8 NEWSLETTER OF THE MOHAWK & HUDSON CHAPTER, N.R.H.S.

L&W'santon Yardd Shops

By Tim Truscott

The Lackawanna's Scranton Yard in the1850s occupied only a portion of what itultimately came to cover. The center of theoperationwas its first passenger and freightstations, wood frame structures built in1851 and located alongside the yard onLackawannaAvenue adjacent to Scranton'sdowntown area. At about the same time, abrick machine shop was built on the westside of Washington Avenue with a boilershop and car shop on the east side of thestreet A small foundrywas located nearby.Both the passenger station and freight de-pot were said to have been moved to newlocations on Lackawanna Avenue in 1854,then were replaced in 1864by brick build-ings. In 1907,when themost recent passen-ger station was built, a large brick freighthouse was constructed on LackawannaAvenue across the yard from the last round-house. This is now the site of a State officebuilding.

The original Scranton roundhouse, de-picted in George Inness' famous painting"The Lackawanna Valley" (now in theNational Gallery in Washington, D.C.),was constructed in 1855 west of what isnow Washington Avenue across fromwhatbecame the Erecting Shop. This structurewas a 225-footdiameter,30-stall,full-circle,fully-enclosed structure, i.e. the center 60-foot turntable area was capped by a 98-foothigh dome. For a period of several yearsthis roundhouse was the most prominentstructure in the growing city of Scranton. Inabout 1864 the raised center dome wasremoved, as this portion of the structurewas observed to be settling. This originalroundhousewas demolished in about 1902,but its 6O-footturntable was retained untilthe 1920s when it was replaced by a 100-foot turntable removed in the late 1940s.This part of the yard was known toLackawanna employees, for some reason,as "Hog Town."

In about 1865a second roundhousewitha 66-foot turntable was built to the west of

the original roundhouse described above.A new roundhouse was built on this samesite in 1902as a part of PresidentTruesdale'sredevelopment program, and the 66-footturntable was replaced with a 90-foot turn-table in about 1912. The roundhouse wasused until the end of the steam era in 1954,although a portion of it was demolished inthe early 1950s. The turntable was useduntil the 1970s,just before Conrail, but wassold to a scrap dealer in about 1981.Whilethere is evidence that the interior configu-ration of this roundhouse was altered atleast once and that the number of stallsevidently changed because of fire damageand reconstruction, this roundhouse was atits peak a 46-stall, full-circle structure.Modifications were made to the buildingover the years. The roundhouse shell andthe turntable pit can be seen today. Theinspection pits of the roundhouse, thoughfilled in years ago, are still intact beneaththe surface of the roundhouse floor.

Adjacent to the roundhouse on its eastside, a machine shop supported the round-house activities. Portions of this building,still standing, date back to 1865. AfterWorld War II an addition was put on thismachine shop building and the structurebecame the Lackawanna's diesel shop. Tothe north of the roundhouse was located alarge wooden coal trestle for fueling loco-motives. Ash pits were also located in thisvicinity. These structures remained for aperiod after the end of steam power in1954.

The Scranton roundhouse was fre-quented by the DL&W's No. 1I50-series"Hudson" type steam locomotives,recentlyrecalled fondly by Jim Ratchford, in recentyears the Manager of Locomotive Mainte-nance at the Delaware & Hudson's EastBinghamton shop. These large-wheeledsteamers were used in passenger service.Ratchford began working for theLackawanna in 1947 and spent nearly ayear working in-the Scranton roundhousein 1950. The No. 1600-series "Pocono"steam locomotives were also recalled by

September 1991

A map of the DL&W's ScrantonYard and Shop complex as itappeared about 1898. The smallerroundhouse near the center of themap was the DL&W's first inScranton and dated from 1855. Thelarger roundhouse in the upper lett(south) dated from about 1865, butwas replaced with another largerroundhouse on the same site in1902. The area at the bottom of themap (east), part of which waoccupied by the Lackawanna Coal& Iron Co., became the site of theDL&W's large locomotive erectingshop in 1907.

