READING, Pa. (AP) – In the late 1950s, years after being largely replaced by diesel engines, steam locomotives made a brief comeback on the Reading Railroad.
Hissing and bellowing smoke, vintage engines that had once pulled coal cars hauled passengers on excursions into coal country, the Lehigh Valley and even Gettysburg. Iron Horse Rambles, as they were known, were wildly popular between 1959 and 1964.
“They made Life magazine and the movies,” said Dale W. Woodland, a Reading Railroad historian. “People came from all over, including foreign countries, to ride the Reading.”
The last hurrah of the Reading steam engines is revisited in a new exhibit that opened recently at the Reading Railroad Heritage Museum in Hamburg.
“Members Treasures,” which features Reading Railroad artifacts from several Berks County collections, runs through Nov. 17.
Woodland, exhibit curator, tapped the collections of members of the Reading Co. Technical & Historical Society, several of whom worked for the Reading.
From an original diamond-shaped “Reading Lines” logo that adorned the front of the streamlined Crusader locomotive to conductors’ pocket watches, the exhibit recalls an era when passengers could board in Reading for destinations like Philadelphia, Jersey City and Williamsport.
“The Reading was like the spokes of a wagon wheel,” said Woodland, who has written four books about the railroad. “Reading was the center, with lines going outward.”
In 1957, Woodland noted, the Reading moved 35,000 Boy Scouts for a jamboree in Valley Forge. It also ran special trains from Valley Forge to Philadelphia.
“That a railroad could move that many people is a testament to its efficiency,” said Woodland, a retired Montgomery County teacher.
Entering the exhibit gallery, visitors are treated to an Iron Horse Ramble display from the collection of Steve Gilbert of Robesonia. One of the trains, No. 2124, it notes, appeared in the Hollywood version of John O’Hara’s From the Terrace, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
The Reading’s forward thinking is dramatized by a painting of the Crusader, which in 1937 was the first streamlined locomotive in the eastern United States. The painting, done by Dan Reed of Hamburg, depicts the Crusader streaming past a 1934 LaSalle roadster.
Bill Cauff Jr., a Reading collector, preserved conductors’ pocket watches and a bronze safety plaque awarded to employees of the East Penn Junction in 1956.
John A. Funk, a West Reading railroad devotee, has a “pig whistle” in his collection. The pig whistle was mounted on a caboose as a warning device when the train was backing up, Woodland said.
Don Davis, another West Reading collector, built miniature HO scale models of a Reading freight train hauling auto frames from the Dana Corp. Parish plant in Reading – once a familiar sight to motorists passing the plant’s yards.
Founded in 1838 to haul coal from Schuylkill County anthracite fields, the Reading was taken over by Conrail in 1976. During its 138-year reign, the Reading also carried freight, arms for the Civil War and passengers in suburban Philadelphia.
In turn, Conrail was absorbed in 1999 by Norfolk Southern and CSX. Norfolk got most of what was the Reading and part of the Pennsylvania Railroad. CSX absorbed much of the former New York Central lines.
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Information from: Reading Eagle, www.readingeagle.com
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AP-WF-03-18-13 1435GMT
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