Spring Open House May 19th and 20th!

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1 PAGE 1 The News Bulletin of the READING SOCIETY of MODEL ENGINEERS Spring Open House May 19th and 20th! Welcome to Spring. Winter is finally over. Another operating season is upon us. The membership has decided to invite our friends and the public to three (3) Open Houses this year. The first, our Spring Open House, is scheduled for Saturday & Sunday May 19th & 20th. The other two are Saturdays & Sundays July 21st & 22nd and October 6th & 7th. Every available member s assistance during these Open Houses is requested. There are many ways to help out, from operating trains to public relations. Don t forget about helping prepare during the weeks prior and cleaning up afterwards. Here is our opportunity to promote our hobby and encourage new memberships. Please contact Nathan Kline to inform him of your availability and how you can help. We also need help in the kitchen and food service areas, not to mention bringing baked goods. Many people get hungry and thirsty riding and watching trains when they visit the RSME during our Open Houses! We are upgrading and/or revising some of our procedures at these Open Houses. The first is public relations. If your tasks do not require your full concentration in the operation of equipment and/or the safety of members and visitors, please open up and talk with our visitors. Thank them for coming and visiting the RSME. Ask them if they are enjoying their visit. If you do not know the visitor, ask them if this is their first visit to the RSME. If this is their first visit, ask them if there is anything you can help PAGE 1

2 PAGE 2 them with (directions, procedures, assistance). Please advise our visitors to be careful and follow our safety rules. (We are out in the country and in the woods. There are tracks, rocks, branches, and other potential trip hazards. They should walk, running is not permitted. Ask them to stay alert to potential hazards.) We want our visitors to enjoy their visit, not get hurt. See that they get/got our 2007 Operating Schedule or direct them where they can get one. Thank them again for visiting the RSME and ask them to visit again. For the time being, we are still encouraging the public to visit our facility and enjoy our railroads and show off our modeling skills. Many other large scale clubs are limiting their operating sessions to their members only, are private operations, or are for profit commercial or amusement operations. Many smaller scale/gauge model layouts are similar to us and rely on the public to help fund their interests (and many do not own the building or facility in which their layout(s) are housed). We should be fortunate for what we have. Let s promote, clean up, support, and protect what we have. If and when assisting people boarding trains (15 or Lite Rail), please inform them of our safety rules (posted inside the station, the meeting room, and on the back of the tickets). If you are assigned to the train crew, please make sure all passengers are seated, that they understand the safety rules (especially to remain seated and remain within the confines of the car during the trip and not get up until the train crew notifies them), and are ready to commence their trip on the train. Please pay attention to the passengers on board the train and stay alert for any potential situations. If there is a situation on a train which you believe may be unsafe, please warn the passenger (or guardian) if at all possible. If warning the passenger (or guardian) is not possible or is unsuccessful, or the situation is not directly passenger related, please alert the engineer to stop the train as safely as possible. Address the situation, and proceed if at all possible as safely as possible. At the end of the trip, please make sure everyone enjoyed themselves and direct them where and/or what to do after getting off the train. Please stay alert for people near potential train/locomotive movements. We have no objections to our visitors taking PAGE 2

3 PAGE 3 pictures or just observing our operations, but politely ask them to do so from a safe distance and location. Open Houses are the RSME s opportunity to raise some needed revenue. During an Open House, we need to have a business persona. Safety is our first priority. Public Relations is a close second. We need to provide our visitors with an enjoyable visit. If at all possible, we should appear like we enjoy what we are doing. (Hopefully, most of us do enjoy what we do at the RSME.) Our play during an Open House should be for the benefit of our visitors. (We have the rest of the year to play for our benefit.) Our benefit during an Open House or Operating Session is attracting donations which help pay our bills and maintain our facility, and if there is any left over, we can enhance our facility. These donations should be our visitors gift to the RSME in return for introducing them to, or enhancing their interest in, railroading and modeling. So let s show our guests a good time, so that the RSME can prosper and continue to promote railroading and modeling. This is our mission. (William Ingham, Photos by Jay Searle) From Branch Line to Main Line: The Story of the Lebanon Valley Branch Standing a safe distance from the tracks at a grade crossing, a railfan hears a low rumble in the distance, faint but constant. Gradually it grows louder. A piercing headlight appears. Both rails turn golden, reflecting the light. A huge black form takes shape. When a commanding chime horn blows two long blasts, a pair of "ditch lights" on the pilot of the locomotive flash alternately, matching the cadence of red lights on crossing gates and signals. With a short blast and a final long one, a 200-ton black diesel roars by, followed by two or three others, working as a team. The earth shakes at the passing of more than 8,000 horsepower. Cars roll by, bearing coal or lumber, chemicals or automobiles, truck trailers riding "piggyback" on flatcars or containers ("boxes") piled one atop another on "double-stack" cars. They have come from Rutherford Yard between Hershey and Harrisburg or from Saucon Yard at Bethlehem. Beyond those points, they may have come from ports on the Pacific Coast or from Canada. After this train passes, the rails remain shiny, silvery. There will be another train, and another, day and night, running east and west, "24/7," keeping the rails polished. But before trains came canals, and before canals there were roads, and before roads there were paths that guided Native Americans. This is but one chapter in the long history of transportation between Reading and Harrisburg. Union Canal Railfans usually dismiss canals as inadequate predecessors of roads of steel rails, but canals represent a giant leap forward. A horse or a mule could carry about 200 pounds. More, of course, could be loaded in a wagon. A team of ten in a "pack train" could carry about 2000 pounds. But one or two horses hitched to a boat on a canal could transport 35 tons. A canal rebuilt for greater capacity could transport 70 tons, then 100 tons, then even more in a single boat. Barges on the Mississippi River today carry hundreds of tons. Some even carry tourists. Huge ships pass through the Panama Canal. Some 200 years ago, the Erie Canal bypassed Niagara Falls to connect the Great Lakes with Albany, where the Hudson River provided access to New York Harbor. To compete, Philadelphia businessmen constructed the Schuylkill Canal to transport freight and newly discovered "stone coal" (anthracite coal), should industry PAGE 3

