Home Chapter News and Events Local Railroad News About Membership Programs & Speakers Available Photos

2009 Chapter Meetings Thursday, November 19, 2009 For decades, manned interlocking towers were vital to safe and efficient rail operations, for setting signals and "shunting" trains from one track to another. Member Herb Landow explained the workings of a typical tower in the 1950's, drawing on his experience as an operator at "BY" tower in the East Binghamton yards. Then he described techniques for controlling traffic flow in a high density area, namely New York's Penn Station and vicinity. Thursday, October 15, 2009 Member Sam Botts, residing now in South Dakota, showed scenic and informative footage on contemporary railroad operations on the DM&E and IC&E. He also showed several photos of NKP 765 taken recently in Owosso, MI. Thursday, September 17, 2009 The program consisted of two Mark I Videos. "Memories of the D&H Volume I" showed steam around Ararat, diesels around Oneonta, plus much more. "Memories of Steam in the North East" covered steam from the D&H, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and H&BT. Thursday, June 18, 2009 Our meeting was held at the 1901 vintage DL&W passenger station in Binghamton, 45 Lewis Street. Here's a map to the Lackawanna Station. Southern Tier HealthLink, current tenant in the former main lobby, restaurant and ticket window area of the building, has afforded us space for displaying railroad history photographs and other items from the chapter collection. We saw examples of the old station's architecture, the exhibits, and videos: "Memories of the Erie-Lackawanna and Erie Railroads - Moodna Viaduct to Binghamton" and "Southern Pacific 4274 Cab Forward over Donner Pass." Thursday, May 21, 2009 We had another fine program "The Lackawanna RR in the Pocono Mountains of PA" by guest speaker Steve Stewart. Steve presented a slide program of DL&W and EL operations through the Pocono Mountains of PA, from Scranton, PA to the Paulin’s Kill Viaduct in NJ. We also viewed NYS&W and L&NE operations at Hainesburg Junction, NJ and Portland, PA. Thursday, April 16, 2009 Member Bob Gongleski presented a PowerPoint slide program titled "The Bowman’s Creek Branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad" The presentation, developed by Harry Owens, covered the operations of the Lehigh Valley Railroad along its Bowman’s Creek Branch. The Bowman’s Creek Branch was a combination of the Wilkes-Barre and Harvey’s Lake RR Company which ran from Wilkes-Barre to Harvey’s Lake, the Loyalsock RR Company from Harvey’s Lake to Bernice, and the State Line and Sullivan RR from Bernice to Dushore. The main purpose of the Bowman’s Creek Branch was to be able to move lumber and lumber products for the coal mining industry from the rich timber lands of the North Mountain Luzerne, Wyoming and Sullivan counties. Ice, tanning products, passengers and local freight were of secondary importance to the branch. Thursday, March 19, 2009 We looked back on some experiences and scenes from the "kinder, gentler" days of railroading through slides and photographs from chapter and member collections. There were glimpses of steam as well as diesel powered trains in both freight and passenger service. Thursday, February 19, 2009 We showed Ed Miller’s video Anthracite Traction: Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and the Laurel Line. Two medium-size city streetcar systems and the high-speed interurban which connected them were the subject of Ed Miller’s superb motion picture camera work. He began shooting just after World War II, and continued through the end of service, including scenes of track removal and car scrapping. Shown were Wilkes-Barre’s lines to Nanticoke, Hanover, Edwardsville, Larksville, Plymouth via Carey Street, Georgetown, and Ashley/Sugar Notch. Several of the lines had extensive segments of private right-of-way giving them a semi-interurban character (This segment ran about 31 minutes). We saw the Laurel Line’s fast mainline from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre and the freight-only branch to Minooka, featuring their 19th-century design locomotives (11 minutes). After the war, Scranton Transit operated nine routes: Providence, Green Ridge Peoples, Green Ridge Suburban, Dunmore Suburban, Laurel Hill, Petersburg, Nay Aug Park, Nativity, and South Side. They featured a variety of cars including the Osgood-Bradley Electromobiles (17 minutes). Thursday, January 15, 2009 This was our Annual Meeting of the Membership to close out administrative matters for calendar year 2008 and lay the foundation for operations and programs in 2009. View past Chapter meetings in 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2005

Board of Managers About SVRHS Local Railroad History Links Contact Us Tribute to John J. Young, Jr.