Nostalgia & History > Bethlehem in CONRAIL's early days

Who needed Mingo Jct to see Alco's. Bethlehem, Pa around 76 and 77 was Alco heaven for the old Northampton and Bath as well as an election campaign train parked at the old CNJ station.

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crusader5619 Wrote:
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> Bethlehem, Pa
> around 76 and 77 was Alco heaven for the old
> Northampton and Bath as well as an election
> campaign train parked at the old CNJ station.

That was the Lehigh & New England.

Neat stuff. Thanks

Gonut

My apologies...Mr. Lankenau. Its been 20 years since I have even been in Bethlehem....Is that branch still in service?

Got any good full frame pictures of that depot? That's a very interesting design. Y'all are very fortunate back east in having such an interesting collection of depots to look at and photograph. I don't think that the northeastern tailroads ever adapted a "standard" design and then built clones of just a couple of fairly simple designs system wide did they? For example look at the standard designs of the Santa Fe, and the SP, and there were more railroads who did this same thing, on railroads that were mostly west of Chicago.

Con

I do have some close ups that I can scan and post later. For all the standardization of PRR, you can go from Paoli to Philly on the mainline and no two stations looked identical from the Strafford station that started at the 1876 Exposition to the imposing brick work at Radnor or Berwyn. I always though the Reading looked a little more standardized in the Philadelphia area. THere is a lot of variety though and a couple of web sites that cover them...but URL's escape me.

The depot you are referring to is the former Central of New Jersey (CNJ) depot. The Lehigh Valley and Reading depot was on the south shore of the Lehigh River. Amazingly, both depots are still extant, although in different uses. The CNJ depot is a restaurant while the LV/RDG depot is (I believe) some sort of health clinic.

There are a few photos of the CNJ depot at:
http://natisin.homestead.com/Bethlehem.html

Yes the branch is still in service and see frequent traffic serving the cement industries, and some others north of Bethlehem.