4 PAGE 4 devise ways of burning the stuff. The Union Canal fulfilled William Penn's vision of connecting the Schuylkill River and the Susquehanna River with that era's most efficient means of transportation. Far from being easily constructed and immediately successful, the Lebanon Valley Branch endured trials and tribulations like those of the Union Canal. Both enterprises were chronically short of money. The Union Canal could trace its ancestry to President George Washington, who championed inland waterways to connect rivers and to tap apparently unlimited resources of a vast virgin country. His service in the French and Indian War and in the Revolutionary War had given him a first-hand knowledge of lands from the Atlantic seaboard to the Alleghenies. On September 29, 1791, Governor Thomas Mifflin signed an act incorporating the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation to connect Philadelphia with the interior via the Quittapahillla, Tulpehocken and Swatara Creeks. On April 10, 1792, the Delaware and Schuylkill Navigation was incorporated to build a waterway from the mouth of Stony Creek, along the east bank of the Schuylkill, across the northern boundary of Philadelphia, to the Delaware River. Unfortunately, both companies were stymied by lack of laborers and finances. The Union Canal was formed in 1811 to combine and complete them, but financial difficulties persisted. The Delaware and Schuylkill Canal languished. The Union Canal was completed, but its bed was too shallow and its locks too small to compete with the Pennsylvania Canal. Some $2,500,000 in bonds was raised to enlarge the canal, but those funds ran out in In December, 1857, three trustees were appointed to save the company. But a devastating flood on June 4, 1862, took a heavy toll. The branch from Jonestown to Pine Grove and the Big Dam at Swatara Gap were beyond repair. The canal struggled on until Its property was sold in Philadelphia in Ironically, the most expensive and troublesome stretch of the canal has been restored splendidly by Friends of the Union Canal. At first, they preserved and restored Union Canal Tunnel, one of the oldest in America, north of 22nd Street in the city of Lebanon. Then they restored the northern portal of the tunnel and several hundred feet of the canal beyond. Today, Union Canal Tunnel Park preserves a priceless chapter of transportation history, handsomely landscaped and easily accessible. The Lebanon Valley Branch Like the Union Canal, this branch originated with two companies, incorporated by the Legislature in 1835 and 1836 to build a railroad linking Reading and Harrisburg. However, investors were lacking. The Philadelphia & Reading, then partially completed, petitioned the Legislature for permission to acquire the route and commence construction. But "the P&R" had chronic financial difficulties of its own, and no action was taken. Progress began in Citizens of Reading, Lebanon, and Lebanon County were authorized to subscribe to some capital stock in the Lebanon Valley Railroad Company. They also approached management of "the P&R," who seized this opportunity to interchange with the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Northern Central Railroad (then separate companies) at Harrisburg. Permission was also granted to build a branch from Lebanon to Cornwall, site of extensive iron ore mines originally owned by the Coleman family. Investors raised sufficient funds to commence construction under the experienced hands of Richard B. Osborne, who rejected a meandering route through Schaefferstown that "ran around every little rise." Recalling high standards of Moncure Robinson, who cut no corners when surveying PAGE 4

