Carbondale

Looking at older GPS maps, there seems to be a mega network of rail lines, but I presume were coal branches. Driving thru Carbondale, you can see quite a bit of past mining / coal slurry(?) in the area.

The other day coming out of Scranton, I went thru business Rt6, and noticed that there are quite a few abaondoned rail cars in the woods.

What's up with that? Who serves the line now (and how often) and how far northeast did and does the line go? Did it ever connect with the Southern Tier line in NY along the Deleware?

Carbondale is rich in both Coal and Railroad history. The D&H built a gravity railroad to transport coal from the area to Honesdale where it was transloaded into canal boats for shipment to New York City. At one time the Mainline of the D&H passed through Carbondale. Carbondale was the site of a huge railyard for the D&H. After the DH purchased the ex-Lackawanna line between Scranton and Binghamton in 1985, the line laid dormant until the Scranton-Carbondale segment was purchased by Lackawanna County in 1987. The line north of Simpson was torn up and the roadbed is being turned into a rail-trail.

The former DH trackage is served by the Delaware-Lackawanna RR, and sees quite a bit of service.

The woods near Business Route 6 were actually the site of the former Mayfield Yard of the New York, Ontario and Western. The cars belong to a scrap dealer named John Naumann who operates an antique store and scrap yard across the street. Near the traffic light where you saw the cars is an old boxcar that was made into a home.

The O&W line crossed the Delaware River and the Southern Tier line near Hancock, N Y

...or was...a lot of railroading up and down the Lackawanna Valley....Andy mentioned some: DL&W, O&W, and D&H (standard and gravity roads) plus the Erie, the NYS&W, trolley lines. Whatsmore, everybody could be running on anybody else's tracks! There were dozens of mines, colleries, and mills too! You almost have to look at maps each year to see how often things changed! O&W Mayfield Yard is pretty visible there on business 6 as is the old D&H plot in Carbondale. The O&W snubbed Carbondale with a bridge across it! You can find out a lot of these stories from the different railroads histories; I wish someone did have a single "history and evolution" of the Lackawanna Valley railroads which would help eliminate the confusion!!!

When I was young, my family always used to make a yearly trip to visit my paternal grandparents in Brooklyn, NY from our home in northwest PA. Our travels always took us on the, then unimproved, Pennsylvania Route 6. I remember the breakers, slag piles and machinery from railroads and industries that had seen better times when passing through the Scranton/Carbondale area. Those memories are about 40 years old now and fading, but recent pictures of the Scranton area can be found at "Forgotten Scranton":

http://www.geocities.com/forgottenscranton/?200527

Scroll down to "The Lost Relics of Mayfield" for photos of the abandoned NYO&W equipment.

Great link, Art. Lots of equipment just aching to be restored, but you'd need to be Bill Gates to do it.

In the Ironton RR photos there's an old boxcar. It appears to be an LV "wrong-way door" car. Since the Ironton was owned by Reading and LV, it's probably a hand-me-down the Lehigh assigned to Ironton.