Eastern Railroad Discussion > Around Scranton Saturday

Finally had an opportunity to head north to the Scranton are this past Friday/Saturday after being sidelined much of the summer after surgery. I started off by heading into Scranton a little before 9:00 to try to catch the DL Portland Turn (PT98) coming on duty. Surprisingly, they were starting to pull east just when I got to Scranton so I headed to Elmhurst to get these shots from the reservoir. I hadn't been back here in over a year, and there is some construction taking place on the dam, fencing or reinforcing the walls or something of that nature, so i don't know if these views will be available in the future.

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Opted not to venture too far away from the home base chasing the 98 so I headed back to downtown Scranton as I knew that CP's 458 was on it's way south from Binghamton. Set up and waited for a little longer than I expected below Lackawanna Ave (MP 671 / Bridge 60 ) before the 102 car train arrived headed by CP 8918 (CP power is not too common on 458/459.) As I was awaiting the 458, a special Steamtown excursion headed north via the Strawberry Connector and the former D&H Mainline which surprised me, but explained why the DL's PT98 headed east earlier than expected, to get out of the way of the excursion. The Steamtown excursion on the D&H piqued my interest for later for possibly some southbound shots of it returning, but for now I headed south to Yatesville to get another shot of the 458 behind the Valley Distribution warehouse complex.

Decided to had back for some lunch but first I opted to get a quick shot of one of Steamtown's Scranton Limited short hop train with the restored 'DLW 664' near the old Lackawanna Station and the University of Scranton.

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I later learned that the Steamtown excursion had a Carbondale destination, pretty much the northern end of old D&H Line now owned by the NEPA Regional Rail authority and operated by the DL. I took a short hop via the Casey highway to the Merideth St. exit where my timing was perfect and I had less than a 5 minute wait to get this overhead shot of the southbound. I thought about getting a few other locations in the upper Lackawanna Valley, but noise on the CP channel on the scanner coming from Taylor Yard caused me to head back south to investigate. Turns out that there was a CP train working in Taylor Yard which I was unaware of, doing yard work and putting a train together to head north to Binghamton. They had a good hour or more of work, so that gave me additional time to grab some more shots of the returning excursion from Carbondale. I set up on the Mulberry St. Bridge in downtown Scranton to get these views of it coming up the Strawberry connector track from the old D&H Line (on left) to the old DL&W Diamond Branch (on right) returning to Steamtown.

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Here are a few more views after making it's moves to get to the boarding platform with the 350+ riders departing and DL power sitting in the yard.

Finally, I headed back over to the Lackawanna Ave area (MP 671) to await the passing of the northbound CP train coming out of Taylor Yard. Apparently the morning's 458 had set out a cripple car at Factoryville, and CP sent the DB11 yard job out of Binghamton to retrieve it and bring it to Taylor for repairs. They then were instructed to clean out as many cars from Taylor as they could take back north with them, which included a good cut of intermodals and over 50 empties from the DL and CP's Tayor-based D11 job. The 60-plus cars weighed in at 2450 tons, just about at the limit for a pair of GP38s to handle up Clarks Summit hill and get back to Binghamton. What a sound these two made in run 8 making a run for it at the bottom of the hill.

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Thanks for sharing your nice collection of photos.
John

GOOD stuff...!!! Thanks for sharing.