Hurricane Agnes in 1972

Back in June, it was the 40th Anniversary of the Flood of 1972 which caused severe damage to Pennsylvania.

What lines were washed out and abandoned due to Agnes?

I can think of 2.

The WAG's Wellsville branch and the LV's Dushore branch.

The State College branch in State College, PA.
The lower half of the EBT
That's all I know of right now.

Len.

thebigham wrote:Back in June, it was the 40th Anniversary of the Flood of 1972 which caused severe damage to Pennsylvania.

What lines were washed out and abandoned due to Agnes?

I can think of 2.

The WAG's Wellsville branch and the LV's Dushore branch.

Number 3:
The Penn Central's Williamsport to Elmira line (nee PRR's Elmira Branch).

The Northern Central was washed out in a number of places between York and Baltimore, and through service was never resumed.
I think Agnes was when the Chester Creek Secondary was washed out between Wawa and Lamokin and never restored. It was conveyed to Conrail in 1976, even with no track, because it was (and I think still is) the route of a major connector in the power grid.

Chris-Here's a link to a discussion in the Conrail forum on this topic that you may find of interest. Two of my favorite lines, the New York Central's DAV&P line from Dunkirk, NY to Warren, PA and the Erie Lackawanna branch in Tioga County, PA that I was just beginning to discover met their demise after Agnes.

http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopi ... 52&t=55560

Wasn't the west end of the PRR Octoraro Branch pretty damaged, in particular west of Chadds Ford- heard of cars being craned out to the Reading W&N line at the junction site?

How about the PRR north of Hamburg?

The SD45

The PRR north of Hamburg was abandoned by the PRR in 1968. Im told that by that time the coal biz gphad tanked so bad it didnt pay to keep the rr active.

I don't think anyplace was hit harder than the North Branch Valley of the Susquehanna between Sunbury and Pittston.

By the time of the flood, traffic on the former PRR was down considerably due to PC's diversion of New England-bound freight from the west via Selkirk Yard in Albany, but Reading's decision to route traffic from Philadelpha and points south to Bullalo and Canada via an EL interchange at Rupert (near Catawissa) had increased traffic on the west side of the river.

The trouble actually began about three days before the flood crested, when one of the reamianing PC freights derailed at a washout somewhere south of Catawissa. One of the RDG-EL joint moves also ended up stranded, and sat in a small yard at Berwick for several days.

Lehigh Valey's Mountain Cutoff, between Gracedale (near Mountaintop) and the yards at Coxton proved to be the easiest line to restore, The EL main weat of Binghamton was also out of service so freight moved via the former DL&W Syracuse line. EL's produce terminal in Scranton, no longer much of a player anyway, also gave up the ghost.

EL also had to deal with damage to low-lying trackage around Bloomsburg, and it was to be about six weeks before the Rupert interchange resumed operations, but the former PRR on the east bank was hit much harder, due mostly to runoff from a sand-and-gravel opeartion about two mies north of Nescopeck which once provided traffic, but now kept the line out of service for well over a year. The former PRR Buttonwood Yard also became history, what was left could be handled byh D&H's Hudson facility, on the north side of Wilkes-Barre. The one remaining daily freight was diverted over the paralell EL, often with D&H C-628's as power.

Things didn't really stabilize until the Conrail Final System plan took effect in the spring of 1976, and ironically, the two roads were struck by another storm -- not bad in the Wyoming Valley, but with actually higher water-marks in Bloomsburg due to local small-stream flooding. And in the summer of 1978, with EL and RDG a memory, Conrail tore out the Bloomsburg Branch north of the new PP&L nuckear power station a few miles south of Shickshinny.

NS and CP cooperated on a complete rebuild of the former PRR as the Sunbury Line in the late 1990's, however, and it now sees almost as much traffic as it did in the 1950's.