September 1991 NEWSLETTER OF THE MOHAWK & HUDSON CHAPTER, N.R.H.S. THE CALL BOARD 9

Ratchford from his days in the roundhouse,though not with quite as deep an affection.

In 1945 a large addition was built at acost of $100,000 on the machine shop build-ing and the structure became theLackawanna's diesel shop. A second,smaller addition was constructed in 1949.The diesel shop had six tracks, numbered2-5 and 7-8 which went outdoors and twotracks, used for repairing locomotive trucks,which didn't extend outside the building.Four of these tracks, #2-#5, had pits andramps to facilitate access to the enginecompartments and undersides of the loco-motives, while Tracks 7 and 8 had neitherpits nor ramps. Drop tables to remove andinstall locomotive trucks were incorporatedinto Tracks 4 and 5, with the one on Track5 lengthened in about 1952 to accommo-date the three-axle trucks of E-8 locomo-tives.

Jim Ratchford also recalls that theScranton diesel shop became home to anarray of diesel locomotive classes over theyears while he worked there. He left theshop as a General Foreman when it wasclosed by Conrail in 1981. TheLackawanna's E-8's (#810-820), the work-horses of the passenger fleet, arrived in1950 and pushed the F-3 diesels back intofreight service. Alco S-l yard switchersarrived in the late '40s, with RS-3 roadswitchers (the 900-series) beginning to ar-rive in 1950. The well-known Fairbanks-Morse "Trainmaster" diesels came toScranton in about 1956.

The Scranton locomotive erecting shopat 23 acres was much larger than theKingsland shop. The shop was built be-tween 1907 and 1910 on the site of theLackawanna Iron and Steel Company,which had moved to the Buffalo area in1902 and eventually became BethlehemSteel's Lackawanna plant. (LackawannaIron and Steel had grown out of theLackawanna Coal and Iron Company, thesuccessor to the Scranton brothers' earlyventure.) This new facility was to be ca-pable of building new locomotives andaccommodating repairs to all locomotivesfrom the Scranton, Syracuse and Utica di-visions. Prior to this time, the DL&W uti-lized the Dickson Locomotive Company'sCliff Works for constructing new locomo-tives as well as for special work of whichthe railroad was not capable. The CliffWorks was located immediately west ofthe Lackawanna property which had re-cently closed after becoming part of theAmerican Locomotive Company in 1902.This firm had grown from an obscure ironfoundry started in 1856 by Thomas Dickson

into a large firm with three separate shopsmanufacturing machinery primarily for theanthracite industry. The Cliff Works facil-ity had been purchased by Dickson fromCooke & Company (unrelated to the Pater-son locomotive firm) in 1862 and con-verted to locomotive construction. Thesefacilities, interestingly enough, appear inInness' famous painting as they were at thetime they were operated by Cooke. A smallportion of the Dickson Works' structuresstill exist today.

'The main shop building, located on theeast side of Washington Avenue from thefreight yard, roundhouse and other shopfacilities, had dimensions of 344 ft. x 582ft. with six bays running the length of thebuilding. The two outside bays comprisedthe erecting department, each having eigh-teen tracks which were accessible by alarge transfer table on the east of the build-ing, or by overhead crane on the side adja-cent to Washington Avenue. The four inte-rior bays were the machine shop, reservedfor repair and rebuilding of individualpieces. Large concrete lettering high on theend walls of the building still reads"ERECTING SHOP," although the facilitywas closed in about 1949 after dieseliza-tion occurred and has been used as a muni-tions factory ever since. A large StoresDepartment building was located on theopposite side of Washington Avenue fromthe Erecting Shop, with the two connectedby a subterranean passageway crossingbeneath Washington Avenue which in-

eluded an electrified three-foot gauge rail-way for transporting materiel. Also locatedacross Washington Avenue from the Erect-ing Shop and on the site of the originalroundhouse, a Maintenance of Way repairshop and storage building was constructedin 1951.

