BLOG 9—STEAMTOWN, SCRANTON, PA

All 3 of our RVs pulled into the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton without any problem—lots of parking!  All the guys like trains and this really is the place to see trains of all types!   Unlike our visit here last year, all the steam locomotives are in the shop so none were running, which was a little disappointing.  But at least 4 diesel locomotives were running around the yard and doing short excursions.  Not quite the same excitement level but diesel is still interesting!  One nice thing is that with our Golden Age Passports, we all got in free-our favorite price, of course!

If you read our Blog 2 from Omaha and Council Bluffs, you'll remember the gigantic Union Pacific

Big Boy locomotives—the largest ever built!  Big Boy 4012 with its tender is one of the first steam locomotives you see at Steamtown, right adjacent to the parking lot.  It is not running, but apparently is a future project for the locomotive shop---as Ed Sullivan would say “A RULLY BIG project!”

The other locomotives in the parking lot area are all diesels-- Delaware & Lackawanna 3642 is in beautiful shape and was running.  A Jersey Central locomotive was nearby.   Inoperative Reading 2124 steam locomotive was near Reading 903 diesel streamliner locomotive, maybe for size comparison?

We went into the Visitor Center to find out the time for the next locomotive shop tour and learned one was starting in10 minutes so we joined that group.  We got a good look at the turntable before heading into the locomotive shop. 

A small crew was working on aligning the turntable rails. 

The Roundhouse and turntable

The first exhibit in the shop is a cutaway steam locomotive so you can see the boiler, all the piping, the linkages and much more.  Our tour guide gave a very long explanation of the steam converted to motive power that lost at least a few people and some left the tour.  Unusual, but actually TOO MUCH information!  

The most impressive parts of the shop, at least to me, are the huge pieces of machinery for bending metal, gigantic drill presses, the largest lathes I've even seen and many more!  Here's a few photos of the equipment.

There are at least 3 locomotives being rebuilt currently in the shop and most are multi-year projects.

In another area, a large boiler was being completely rebuilt and interestingly, many of these jobs no longer have parts available, so all those big tools I just described are put to use to custom build major parts. Just the scale of components for the steam locomotives is awe-inspiring!

Lehigh Business car 353                                                      Steam derrick and Idler Gondola

Outside the shop tour which was 1-1/2 hours long, there is an impressive steam derrick car and an idler gondola, parts of a work train. 

There is a 15 minute film upstairs in the auditorium that is interesting on the attraction of stream railroading to a child, later a young man getting his first railroading job, then eventually becoming an important railroad manager.  There are many fascinating exhibits in several areas of the Visitor Center.  There are life size figures of people representing many of the typical jobs on the railroad which explanations of what they do. 

A large group of railroad logos, many from the past, before they were gobbled up by another railroad.  Along that same line, a large photograph of a Norfolk Southern roundhouse display of many large diesel locomotives all painted in the colors and logos of all the other railroads NS has bought over the years!

Delaware & Lackawanna, the railroad  that built the shops and Scranton yard where Steamtown is now located, had a very clever marketing campaign for many years using a fictitious woman named Phoebe Snow, dressed in white dress, coat and even gloves, to make the point that steam locomotives pulling their trains used anthracite coal, which is much cleaner burning than the bituminous coal other railroads were using, so you stayed clean while riding the Delaware & Lackawanna RR passenger service!

Another exhibit showed the massive effort made by the nation's railroads during World War II to move vastly increased volumes of freight as well as many more servicemen and women as passengers than in peacetime earlier.

One of my favorite exhibits was about the government-mandated nationwide adoption of Railroad Standard Time back in 1883, which created the 4 time zones in the U.S.and Canada that we still use today.  Previously even small towns on their own could create their own time, leading to chaos in preparing schedules, especially for businesses and travelers.   A series of WWII posters was adjacent to that exhibit. 

Nearby 2 old but nicely restored railroad cars, one a beautiful Pullman sleeper car with all the different compartments and even a dining table area and the other car was a Louisville and Nashville Railway Post Office car, one of the very few I've ever seen exhibited.   Mail was grabbed on the fly from local stations, sorted on the car, then delivered to appropriate stations along the route. How times have changed!!

Steamtown is a wonderful place to learn about the history of railroading and especially the almost gone steam locomotives that were so common on the railroads until the early 1950s.   Kids love it and most adults are equally fascinated, especially if they, like us, are of an age to remember when steam trains were the common form of transportation all over the United States and the rest of the world as well.  The National Park Service has done a great job telling the story here at Steamtown!