Wilkes-Barre mainline & info

I was looking at the GingerB web site and the CNJ mainline thru downtown Wilkes-Barre. I didn't realize that the CNJ/LV had parallel mains and a huge yard in the middle of town (where now only 1 rusty rail exits). Wow I was surprised. It's like all the RR action in town is gone now. Anyone know when it was all torn up? I assume 1972 or 1973?

CNJ put on a decent show in Wilkes Barre in the early 60's when I lived there. If you went across the myriad yard tracks at Scott Street, controlled by a rather decrepit gateman's tower with equally decrepit crossing signals and pneumatic gates, you could be stopped by a CNJ or D&H train. D&H had a roundhouse there, LV interchanged via overhead bridge there, and PRR also interchanged with D&H via the Wilkes Barre Connecting RR. Most of that area, while not by the river, was low lying enough to be flooded by the Agnes flood in '72. The D&H moved east to Hudson yard, and of course the CNJ left Pennsylvania in 1973, and the LV didn't do a lot in W-B after that.

Downtown Wilkes-Barre was a hodgepodge of traffic until the coming of Agnes in June of 1972, but the actual classification took place at yards on the city's outskirts: LV at Coxton across the river from Pittston, CNJ at Ashley to the south, at the foot of a grade which used inclined planes until 1948, D&H at Hudson on the North Side, and PRR at Buttonwood, not far from the Susquehanna to the south.

There were several bypasses and run-through arrangements; PRR and D&H built the Wilkes-Barre Connecting Railroad, which connected Buttonwood and Hudson by bridging the Susquehanna twice and crossing a neck of Kingston Borough. CNJ served in part as a feeder from central New Jersey to the DL&W at Taylor, south of Scranton, and much LV through freight traffic bypassed the city via the Mountain Cutoff, a line from a tower at Gracedale, near Mountaintop, direct to Coxton via Dupont.

But there were also a number of transfer arrangements which used a routing via downtown. One of the most unusual involved perishable, and possibly livestock traffic which moved from the west via Pittsburgh, Altoona and Williamsport using Pennsy's Bald Eagle, Northern Division Main, and Wilkes-Barre Branches, then reached Jersey City and Elizabeth via the CNJ. This traffic apparently dried up quickly during the early 1950's.

Agnes hit the railfan scene in Wilkes-Barre very hard, severing the PRR-D&H connection via washouts near Nescopeck (although much of the traffic had already been re-routed due to the PRR-NYC merger). The Jersey Central had suspended operations in Pennsylvania three months previously. Lehigh Valley's Coxton-based operation was only mildly affected, but the road was aready on very thin ice financially. The lone bright spots were a diversion of Philadelphia traffic formerly routed via Williamsport to an E-L/Reading connection via Rupert (near Bloomsburg), and a Reading/LV/D&H Philadelphia-Albany service via a new connection near Dupont/Avoca.

D&H petitioned the ICC for an agreement that kept some overhead traffic from both Chessie at Potomac yard and N&w at Hagrstown moving via Wilkes-Barre once the line was restored in 1975, but sometimes at painfully slow speeds, and It was not until 1996-1999 that the breakup of Conrail allowed NS and CP to co-operate on rebuilding the former PRR Wilkes-Barre line as an alternative to CSX' near-monopoly on New England service, and eventually, two daily through freights in each direction also found their way onto this route rather than the heavier grades on the former PRR between Renovo and Buffalo.

Given the overwhelming importance of grades and fuel economy in the rail industry as it is currently evolving, and the pressure to re establish suburban and corridor services on just about every line serving the major Eastern Seaboard cities, it wouldn't suprise me to see the Wilkes-Barre lines further expanded as an alternative for north/south freight traffic someday.