this line had.
Very intrigueing, but also frustrating, is that it looks like one of the 0-6-0's had a bigger, conventional
tender behind it, and not the smaller slope-back tender.  Unfortunately, from the angle the photo is
taken, it is really hard to say for sure.

Engine number 4, here:  http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/misc-w/wpe-4.jpg

It really looks like a straight tender on that one.  Too bad there's no photo from the side.

[Chris333]

Found this on whats left now:
http://viewoftheblue.com/photography/maps/wpe.html

Check out the half missing bridge pier! 

[Hornwrecker]

Are there any photos of the Celotex plant around?  It sounds like a good industry to put into the LV section of my layout, since it's near the area of Luzerne County I'm faking protolancing.

There are Sanborn maps for Pittston up now at PSU, don't know if they include anything in this area:   http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/sanborn.html

[eric220]

Wow, three miles... That's almost exactly how much mainline I have down so far. For short trains pulled by 0-4-0's and 0-6-0's, it's an impressive amount of railroad.

[LV LOU]

Are there any photos of the Celotex plant around?  It sounds like a good industry to put into the LV section of my layout, since it's near the area of Luzerne County I'm faking protolancing.

There are Sanborn maps for Pittston up now at PSU, don't know if they include anything in this area:   http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/sanborn.html

What area/era are you modeling? I live right in the middle of Luzerne county,lived here 58 years,and I model LV...I pretty much know what you're looking for,LOL!!

[LV LOU]

Found this on whats left now:
http://viewoftheblue.com/photography/maps/wpe.html

Check out the half missing bridge pier! 

Chris,that pier has been like that since the '72 Agnes flood!!! Shortly after,some of this line was removed on the other side of this bridge,which is the former LV West Pittston branch.There's another road bridge in Pittston,my hometown,which received nearly the same damage to the same pier.[Water Street..]It was repaired over 40 years ago,still in use..Agnes was something..Nothing like seeing 50-100 nearly intact HOUSES an hour going bye you at 50 miles an hour,along with hundreds of cars.trucks,sheds,semi trailers..Quit a sight,I'll never forget it..
  One interesting story.I was at the Water Street Bridge when a LV train was trying to make it's way north out of Wilkes Barre,which was completely wiped out in Agnes.The water was rising fast,and the locomotives got stuck,as the traction motors shorted out.It had just stopped in front of me..Only 200 or so feet north of me,there was a huge wall,solid concrete,probably 50 feet high,two feet thick,200 feet long.Not 6 seconds after the locos stopped,just short of the bridge,the wall,just on the other side of the bridge,collapsed!!! The sight was incredible.It pushed a tidal wave in front of it 30 feet high that wiped out dozens of houses on the other side of the river..If those motors didn't get soaked,the crew would have been killed instantly..

[Hornwrecker]

What area/era are you modeling? I live right in the middle of Luzerne county,lived here 58 years,and I model LV...I pretty much know what you're looking for,LOL!!

When redoing my layout last year, PRR/EL 1960s, I looked around for an area where they came close together in Luzerne county.  My yard kind of looked like part of Buttonwood Yd, so I expanded it to get it so I could operate like that (adding in a D&H/CNJ interchange yard tracks).  The small upper level with EL, got LV added (CNJ running rights) to have it make sense. Maybe I could have an WP&E S-4 switch the coal mine to add to the confusion in a 5' x12' area.

[LV LOU]

At that page that David linked, there are links to photos of the locos that this line had.
Very intrigueing, but also frustrating, is that it looks like one of the 0-6-0's had a bigger, conventional
tender behind it, and not the smaller slope-back tender.  Unfortunately, from the angle the photo is
taken, it is really hard to say for sure.

Engine number 4, here:  http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/misc-w/wpe-4.jpg

It really looks like a straight tender on that one.  Too bad there's no photo from the side.

Max,I think it's gonna be a case of "good enough" on this stuff,unless I can dig up pics,or more of my friends send me pics of these locos..[LOL!! Thanks,by the way...]

[LV LOU]

When redoing my layout last year, PRR/EL 1960s, I looked around for an area where they came close together in Luzerne county.  My yard kind of looked like part of Buttonwood Yd, so I expanded it to get it so I could operate like that (adding in a D&H/CNJ interchange yard tracks).  The small upper level with EL, got LV added (CNJ running rights) to have it make sense. Maybe I could have an WP&E S-4 switch the coal mine to add to the confusion in a 5' x12' area.

Yeah,PRR,Erie, and the DL&W didn't really have much presence here.PRR was strictly Wilkes Barre and the southern end of the county,DL&W really only had the "Bloom",a main that ran from Scranton to Bloomsburg,and the Erie was strictly mine and light in town trackage,mostly in Pittston & Jenkins Twp..D&H/CNJ were totally on the other side of the valley,and ran on the same 2 track main..
 Luckily,though,the Bloom was the EL connection at Buttonwood to the PRR.The EL ran on the west side of the Susquehanna river,the PRR ran on the east bank,they were connected by a bridge in Larksville.The Bloom was also the EL interchange with the WP&E in West Pittston,about 8 miles north of Larksville,so,in model terms,you could head out onto the PRR  Buttonwood-EL connection,head north,and end up on the WP&E.About two miles further north,the Bloom would interchange with the LV at Coxton Yard.
  No pics of Celotex,[yet..] but it was a pretty simple structure.From what I remember,it was just a pretty much 200 foot square,single story white building,with a second floor over maybe 1/3 of it on the right rear.There was a fenced in section,maybe 50 X 100 on the right,with a few huge dust collectors,and a few large cylindrical white tanks,maybe 50 feet high by 20 feet round.The tracks were in the back of the building.
 I'm still looking for a pic,but there was a coal breaker/mine between Celotex and the WP&E interchange with the EL...Actually,you could have a WP&E/EL/LV interchange in a very small area...
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