Eastern Railroad Discussion > Some Scranton and Wilkes-Barre President's Day action

Took a short trip north from Harrisburg to Scranton with my son Sunday evening and Monday for a family visit and managed to work in a few productive hours with the DL and CP. It was a remarkably clear day in spite of the impending snow storm Monday evening.

Started off with the DL running the old Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley (Laurel Line) trackage to work Compression Polymers in Moosic. The first two shots are coming and going shots of the short train with DL 211 and 1804 bracketing 2 covered hoppers coming up the switchback from the Laurel Line and crossing Montage Mtn Rd. before crossing under I-81 to serve the plant.

Just before getting out of my truck to get these shots, heard CP's D11 job calling the CP dispatcher to open up at the south end of Taylor Yard and head out to the main to start their work. Flew a short distance down Davis St. and got the 7311 and 4653 coming out of the yard with 8 boxcars for the warehouses in Yatesville, 9 salt hoppers for the salt distribution facility south of Wilkes-Barre at Buttonwood, and 6 LP tankers for the Luzerne and Susquehanna interchange at Avoca to be worked on the return trip.

---

---

---

After observing some of the switching at Yatesville, I headed south to Wilkes-Barre and set up on the levee on the Kingston side of the Susquehanna River to get this shot of the D11 on the gauntlet bridge which was once part of the Wilkes-Barre Connecting RR, which was the joint PRR/DH operation between PRR's Buttonwood Yard and the D&H at Hudson Yard, just north of Wilkes-Barre,

The D11 crew made short work at Buttonwood, shoving the tank cars and salt loads up against the empty salt hoppers from the south end, then running around everything and tying on to the north end, cutting behind the tank cars, re-hanging the marker and doing the air test, then running back north to work Avoca. I managed to watch some of this operation then head back north to the other side of the upper WBC RR Susquehanna River bridge (just south of PA 309) to nab this view of the D11 heading northbound.

Amazingly while taking this shot, the CP dispatcher told the crew that the DL was starting to work at Taylor Yard, so I quickly headed back north and set up in the old DL&W Scranton Yard (now home to Steamtown), and got this shot of the DL 211 and 1804, now working as SB3, returning to DL rails from CP with a 22 car pickup including grain hoppers for Mt. Pocono and LP for Tobyhanna. After these shots the train proceeded east to RIDGE (behind the University of Scranton) to set up the cars for the Tuesday run east.

---

---

---

Probably a question best suited to the "Model Railroading" group...The pic of the CP unit running through the crossover: To what 1:87th equivilant turnout #'s would that scene equate? Yes, I was avoiding scrutiny from any grammatical buffs...no prepositional phrasings...My New Year's Resolution...