NEW PRR Book!

Newly published- "PRR in the Schuylkill River Valley" by Benjamin L. Berhart. Hardbound book with color and B&W photos- lots of good information on the PRR Schuylkill Division from 52nd Street to Pottsville- a rare subject. 156 pages. Book may be purchased from the Historical Society of Berks County, information coming soon to website. $49.95. 610 375 4375. http://www.berkshistory.org/

I picked up a copy at the model train show in Philadelphia last week...I'm enjoying it a great deal.

Gentlemen:

Can any of you give us a capsule description of this book? Regarding its purchase, I am fence-sitting until I can find a decent-sized review of it. At $50 a copy, I can't be hasty.

I am *cautiously* optimistic that this book is more than just pretty pictures with most of the text actually being just extended captions. Like the volumes by Morning Sun Books. I'm hoping for some above-average prose to educate me. As the Schuylkill River valley is one of the very few railroad arenas where the PRR "lost a war" against a major foe, the topic is of great interest to me. It is a terrible shame that its Schuylkill operations, until fairly recently, have been obscure and virtually unknown to many rail enthusiasts.

David Messer's "Triumph III" (concerning PRR's Philadelphia Terminal Division) has a large chapter on the Schuylkill Branch which was highly informative, and benefitted from original research. Major shippers like Phoenix Steel, McClintic-Marshall, and the upstate anthracite collieries are also given a place here. I never knew about the +3% Darkwater grade or the St. Clair Tunnel north of Pottsville until I got this book. Many images came from the National Archives, taken during the 1917 ICC valuation surveys which documented many railroads' physical features in fine detail. There are also old-time postcard views of some stations, which are good but are eclipsed in value by actual photos of otherwise-unremarked vital features of the line.

Likewise, Volume 46 Number 4 of the NRHS' "National Railway Bulletin" (1981) is dominated by a 37-page feature on the Schuylkill Branch. The very earliest history of the line's pre-PRR forebears is covered, as well as much operational data concerning everyday freight & passenger operations. Many vintage photos of facilities, motive power, and rights-of-way, too. For the longest time, this was essentially the *only* thing in print about the history of PRR's Schuylkill struggle with the Reading. Fortunately it is very well-written and researched.

The Bernhart book has some serious competition. I really hope that it is up to par...I'd love to learn more new things about this line's rise and fall, instead of rehashing old data behind a new facade.

With the caveat that I haven't gotten halfway through yet (lots of homework), it seems to focus mainly on the construction of the line from Philadelphia out, with most of the details focusing on specific stations and especially how the rivalry with the Reading line impacted the PRR's construction and operation. I've never read those others works you cited (though i'll try to when I've moved through the backlog) so I can't really compare it to them. I'll post more when I've made some more progress.

Have any other members of this forum read the PRR book referred to in the first post???

I have an opportunity to buy a copy but the author's reputation is checkered enough that I am reluctant to do so without some reader reviews first. Especially at the price which I am being quoted. I have read other volumes of his and am generally less than impressed with books that are mainly assortments of postcard views and previously-published photos, loosely stitched together by very little in the way of original research.

Much of my concern stems from fears that whatever prose the Bernhart volume offers might merely be reshuffled and warmed-over portions of prose from the other two excellent works on the PRR Schuylkill Branch mentioned in my 2006 post in this thread. Some overlap is expected, but I am opposed to buying the same books twice, if you know what I mean.

If anyone here has read the book and can tell me its ratio of "photos versus text" or perhaps how informative the text is, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks.

I meant to return with a final review after I finished reading it but obviously I forgot, so lets call this a late holiday gift.

In terms of information I doubt this book will teach you anything new. There's a lot of quoting of construction dates and companies and a synopsis of the construction of the various sections and the creation of the division, as well as anecdotes about all those things, but most of these are brief. There are a lot of mostly black & white photographs and some color photos and I would say these are the focus of the book. (I'd say about 75% pictures and captions). Most of them are cited as coming from various individuals such as Robert Wanner and Art Acker, if that helps.

There's also a list of stations, sidings, and their locations in terms of mileage, a list of scheduled freight trains, signal towers, water towers, and bridges. Some track diagrams are also included.

I haven't read the other books you mentioned so I can't compare it to them. However I would say it does a good job of conveying what was involved in building and managing the Schuylkill Division and the pictures document the line fairly well. The writing style is kind of blah and I would have liked more about operations. I can provide you some more details if there's any specific aspect of the division you want to find out more about. I hope this review was more helpful than my first one.

Hi All,

Interesting opinions/ reviews at this juncture.

