This video is a compilation of photos and video clips I took during five trips to Steamtown in Scranton PA between 2001 and 2024. Check out my other railroad videos in my playlist here • Jay's Train Videos
Steamtown is probably my least favorite railroad museum just because of the appalling state of a lot of their locomotives and rolling stock. Owning equipment is one thing, but you have to keep them maintained like come on
Not to mention that restoring the equipment (cosmetic or operational) requires a lot of money. Forget about winning the lottery, if this is an important job, get it done! No need to be sitting on one’s backside counting the money and worrying about what to spend it on.
Being almost a national park, Steamtown gets a lot of federal money (thanks to its congressman). How many railroad museums are that lucky? None last I heard, though several are state museums and get generous funding although they are subject to budget cuts and political footballing. Witness NC.
Even with the federal money, they seem to have a struggle keeping things going. Moving it from Vermont made it more accessible, but it's still too far from major population centers to draw a lot of people other than train buffs.
It is really a crying shame that the motive power has deteriorated to the condition it is in today. In the video, I noticed a tender with High Iron Company labeling on its side. High Iron used to run excursions out of Lebanon, New Jersey when I was a kid back in the 1960s. I was in Steamtown a little over 30 years ago along with my brother and his future wife. We picked up the excursion train at the Ukraine veterans club. The train backed out of town and then got a running start through town. The idea was they didn't want to blow cinders all over the place by starting from a standing stop. I remember stopping in the middle of the Tunkhannock Creek Viaduct on the Nicholson Cutoff so people could take pictures.
I still have 8mm film of Steamtown when my family visited in 1966. It was amazing! My sister and I climbed all over the engines, which were all together. Just wonderful. A real shame what happened to it.
There was a time during my childhood when I so desperately wanted to visit Steamtown. But as I got older, smarter, and learned things about them, my interest in visiting has decreased. I still want to visit it for myself one day, but if I were ever to visit Pennsylvania, I'd probably put it towards the bottom of my list of places to go seeing as they don't offer as much as they used to before 2317 & 3254 were pulled from service. Even though they've been working hard to have B&M 3713 The Constitution operational, I still wonder if are they still worth a visit. Until that day comes, I won't be holding my breath until they do something that amazes me.
I've had no luck on excursions. Even with advanced registration and payment. They always cancel for track maintenance. So I've learned to go at halloween 🎃 and christmas 🎄. More guarantee the train will run.
I don't think they have enough resources to have reliable operation. Only one working steam locomotive, so if it has an issue visitors are out of luck.
As an architect / engineer who has been a rail fan my entire life, I have always felt that the "architectural" concept for the who!e revamping of the roundhouse at Steamtown in Scranton was a complete abortion. It looks like something some 70's contemporary architect on psychedelic drugs came up with. I think a more historic!ally accurate restoration would have been more appropriate but I guess they wanted to try to get more daylight into the inside displays.
You're right, I didn't even realize it was there. You can see its cab sitting on a flatcar 14 seconds into the video. That photo was taken in 2013, and from what I read online it's still in pieces. if any of it's other parts are in any of my photos, I'm unaware.