Charles Yungkurth, now known for hiscontributions to Railroad Model Crafts-man Magazine, grew up four blocks fromLackawanna Station and near the railroadsshops toward the end of the steam era.Yungkurth recalled how the railroad wouldbreak in its steam locomotives after majorrepairs or rebuilding by running them backand forth for hours at a time on the stretchof track adjacent to the south side of theErecting Shop which extended over Wash-ington Avenue toward the roundhouse area.These newly-refurbished locomotives werealways freshly painted. An 0-6-OT switcherwas used to work the shop and to moveinactive locomotives on and off the transfertable. Adjacent to the shops, on the eastside toward the station, the tenders werestored which belonged to all the engines inthe shop. Between the shop and the stationwas located the Lackawanna's power plant,whose large steam engine and flywheelwere visible from the street in the hotweather when the doors were open.

Yungkurth also recalled the impact thatdieselization had on the Lackawanna'sworkforce, first on the road and then in theshops, after the first FT diesel units arrivedin Scranton on May 3, 1945. It was com-

Steamtown engineer Bernie O'Brien (standing in the doorway) andfireman Seth Corwin Oeaning out the window of the 2317) at Kingsley,PA. Bernie and Seth will be working the train when the Mohawk &Hudson Chapter takes the steam excursion on October 19.

10 THE CALL BOARD NEWSLETTER OF THE MOHAWK & HUDSON CHAPTER. N.R.H.S. September 1991

mon at that time to use three 2200-class 4-8-2 or various 2-8-2 pushers on the backand a helper on the front of east-bound coaltrains heading out of Scranton, thus makingfive steam locomotives on a coal train ofabout a hundred cars. Sitting on the stationplatform, one witnessed at about ten minuteintervals what seemed to be a constantstream of these locomotives drifting backdown the grade from the summit of thePoconos. Soon after the first F-units weredelivered to Scranton in 1945 for pusherservice, 50 firemen were furloughed and 50engineers were immediately bumped backto firemen. The impact of a pair of higherhorsepower diesels replacing a trio of steamlocomotives was apparent.

One can also imagine the impact thatthese new high horsepower, low mainte-nance units had on the steam shop, as thediesels ran night and day with only crewchanges, while the steam locomotives couldmake only two trips up the mountain beforehaving to spend as much as eight hoursbeing coaled and serviced. At the sametime that dieselization was being imple-mented after World War II, the tonnage ofcoal being shipped out of Scranton wasfalling rapidly. Although in 1940 theDL&W was probably the largest employerand taxpayer in Scranton, perhaps employ-ing as many as 5,000 people, theLackawanna's roll in Scranton was soon todecline. And the DL&W was one of over ahalf-dozen railroads that came intoScranton.

The Lackawanna's Scranton Yard wasone of several in Scranton and was rela-tively small. Its use was primarily for ser-vicing local industries, as well as for add-ing to or taking cars from hotshot freights.All trains changed engines at Scranton, andeven the hottest of merchandise trains withrefrigerator and stock cars stopped at theScranton Yard for at least two hours whilean inspection of the train and a powerchange took place. The DL& W's other twonearby yards, Hampton Yard and TaylorYard (which is now part of the Delaware &Hudson), were principally used for coaltraffic. The Taylor Yard was intended pri-marily for handling of empty coal cars andHampton Yard was intended primarily forloaded cars.

The DL&W's Scranton Yard and Shopcomplex went through about 175 years ofevolution before it ceased operation as arailroad facility. The Steamtown NationalHistoric Site will be a partial restoration ofthat historic rail site, and will interpret itshistory for the public.

What remains of the DL&W's 1902 roundhouse in Scranton has beenstabilized and refurbished by the National Park Service during 1991.A new 9O-foot turntable, seen in the photo in front of the roundhouse,was installed in recent months.

,,.-Truck No.6

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The genera1 floor plan of the DL&W's Scranton diesel shop, whichwas developed in 1945 from the old machine shop building adjacentto the roundhouse, shows six tracks, four of which entered the shopfrom the east (right) and two of which had no outside rail connections.Tracks 1 and 2 were for running maintenance, Track 5 was used forheavy road locomotive repair and Track 6 was used for heavy repairof switching locomotives. Tracks 3 and 4, which did not go outsidethe building, were used for truck repair and engine overhauling.