So, let us see, under 200 pages and a price tag of fifty bucks. Rather extravagant, even if it is offered by Borders, Barnes and Nobel, etc.

I have a problem with such extravagance and most likely will pass on the issue.

PARailWiz, thank you for the "inside view"! I realize that it is not easy to convey the apparrent "usefulness" of a given set of photographs via a text posting to another reader, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you could try for me. Hopefully I can adequately explain below what I seek from this book, and why I fear this book may not hold what I hoped to find.

(This is going to be a lengthy post!)

Are many of the photos you find in this book taken in the final few decades of operation as the line becomes truncated and forlorn, or are they taken when it was still a fairly busy property in good repair? I hope that the pre-1950 steam era is well represented, especially seeing as how the line's usefulness dropped sharply during the diesel era and began suffering vicious cutbacks. Heck, one could even argue that 1930 is a good watershed year for considering the pace of the line's transformation from being well-travelled and useful to slowly coming unraveled. You don't have to wait until after World War II to see the line falling to its knees. The 1925 anthracite miners' strike did much to sour Americans on hard coal for home heating, so revenues from freight were already sliding downhill. As for passenger service, the Depression eventually killed the Reading-Pottsville locals and finally the two through trains to Wilkes-Barre as well. The claim that the years of the steam-to-diesel transition are a good watershed point in the line's fortunes can't be supported if you are familiar with its history.

While the ratio of steam to diesel is of some interest, what about the number of photos showing electric operations east of Haws Avenue in Norristown? Do we get to see the electric MP54 "red rattler" MU cars in local passenger service? BTW, are there any images of GG1-hauled passenger trains as special moves for the Boy Scouts of America and their national jamboree in Valley Forge in 1957? IIRC, electric ops were cut back east to Manayunk in October 1961 (corrections welcomed).

Are there any good pre-1940 photos of the two "flagship" passenger trains of the line, the Mountaineer and the Anthracite Express? There are a select few photos of them in other publications showing one or the other around Conshohocken and at Frick's Lock & Pottstown...but what about views in Reading, Pottsville or in between? These two trains made it all the way to Wilkes-Barre from Philly and back.

I'm assuming that the book offers few images or text about the part of the line north of Pottsville, as far as Morea and New Boston Junction; the connection with the Legigh Valley RR. Are there any photos or prose describing anything in this segment other than Darkwater trestle or St. Clair tunnel?

And how about the Brill gas-electric "doodlebugs" which covered most of the PRR Pottsville-Reading and Pottsville-Shenandoah local runs during the Depression? Any photos of these humble vehicles doing the local passenger trade?

Please tell me if there are many photos or pages of text describing things between Hamburg/Port Clinton and Mount Carbon roundhouse & yard, just south of Pottsville. I have long been interested in the "no man's land" between Port Clinton and Schuylkill Haven on the PRR line. There's very, very little in print which provides descriptions of the trackage and structures, let alone pictures of same. Heck...I could even say the same about the RDG Main Line between the same points. This is an area where Route 61 swings to the north, away from the railroad alignment; photography isn't quite so easy along here, and one would have had to go exploring down some country roads. Persons who once chased trains through here with their cameras in hand likely would not have gone off of 61 unless they already knew how to reach a scenic point chosen in advance, so photos are scarce here. I wouldn't call it "difficult"...just that it was not conducive to the "hit and run" style of yesteryear's "foamers" .

For examples of the above...are there any photos which show the stations at Auburn, Landingville, Adamsdale, and Schuylkill Haven? The through-truss bridge at Auburn which carried the PRR over the river as well as the Reading Main Line? The concrete overpasses which carried the PRR atop the streets of Schyulkill Haven? Views of the PRR passing beneath the huge bridge at Connor which carried the Lehigh Valley's Pottsville Branch overhead? The Mount Carbon roundhouse and freight yard in its heyday as opposed to its empty, weed-strewn final years?

And what about views of the large passenger station in Pottsville as well as the trackage leading through that area to/from Mount Carbon? IIRC, the PRR line jumped over the lanes of Route 61 just a few hundred feet south of the last big curve to the left before driving north into Pottsville. I think that the space which the current southbound lanes of Rt. 61 occupy was originally where the PRR trackbed may have been. How did the PRR cross the RDG's own Schuylkill Valley Branch heading northeast towards Tamaqua? It's very hard to tell for certain when looking back from so many decades later. The physical relationship between the RDG and PRR trackage in Pottsville itself and the southern approaches has long interested me. It is a complex tangle which I had high hopes that the Bernhart book would illuminate with detailed street maps, railroad track charts and photographs of this area.

