Very well made video! Great to see the history of some of the more underrated anthracite roads with their mighty fleet of camelbacks and ALCO diesels. That's also the second time Vernon, NJ has been involved in some cursed rail history: first a NJT ski train excursion to Action Park, and now a proposed ski train excursion to the Playboy Mansion...
A fantastic and accurate history. I grew up in Vienna, NJ just a quick walk from the Great Meadows station. During the 1960's there was a number of trains operating with meets at Vienna siding. I was hired as a tower man with the EL Rwy while the L&H Rwy. was still in operation. As an agreement with the BRAC union the EL also provided a qualified operator at Andover Jct. even though the Sussex branch was abandoned. I was one of the few to be qualified there. I retired from NJ Transit 5/1/2013 as conductor. 😎🚂🚃🚃🚃✝
Great report! Thanks for posting it! There's only one thing I can add, the Lehigh & Hudson River was a great railfan favorite in it's time and was also a VERY railfan friendly 'road. The atmosphere on the L&HR was more like a family than a business according to it's fans and the L&HR's employees were very proud of their railroad and enjoyed showing it off. It's sorely missed to this day by those who remember it.
Great video! Speaking of the Susquehanna, you should make a history video about that, including it's passenger history, how the original line went into Stroudsburg PA, it's joint partnership with the Lehigh & New England railway, the cutback to Sparta Junction, the further cutback to Butler NJ after the Smoke Rise washout, near entire abandonment, and the resurgance with the stackpack trains until 1999. It would be a big video with a ton of history and research, but I would love to see one about my home freight railroad
Th Suzy-Q's like the proverbial cat with nine lives. Every time it seemed to be the end for the 'road they ALWAYS bounced back. As bad as things got there was always someone who saw potential in the Susquehanna.
Monongahela Railroad was not one of the railroads that formed Conrail in 1976. It was absorbed by Conrail in 1993. Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines ( PRSL ) was part of the 1976 consolidation.
Hi West of Hudson Studios, As a fan of the L&HR or as the locals called it "The L&H", this is a very nice video of the railroad with some great video footage of the line in action. But as a fan of "The Bridge Line to New England" I need to add, the passenger station and freight house you keep showing when talking about Sparta Jct, is not at Sparta Jct. That is the Great Meadows Passenger Station and Freight house. Cheers, Rich S.
Thanks for commenting this! I'm aware it was the Great Meadows station, but the reason why I put it as "Sparta Jct" in this video is because after continuous searching, I couldn't find any real images of Sparta Jct so I used it as a substitute. Thanks again!
Hang on, wasn't the Ironton Railroad the smallest? OK, it was an LV/RDG subsidiary, its locos wore RDG green (and had the characteristic RDG drip rail on the cab roof), its cabooses were RDG pattern cars but it was a separate company from both LV and RDG. It was so separate that one of its BLW DS-4-4-1000s was the only Baldwin diesel to make it into Conrail...and the only one to be painted in CR blue.
I think that the Central Indiana & Western was shorter. It ran from Anderson to Lebanon, Indiana. By the time Conrail took it over, it might have been cut back to Westfield.
The situation with the Penn Central bankruptcy shows why Nationalisation was necessary. Even if you run your slice of the economy well and are profitable, if you get fucked by the big guys next to you, that's it! You're working with a natural monopoly so can't blame them for not diversifiying their service away from Penn. Moreover, it's a public utility serving the public interest and national defense so it's important that it work smoothly and efficiently. When the banks failed in 2008 because of poor management by Wall Street and the FED, they said the banks were too big to fail. Penn was too big to fail and look what happened. The railroads today should be nationalised for other reasons, but it's the same thing for the banks.
