i live in Easton Pa, in a town called Forks. If anyone is at all familiar with this area you know that there are a few industries north of forks such as, The Dixie Factory which recieves Hoppers, a Wood Company that receives centerbeam flats / box cars, and the crayola factory which receives tankers.
Very Rarely will i see any forms or signs of locomotive power around, however i do know the area is serviced by NS/Conrail “same thing i know”, and i hear locomotives all the time, its just never when im in the area to try and catch one. So i guess im just wondering if anyone knows anything about the area or the very minute rail traffic that seems to take place.
The area your talking about is served by an NS local out of Allentown the H75 cement secondary job. On the railroad we call this area Uhlers. This area gets served two to three times a week, depending on customer needs. There are actually four customers, a door manufacturer gets cars occasionally. Two other rail served industries are supposed to locate in this area in the near future.
This line is leftover from the Lehigh and New England’s Bethlehem branch from Bethlehem PA to Bath PA and its Martin’s Creek branch from Bath PA to Forks Township (Uhlers). It includes a couple leftover bits of Lehigh Valley’s Easton and Northern branch and Lackawanna’s Pen Argyl-Bath line in the Stockertown area.
I worked at the Crayola (aka Binney & Smith) plant in Forks Twp. in summer 1994, and I did see the Conrail train on at least one occasion deliver tank car loads of the paraffin wax use to make the crayons. I would have liked to see it more often, but I never knew when they came, and I did not work in the back of the plant where the spur is located.
In the heyday of the Lehigh & New England, this line served something like ten cement plants with lots of coal shipments inbound and lots of cement bagged in box cars, and later, bulk shipments in covered hoppers outbound. Hence the name ‘Cement Secondary’. I know that at least three of these plants still have active kilns, but I’m curious to know if any of them still receive coal since they tend to burn lots of waste solvents for fuel now. I’d also like to know how many of them still ship cement by rail since most of this goes out by truck.
The town of Nazareth lies on this branch and is bounded on either side by cement plants. The two plants on the west side of town have their kilns shut down, but they still quarry, and I believe they are still used for storage and milling operations. The plant on the east side of town has a modern kiln that still operates, but its quarry is out of stone, so the company, which happens to own all three of these plants, built a several thousand foot long covered conveyor on the abandoned Lackawanna grade (parallel to LNE) to transfer limestone from the plants on the west side to the plant on the east. It took them several years to get the conveyor built, and I always wondered why they didn’t just arrange for a shuttle train to do the hauling instead of trucking limestone through town like th
jim, do you know when these industrys receive rail shipments or when they do, i see what you mean by uhler, since thats the road their on. Any other information would be great, ide love to catch a train there.
I believe they work the Uhlers end Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning to late afternoon. Someone asked about if the cement plants receive coal, a couple of them get coke, this business has increased, (there are some newly built open top hoppers being used in this service) as has inbound shipments of limestone and other aggregates. There is some cement shipping going on again also. Things are looking up on this line.