5 PAGE 5 the routes of the Little Schuylkill between Port Clinton and Tamaqua and the Main Line between Philadelphia and Mount Carbon, Mr. Osborne stipulated the following: 1. All tangents to be as long as possible and aim for three-quarters of line to be straight. 2. No curves in main line of less radius than one mile, and when possible radii of two miles or more. 3. Vertical curves at intersections of all grades, rising or falling. 4. Maximum grade, 26 1/2 feet. 5. One-fourth of the road to be on a level. Such quality did not come cheaply. Building the Main Line to Moncure Robinson's satisfaction drained the P&R's finances for decades afterward. In 1854, lack of funds threatened to halt construction of the Lebanon Valley Branch. In response, Mr. Osborne persuaded "the P&R" to lay off half of the laborers and to put his engineering staff on half-salary until a full complement could again be hired. That situation prevailed until June, Then one of two contractors responsible for most of the work on the line reneged on his contract. The next day Mr. Osborne summoned all the sub-contractors to his office and agreed to divide that contract among them at the original prices. Thus the work continued. Mr. Osborne achieved a line seven miles shorter than the original estimate. Only 23% of the route had curves. Other than the covered Lebanon Valley Bridge across the Schuylkill at Reading (burned during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877), bridges were constructed of stone, brick, or iron, including the elegant masterwork near Hummelstown that crosses the Swatara Creek on six brick arches, each spanning 70 feet, rising 43 feet above the water. Another remarkable structure, beloved by Reading fans, is the Skew Bridge on Sixth Street by the Outer Station at Reading, completed in The arch is built on an angle, to accommodate a multi-track curve that brings the Lebanon Valley Branch along the Reading & Columbia ("the R&C") platform to meet the Main Line. The courses of stones are laid in ellipsoidal curves, not in rectangles or circles. Service between Reading and Lebanon began on July 13, 1857; between Lebanon and Hummelstown, on November 30, The entire line opened on January 18, 1858, when 1,000 passengers rode to the inauguration of Governor Pollock at Harrisburg. The branch was merged with "the P&R" on March 20, Sinking Spring was important. A one -story 25' x 51' frame freight station was constructed in 1858; a siding, in A frame passenger station was built in The Reading & Columbia Branch curved south to Reinholds, Ephrata, Lititz, and Lancaster Junction, where a branch to Lancaster met the main route to Columbia. Just as the Union Canal had to be enlarged to handle larger boats from other canals, the Main Line of "the P&R" had to be enlarged to handle wider cars from other railroads rolling to Reading via the Lebanon Valley Branch. Black Rock Tunnel at Phoenixville and Flat Rock Tunnel at Manayunk were widened in the span of six months, from December 1, 1858, to early April, For the first time, electricity was used to detonate several charges at once, instead of one or two fuses lit by hand. Fortunately, there were no casualties. Heavier rails were laid and spaces between tracks increased from 4 feet to 6 feet between 1856 and PAGE 5

6 PAGE 6 The Lebanon Valley Branch proved to be a vital component of"the P&R," even more important today. Completion of the Eastern Pennsylvania Railroad (East Penn Branch) from Reading to Allentown in 1859 formed a "Crossline" to Harrisburg. By acquiring the Harrisburg & Shippensburg Railroad and the Harrisburg Terminal Railroad Company in 1890, P&R President Archibald Angus McLeod extended the Reading to Shippensburg and Lurgan. From there, the "Dutch Line" jointly owned with the Western Maryland reached Hagerstown, Maryland, where five major railroads interchanged. As anthracite traffic declined, the Lebanon Valley Branch carried so many cars from railroads in the Midwest that it was called the "Alphabet Route," after all the "reporting marks" (heralds) on cars from Hagerstown and Allentown/Bethlehem. The line is still heavily used by Norfolk Southern, successor of Conrail, as the Harrisburg Division. Rutherford Yard has been completely rebuilt as an "intermodal" facility, where tractor-trailer trucks and shipping containers ("boxes") are loaded and unloaded "24/7." Were it not for the Lebanon Valley Branch, trains would have to be routed all the way north to Binghamton, the "Southern Tier" of railroads across New York. The Lebanon Valley Branch has grown from a branch line to a main line. (Pastor Philip K. Smith) RSME Calendar The following is the RSME Schedule of Events. If you have any additions or corrections, please let me know. Membership Dues Currently Due Monthly Meeting Second Saturday of each month Annual Meeting / Elections October Monthly Meeting Spring Open House May 19th and 20th 12 PM-5 PM Summer Open House July 21st and 22nd 12 PM-5 PM Fall Open House Oct 6th and 7th 12 PM-5 PM Laurel Run Operating days First Sunday of Month (June - September) 2ND Floor Meeting Monday Evenings (7:30) HO Venture Crew Meeting First and Third Mondays (7:00) (Any submissions, comments, or corrections can be ed to the editor at tweetiebird94@yahoo.com or see me directly at a club function. You may also mail the submission to the club address C/O Newsletter submission) PAGE 6