We Are Lucky to Have This Picture

In this post card’s picture, the Alco RS3 locomotives are fresh out of the car wash and are headed back to the yard for their assignments. The picture was taken in 1964, not too many years after the company that owned them, the Erie-Lackawanna, was formed.

On October 17, 1960, the Erie Railroad (ERIE) and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DLW) merged to form the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad (EL). The ERIE originally connected Jersey City, New Jersey to Lake Erie at Dunkirk, New York. It later expanded operations to include Chicago, Illinois. The DLW basically connected Hoboken, New Jersey with Buffalo, New York and primarily was meant to carry anthracite coal from Pennsylvania to markets. Both lines carried passengers along their routes; so they merged those services into one. The DLW lines handled passenger east of Binghamton, New York (halfway between New York City and Buffalo); the ERIE line handled the western part. Starting in 1960 there were some acquisitions, mergers, stock trading and other machinations that eventually led to the Norfolk & Western Railroad owning the EL. Hurricane Agnes caused an estimating to $9.2 million to the railroad, which forced the EL to file for bankruptcy on June 26, 1972. CONRAIL took over EL's operations on April 1, 1976. Conrail's map excluded most of the former Erie main line west of Marion, Ohio. There is a copyrighted (©1985 by Kalmbach Publishing Co.) history of the Erie, the Lackawanna, and the Erie-Lackawanna Railroads at this website: https://erielackhs.org/railroads/

Here is the back of the post card... I would really like to know something about this company.

A Round House on a Rectangular Card

The picture on the front of this post card is an aerial view of Steamtown National Historic Site's roundhouse and yard. Our friends at Wikipedia tell us that the Historic Site is a railroad museum and heritage railroad located on 62.48 acres in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the site of the former Scranton yards of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W). The museum is built around a working turntable and a 1902 roundhouse that are largely replications of the original DL&W facilities; the roundhouse, for example, was reconstructed from remnants of a 1932 structure. The visitor center, theater, technology and history museums are built in the style of and on the site of the missing portions of the original roundhouse, giving an impression of what the original circular structure was like. This website below is a good way to find out why some thing or some place was designated to be historical. This website shows us historical markers across the United States and tells us what is written on the markers. Regarding Steamtown the website tells us the information below: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=19833 "The roundhouse was and is the heart of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western (DL&W) yards. Here, mechanics perform daily maintenance on steam locomotives - routine inspections, light repairs, and boiler washes. Hissing steam, pounding hammers, and the drone of engines provide a constant backdrop for the mechanics' work. During the 1940s and 50s, the diesel electric locomotive, with its different maintenance requirements, rendered the roundhouse obsolete. The DL&W removed two-thirds of its Scranton roundhouse in the 1950s. You are about to enter the largest of the three remaining DL&W roundhouse sections. The National Park Service has carefully restored the remains of the DL&W's 1902/1937 roundhouse to working condition. Once again, it is used to house and service steam locomotives."

The post card was published by Steamtown National Historic Site, based on a photograph by Calin Photography. It was printed by Dynacolor Graphics, Inc. There is a bar code where the stamp is to be placed, so this post card was printed after 1974.

Once a Busy Rail Line, Now a Busy Hiking Trail

The passenger train pictured on this post card is travelling on what is now a National Recreation Area administered by the National Parks of the United States. It is in a gap between New Jersey and Pennsylvania in which the Delaware River flows. It is just south of where the borders of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York all share a meeting point. This website of the National Park Service tells a bit of history of the Delware Water Gap, including some railroad history: https://www.nps.gov/dewa/index.htm