Now for some more philosophical musings about why what I've heard so far about this book sounds like a missed opportunity to me...

I get the distinct feeling that many of the photos in this book are of a character which some might possibly describe as "rivet-counter" fare: showing a locomotive and the first couple of freight cars in close-up view, but filling the frame tightly enough that little else about the scene can be discerned. Such photos are useless to me; the motive power in question could have been photographed anyplace. It is views of the train in its greater geographic and/or urban context that interest me.

On the average, photos of rolling-stock (either passenger or freight) being hauled by whatever form of power gives me little of what I seek. This is doubly true of most vintage photos, as many were composed and cropped so severely that some are simply locomotive portraits without any sense of place or signifigance. I am far less interested in the train than I am in the railroad and its structures, if you take my meaning. If a photo which includes a train is the only window I have which also depicts at least part of a key station, bridge or interlocking tower I yearn to see, then I'll gladly settle for that instead. Just as long as the train doesn't fill 80% or more of the photo, please.

I am well aware that an author in 2006 is limited to decisions made by random scattered photographers in October 1953 or August 1941 or whenever, all of whom had their own agendas and many of whom are now deceased (so there's no way to track them down and seek clarification about a given photo). As someone with his own railroad-themed historical projects simmering on the stove, I am familiar with that limitation. However, a book whose skeleton seems to consist mainly of data lifted more-or-less directly from a PRR employeee timetable plus photos whose aesthetic emphasis is skewed so heavily in favor of the train that the surrounding scene is nearly impossible to appreciate is therefore a book of limited usefulness to me. I am not a modeller or a motive-power fan. I care not for knowing how many ton-miles were accommodated in 1917 or the precise location of the closest trackside telephone to Douglassville for calling the dispatcher.

PARailWiz's wish for more data on the routine operations of the line make me feel more strongly that the book is much too light on research. Despite my disinterest in locomotives and cars on their own merits, I do enjoy operational data; I find it breathes life into such accounts of rails longe gone and stations long forgotten. Some folks like to ask "when was this track built and where did it head to?". I like to ask, "how was it used and for what purposes?".

Many of my reasons for wanting broader-angled photos showing the right-of-way and much of the adjacent lands have to do with wanting to be able to place where the long-gone track used to exist. Likewise my reasons for wanting to know have less to do with railroading per se and are more in tune with the sociological signifigance of the line. I know that this appears to run at right angles to the heavy technophilia which most readers carry within them and which most railroad books understandably cater to. I used to share that interest but I have since shifted to a broader view in which the mobile machinery is but one part. The latter is a passion which is mostly private to me; the former is something I offer no personal opinions about...while I no longer share that interest, it is legitimate and I do not expect it to be ignored by an author. If only I could have been able to convince author Bernhart to find a means to provide a bit more meat for my own plate and that of other readers like me!

Thanks to all of you for your patience with me as I tried to explain just why I am disappointed to date with the Bernhart book and what it might have been instead. Perhaps PARailWiz might be able to shed some additional light on it which could cause me to revise my views in a more favorable direction.

Well, those were specific requests all right .

I do have one correction to make, there actually is a decent summary of operations on the line and changes over time in the back of the book. It's about seven pages long.

Are many of the photos you find in this book taken in the final few decades of operation as the line becomes truncated and forlorn, or are they taken when it was still a fairly busy property in good repair? I hope that the pre-1950 steam era is well represented, especially seeing as how the line's usefulness dropped sharply during the diesel era and began suffering vicious cutbacks. Heck, one could even argue that 1930 is a good watershed year for considering the pace of the line's transformation from being well-travelled and useful to slowly coming unraveled. You don't have to wait until after World War II to see the line falling to its knees. The 1925 anthracite miners' strike did much to sour Americans on hard coal for home heating, so revenues from freight were already sliding downhill. As for passenger service, the Depression eventually killed the Reading-Pottsville locals and finally the two through trains to Wilkes-Barre as well. The claim that the years of the steam-to-diesel transition are a good watershed point in the line's fortunes can't be supported if you are familiar with its history.

I'm happy to say there is some good news for you. I would say the majority of the pictures are dated 1910-1930, or in the early 1950's, and several are earlier than 1910. The majority of them are indeed steam era and there are only a few diesel era pictures. There are also many valuation photographs of the property which show stations, towers, or bridges almost new.

While the ratio of steam to diesel is of some interest, what about the number of photos showing electric operations east of Haws Avenue in Norristown? Do we get to see the electric MP54 "red rattler" MU cars in local passenger service? BTW, are there any images of GG1-hauled passenger trains as special moves for the Boy Scouts of America and their national jamboree in Valley Forge in 1957? IIRC, electric ops were cut back east to Manayunk in October 1961 (corrections welcomed).

