Does anyone know of any information on this railroad.
From the looks of it from railpictures.net the is railroad used to server the steel plant and now deals with NS intermodals and what not.
Their locomotives have strange looking headlights, any reason for those?
Matt
It started in 1912 and is, or was, owned by Bethlehem Steel.
The only thing strange about the headlights is that the lower lens is red. This is like several railroads used on their locomotives to warn other trains if the emergency brakes had been applied in case there had been a derailment and cars had spilled on adjacent tracks.
I’m not sure about PB&NE, but other Bethlehem-owned roads had the headlight casing on the nose shortened for safety reasons; one less thing for a crewman to bounce his head against.
I didn’t even know of a railroad called the Philadelphia, Bethlehem and New England Railroad. Thanks for mentioning it I’ll have to do some more research. I do know of another rail line that used to go up to Bethlehem back in the day. The East Penn Railroad. It runs Landsdale and surounding areas to Quakertown, PA which is some miles short from Bethlehem, PA. Back in the day it used to go up to Bethlehem, PA but Conrail desided to abandon that portion of the line, when they received it from Reading. I do wonder if the East Penn and the PB&NW shared lines back in the day.
You can find out a bit more on this railroad at http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/PBNE/ .
Jim
Each of the Bethlehem Steel mills had a common carrier shortline associated with it, to do the switching and connect with the Class I railroads, this gave them a little leverage with regards to rates.
The P,B&NE served the mill at Bethlehem, PA. The South Buffalo served the Lackawanna, NY mill, The Steelton and Highspire RR. serves the mill in Steelton, PA (Harrisburg area). The Conemaugh and Black Lick served the Johnstown, PA mill. The Patapsco and Back River serves the Sparrows Point mill in the Baltimore, MD area. and there were more.
Another Bethlehem-owned road, although not a steel mill line, was the coal-hauling Cambria & Indiana, which was abandoned a few years ago when the last of the on-line mines shut down. It had a fleet of up to 18 EMD switchers ranging from SW7 to SW1500 and moved some pretty sizable trains in its heyday.