Montrose RR info
Twano
property and also thru property i am considering purchasing. Of
particular interest is where it follows nearby lake carey. My brother in
law, who grew up on the farm the RR tranverses, has no recollection of
the line being active.(he's 45) When did operations cease?? Also, there
are two octogon shaped structures that have puzzled me as to their
purpose. They appear they might have housed cisterns or maybe used as
well enclosures. Any ideas??
Thanks for the info and leads so far.
Twano.
Doug Smith
>
> Also, there
> are two octogon shaped structures that have puzzled me as to their
> purpose. They appear they might have housed cisterns or maybe used as
> well enclosures. Any ideas??
And Smitty postulates:
How 'bout enclosed water towers?
vince and carol sweeney
Montrose RR...the Lehigh Valley did serve that area and perhaps this
rail line became theirs at some point in time, but that is only a
guess...the old DL&W also had property quite close to that general
vicinity, which also might give you a lead...quite a few old road beds
in this area are so old that virtually no one living recalls them being
active...any number of them were used primarily for the harvesting of
ice, before mechanical refrigeration became commonplace...here again,
it's only a guess...
The Lake Carey area, for those who might care, was hammered by a killer
tornado last summer and is still in the process of recovery...and
tornadoes, while not unheard of in these parts, are rare indeed...
Please let us know what you discover...
Twano wrote:
>
> The Montrose RR is of interest to me as it cuts thru my brother in law's
> property and also thru property i am considering purchasing. Of
> particular interest is where it follows nearby lake carey. My brother in
> law, who grew up on the farm the RR tranverses, has no recollection of
> the line being active.(he's 45) When did operations cease?? Also, there
> are two octogon shaped structures that have puzzled me as to their
> purpose. They appear they might have housed cisterns or maybe used as
> well enclosures. Any ideas??
Amos Hale Adams
Amos Hale Adams
Twano <nvr...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>The Montrose RR is of interest to me as it cuts thru my brother in law's
>property and also thru property i am considering purchasing. Of
>particular interest is where it follows nearby lake carey. My brother in
>law, who grew up on the farm the RR tranverses, has no recollection of
>the line being active.(he's 45) When did operations cease?? Also, there
>are two octogon shaped structures that have puzzled me as to their
>purpose. They appear they might have housed cisterns or maybe used as
>well enclosures. Any ideas??
>Thanks for the info and leads so far.
>Twano.
>
One of these days I will get my ISP software to actually work right and post a message.
This is the third time I've tried to answer your request for information-- maybe it'll work this
time!
There were three railroads that served Montrose: the Lehigh Valley branch up from
Tunkhannock, which started life as the Montrose Railway; the Lackawanna branch from over in
Alford; and the old "trolley" formally known as the Scranton, Montrose, and Binghamton Railway,
sometimes also known as the Northern Electric, which came up from Scranton by way of Nicholson,
Hop Bottom, and Brooklyn. I'm no expert on any of these, but I more or less grew up in Montrose
(in the 1970s) and so I know something of their histories and what facilities they had in town.
Some of the information in this post is taken from George W. Hilton's book, "American
Narrow Gauge Railroads", published by Stanford University Press in 1990. The rest of it relies
on some slighty fuzzy memories-- I haven't walked the line or seen much of it in the nearly 20
years since I went off to college.
In the late 1860s, the citizens of Montrose and the towns in the general direction of
Tunkhannock began to agitate for a railroad to connect with the Lehigh Valley Railroad which
passed through Tunkhannock on its way from Scranton to Sayre. In April 1869 the Montrose
Railway was formed to build a three-foot narrow-gauge line from Tunkhannock to Montrose, but
little construction was done due to lack of funds. In 1872, the Lehigh Valley bought a 55
percent interest in the line, and pushed ahead with construction, reaching the vicinity of South
Montrose in 1873 (Hilton mentions a place called Hunter's), and finally reaching Montrose in
1876. (Construction into Montrose was probably delayed by the Panic of 1873 and the ensuing
depression.) If I remember rightly, the LV bought into the Montrose Railway at the behest of
Asa Packer, who was a big wheel in the LV and in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre society, and who was also
a summer resident of Montrose.
Something that local people often forget is that Montrose used to be a resort town for
wealthy people from Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, and even Philadelphia and Reading. They would
come to Montrose to escape the heat of the city in the summer, and they built many of the nice,
big, old houses in town, particularly the ones along Lake Avenue north of the old jail.
The line was operated independently of the LV until the LV assumed direct control of the
line on 10 January 1898. Conversion to standard gauge came in November 1903. The LV obtained
complete control of the line in a reorganization in September and October of 1905, and the new,
reorganized company was leased to the LV on 1 November 1905 for a term of 82 years, until 1
November 1987. The line was then operated as just another branch of the Lehigh Valley until
1972, when operations ceased after something like the last 5 out of 6 trains derailed. The
tracks remained in place until after Conrail Day, finally being ripped up in 1978.
The coming of the automobile doomed the Montrose Railway, like many other lines. Milk
that used to go to small creameries along the line (like the derelict one that still looms over
Springville) now goes to large centralized ones by truck. Industries began using trucks, which
were more convenient than the clumsy old railroad. And the summer people by the 1940s had
either died off or were coming up from the city in their cars.
I could go on in more detail, if you want, about how the tracks in Montrose were arranged.
I don't know much about the line any farther south than South Montrose, though. By the time I
discovered the Montrose Railway (at age 11 in 1973) it was already a streak of rust, and by the
time I learned to drive, it was already gone and I was no longer quite the railroad nut I had
been.
If you have any other questions about railroads in Susquehanna County, I'll be glad to
attempt to answer any questions you have. Another source of information would be the
Susquehanna County Historical Society. I'm not sure what they have, anymore, but they should
still have copies in some form of the Susquehanna County Independent and its predecessor papers,
if nothing else. They should also have some other odds and ends relating to the county's
railroads, but I have forgotten what they might be.
I hope this has been helpful!
Hale Adams