Here's a repeat of a post on PQ submitted just about three years ago:
I visited PQ on a number of occasions as a teenager in the mid 1960's. It saw about 12 moves per day (4 through freights in each direction, 1 local on the Nesquehoning Branch, and an as-needed ore run from Bethlehem to a mine on the D&H at North Creek, New York). Switching moves at the west end of Jim Thorpe yard also required occasional participation by the operator at PQ.
The feature I most remember about PQ was its all-semaphore signals, with 5 or 6 mounted on a bridge on the east approach to the plant, If I remember correctly, one on the bridge, as well as the home signal for the branch, were of the three-blade variety, with the lowest of the three (used to display a diverging route) somewhat smaller in size.
Although the employees' timetables listed the interlockings between PQ and Ashley as controlled from PQ, that description applied only to the relays on the first floor of the tower; the control panel was in the Dispatchers' Office at Allentown. The interlocking machine at PQ was a GRS machine with over-and-under pistol-grip levers. The board was simply a printed diagram, not illuminated.
When I first discovered PQ in the spring of 1963 or '64, the Jersey Central was already in rough shape, operating on a mix of first-generation power. A handful of GP40's financed by parents B&O and Reading didn't arrive until 1966. The shared-track arrangement with Lehigh Valley evolved over the same time span.
I was seldom to visit PQ after 1966, having moved on to other, busier lines, but I did pass through on two steam excursions in 1967 and '68, and stopped in for a last visit in March of 1972 when CNJ cut operations back to Phillipsburg. Later that same day I caught the "funeral train" at STEEL tower in Bethlehem.
What a revoltin' development this is! (William Bendix)