There are some photos of electric operations as well, but not very many. Those are entirely of MP54s and even a couple pictures of Silverliner II's at Manayunk (these being the newest pictures in the book, obvoiusly). The wires can be seen in several of the steam pictures as well. One picture of GG1's but it's only tangentially related so I don't think it counts.

Are there any good pre-1940 photos of the two "flagship" passenger trains of the line, the Mountaineer and the Anthracite Express? There are a select few photos of them in other publications showing one or the other around Conshohocken and at Frick's Lock & Pottstown...but what about views in Reading, Pottsville or in between? These two trains made it all the way to Wilkes-Barre from Philly and back.

I don't think there are pictures specifically of the Mountaineer or the Anthracite Express - there are passenger trains shown but they're not usually identified. I should point out that the book lacks a photo index which makes it hard to find specific pictures.

I'm assuming that the book offers few images or text about the part of the line north of Pottsville, as far as Morea and New Boston Junction; the connection with the Legigh Valley RR. Are there any photos or prose describing anything in this segment other than Darkwater trestle or St. Clair tunnel?

There are things north of Pottsville? No, really, there's virtually nothing north of Pottsville in the book. A couple paragraphs about it's construction and that's really it.

And how about the Brill gas-electric "doodlebugs" which covered most of the PRR Pottsville-Reading and Pottsville-Shenandoah local runs during the Depression? Any photos of these humble vehicles doing the local passenger trade?

Didn't see any pictures of them. Not many depression era pictures, most are before or after the depression.

I have to go for now, i'll answer the rest of your questions later today or tomorrow, I promise!

Answers to Questions, Part 2:

Please tell me if there are many photos or pages of text describing things between Hamburg/Port Clinton and Mount Carbon roundhouse & yard, just south of Pottsville. I have long been interested in the "no man's land" between Port Clinton and Schuylkill Haven on the PRR line. There's very, very little in print which provides descriptions of the trackage and structures, let alone pictures of same. Heck...I could even say the same about the RDG Main Line between the same points. This is an area where Route 61 swings to the north, away from the railroad alignment; photography isn't quite so easy along here, and one would have had to go exploring down some country roads. Persons who once chased trains through here with their cameras in hand likely would not have gone off of 61 unless they already knew how to reach a scenic point chosen in advance, so photos are scarce here. I wouldn't call it "difficult"...just that it was not conducive to the "hit and run" style of yesteryear's "foamers" Happy.

There are three pictures of the PRR bridge over the P&R and the river, two from the national archives and one from a railfan. They're not the greatest but they do show you what it looked like from a couple of perspectives. There's a 1910 and a 1917 photo of Auburn station, and some bridge photos north of Auburn. There's one picture of Schuylkill Haven in 1917 and one of Adamsdale the same year. There are a couple photos around Schuylkill Haven as well, including the PRR over Dock Street (under construction in 1886). There are survey photos around Mount Carbon and a description of the legal battle with the P&R about building there. There's also photos of the consturction of the line atop the old canal bed, a 1917 photos of the paint shop, and an 1890 photo of the turntable as well as an overhead shot of Mt. Carbon yard (undated).

And what about views of the large passenger station in Pottsville as well as the trackage leading through that area to/from Mount Carbon? IIRC, the PRR line jumped over the lanes of Route 61 just a few hundred feet south of the last big curve to the left before driving north into Pottsville. I think that the space which the current southbound lanes of Rt. 61 occupy was originally where the PRR trackbed may have been. How did the PRR cross the RDG's own Schuylkill Valley Branch heading northeast towards Tamaqua? It's very hard to tell for certain when looking back from so many decades later. The physical relationship between the RDG and PRR trackage in Pottsville itself and the southern approaches has long interested me. It is a complex tangle which I had high hopes that the Bernhart book would illuminate with detailed street maps, railroad track charts and photographs of this area.

Several pictures in Pottsville, a couple of the station and several more of construction of the line and the Schuylkill River bridge, although i don't see any on that curve before Pottsville.

Regarding your comments in general, this book doesn't really focus on the trains themselves but the right of way. There are a lot of pictures and descriptions of stations and bridges, and most of them are the older type you seem to prefer (i.e. before the depression). There aren't many general right of way pictures of just track rolling along except showing the line under construction, which as an engineer i rather liked. It did disentangle the track layout in some places like Norristown but not so much in the areas you asked for. Anything else I didn't clear up sufficiently or that you thought of to ask?