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.
Last edited by 2nd trick op on Tue Aug 28, 2012 5:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
What a revoltin' development this is! (William Bendix)