The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railway (DL&W) first arrived at the Delaware River on May 13, 1856 with a train to New York City. The terrain from Scranton had been mountainous and isolated; the route traced the course of major streams, crossed the Lehigh's headwater at Gouldsboro, and bisected Pocono Summit Lake on DL&W's land bridge. In what is now the park, the single-track line used an old right-of-way to Slateford Junction on the Delaware, then crossed into New Jersey and continued to New York via existing tracks. The effect of the new rail line on the Delaware Valley was immense. The resort industry at the Water Gap had begun with Kittatinny Hotel, built in 1832. With the railroads now also promoting the Gap as a destination, 16 more hotels sprung up in the village of Delaware Water Gap by the century's end. Additional rail lines, such as the New York, Susquehanna, and Western (NYS&W) served the Jersey side of the Gap. A small section of the Delaware Valley Railway bed is now part of Railway Avenue Trail in Bushkill, and just under a mile of the NYS&W rail bed is now the Karamac Trail in New Jersey. The DL&W's single track is still in use through the Gap between the river and Route 611, and occasionally an excursion train from Steamtown National Historic Site will reach Point of Gap Overlook. Just outside the park, the rail station in Delaware Water Gap awaits renewal. From 1901 to 1938, the Delaware Valley Railroad ran a spur from East Stroudsburg station to Bushkill PA, carrying both passengers and freight. Resort-based agriculture, such as dairying, began to replace subsistence farming, and remote areas between Scranton and the Stroudsburgs filled with villages and farms. Church, scout, and trade groups lined the banks of the river with rustic summer camps. The park encompasses significant Native American archeological sites, several of which have been investigated. A number of structures also remain from early Dutch settlement and the colonial contact period. The entire region was a frontier of the French & Indian War. Historic rural villages from the 18th and 19th centuries remain intact on the New Jersey side, and landscapes of past settlements are scattered throughout the park. In the 19th century, the village of Delaware Water Gap was a focus of the early resort industry fostered by the railroads. Even today the region is known for its vacation appeal. The proposal to dam the Delaware River near today's Smithfield Beach brought the region and its inhabitants into another era of American history -- the conservation and environmental movements of the 1960s and later.

This post card is from the divided back era (1907 – 1915). Because it was printed by Curt Otto Teich, we can get very close the actual date of the printing. The number at the bottom-middle of the card is R-31555. Between 1908 and 1928 the company’s number system went up to 124180. 31555 is about 25% of the distance from 1 to the end. 25% of the 20 years between 1908 and 1928 is about 1913.

The post card was published by J. F. Kirkton of Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. I searched the internet for information about this person, but could only find other post cards published by him; I found nothing about him. I have a second post card of the gap. It was also printed by Curt Otto Teich. No publisher is listed. I include it here so you can enjoy the airplane flying over as well as the train passing through it.

The Bridge is Still There, But not the Tracks

The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (after many years of building, buying, merging and leasing railroads) had a direct link to the Great Lakes. The city of Elmira, New York must have been included in this expansion to Lake Erie. That is where the picture on the front of this post card was taken.

Sadly, that bridge is no longer used by any railroad. If you go to this website you will see that it is part of a hiking trail today. There is one picture in the file that looks like it was taken from the same spot as the picture on the front of this post card. https://bridgehunter.com/category/city/elmira-new-york/ For the story about the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad go to this website: https://www.american-rails.com/dlw.html That is where I picked up this story, below. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western was another of the Northeast's many anthracite carriers with a history tracing back to the early 19th century. During the company's height it never reached 1,000 miles in size but was nevertheless a well-managed company throughout its corporate history. As a result, it avoided bankruptcy from the time of its formation (early 1850s) until its merger with the Erie more than a century later. The "Road Of Anthracite's" entire network only stretched roughly 950 miles but the Lackawanna was a finely tuned operation with a diverse traffic base and highly skilled railroaders, from top to bottom, that kept it humming along. It weathered the financial panics of 1873 and 1893 and even the Great Depression of 1929. However, its closest brush with bankruptcy did occur during the 1930s, under the leadership of John Davis. It seems that most of the classic railroads of New England and the Northeast can trace their heritage back to an entity predating the industry. Such was the case for the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western whose earliest predecessor was the Hoboken Ferry Company. The Lackawanna's two earliest railroad predecessors were the Liggetts Gap Railroad, incorporated on April 7, 1832 and the Delaware & Cobbs Gap Railroad, chartered on December 4, 1850. On April 14, 1851, the company changed its name as the Lackawanna & Western Railroad and later that year, on October 20, 1851, service was opened between both towns. The Lackawanna gained its official name on March 11, 1853 when the L&W merged with the Delaware & Cobbs Gap forming the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad. The DL&W at this time ran diagonally across Pennsylvania and enjoyed lucrative sources of freight from iron ore deposits and anthracite coal located within the Lackawanna Valley. With the DL&W's eastern network largely complete it now looked to the west and an extension to Buffalo; reaching this port town along the eastern tip of Lake Erie would mean the railroad no longer needed to rely on its rival, the Erie Railroad, to ferry its freight westward.

The post card was published by a company that was based in Elmira, New York. It was published by the Rubin Brothers. Harry Rubin, and his brother Ike, formerly printers at the Elmira Star Gazette, the first Gannett newspaper, open Rubin’s Newsstand. A wholesale distribution operation, known as Rubin Brothers News, begins in the basement on East Water St. in Elmira, New York. Most wholesale business is newspapers. Few magazines published for distribution at this time. New York Times and other newspapers arrive on trains.