Some facts from the "Flood issue", AUG-Sept 1972 PENN CENTRAL POST
68 PC branch lines, secondaries and industrial tracks closed by slides/washouts
25 bridges destroyed ; 2 biggest were the Shock's Mill stone bridge and the truss bridge over the Chemung R. in Corning NY.
23 Bridges damaged
Bridge washout caused wreck of CSB-7 near S. Danville,PA. 4 DIESELS, 3 CARS down 30' embankment
3 PC lines that did not survive Agnes were:
Bedford,PA. - Cumberland,MD.
Waynesboro,PA. branch
Dillsburg,PA. branch
Locally, the Frederick,MD. branch was cut at the Monocacy River north of town, this bridge lost 2 girder sections and 1 pier, It was OOS for almost 25 yrs., when the Walkersville Southern did the repairs, however their trains run just to the former grade xing at RT26, the trackage from there south to the street trackage on East St. was never restored, customers remaining were served from the B&O connection. There are no customers left today and the trackage was cut off when the B&0 branch was reconstructed for MARC service in 2001.

Schuylkill Valley wrote:The State College branch in State College, PA.
The lower half of the EBT
That's all I know of right now.

Len.

The State College branch is really not the correct name.

It was previously the Lewisburg and Tyrone Railroad, which connected Bellefonte with Lewisburg PA. It was considered the PRR Bellefonte branch I believe under the PRR. It never reached State College Borough, which the Bellefonte Central did. The closest it came was to Lemont, which is a village in College Township, just outside of State College Borough. More information at the link below. It was interesting to note that the section between Mifflinburg and Coburn was actually abandoned in 1970, two years before Agnes, due to lack of traffic on that stretch of the line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewisburg_ ... e_Railroad

BWP

The Erie Lackawanna was devastated with an estimated 11 million in damages which essentially forced them into bankruptcy. Pretty much every RR bridge in the Poconos was blown out and the southern tier of NY was clobbered with over 100 washouts from Hornell to Owego.

Knowing the Lackawanna & Wyoming Valleys in Northeastern PA and how they suffered with Agnes, it is a safe bet to assume every other RR in that area took a major hit as well.

NYSW3614 wrote:Wasn't the west end of the PRR Octoraro Branch pretty damaged, in particular west of Chadds Ford- heard of cars being craned out to the Reading W&N line at the junction site?

Yup!

I know firsthand that Agnes pretty much killed the Chester Creek Branch and the upper end of the Octoraro although the damage I actually saw was EAST or north of Chadds Ford caused by the West Branch of Chester Creek and the main branch of Chester Creek.

As a kid, a buddy & I used to fish the West Branch of Chester Creek downstream of Cheyney Road along Pole Cat Road near Chester Heights. We would access the public section of the creek via the PRR tracks at Cheyney Road by walking the tracks downstream past the private Newlin's Grist Mill property. On one trip not long after Agnes we had to do a high wire act to walk the rails which were 2-3 feet up in the air in some spots with no earth, ballast or anything else below. It was a complete washout and something amazing to see.

In regards to the Octoraro and transfers to W&N at the junction. As a fisherman I know the Brandywine pretty well and I have to believe the Reading's W&N had major problems of their own due to Agnes both north & south of the PRR junction since the Brandywine Creek essentially follows the W&N for miles and miles in both directions, although this is just a guess. However I do know the PRR trestle EAST of the junction and the rails as well still exist about 3 feet shy of where the diamond once was. Whether this was a later rebuild or they survived Agnes I don't know for sure.

Schuylkill Valley wrote:The State College branch in State College, PA.
The lower half of the EBT
That's all I know of right now.

Len.

the ebt south of rockhill funace hadn't seen traffic of any sort for ten years or more by that point. the last run of any sort was a trip by their gas=electric motor car to saltillo, just to prove they were "still in service" and therefore couldn't be ripped up for the new high school.

Was the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes a convenient excuse for the N&W to rid itself of the EL?

CPF363 wrote:Was the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes a convenient excuse for the N&W to rid itself of the EL?

Well.....the damage from Agnes and resulting EL bankruptcy certainly aided the cause. But the fact remained that
the commuter operations in the NYC/NJ areas was a HUGE money-loser. After the devastation, I think N & W saw the
proverbial "writing on the wall" and cut bait.

Charlie

PRR>PC Elmira Branch. Sadly the only sections left of the line south of Elmira after Agnes was a small section of line from Elmira Yard to Chapel Lumber. CR derail 1 time in the 80s & that was the end of that section of the old Elmira Branch.