A dear friend and gentleman passed away early Wednesday morning, August 8th. William S. Young. Many of us first encounterd BIll when he was writing the Short Lines column for TRAINS Magazine back in the late 50’s into the 60’s. The late…
Wade Rendle introduced me to BIll in the late 60’s and a 47 year friendship began. Bill was a slave to details and accuracy in whatever project he involved himself in, which was mostly writing about trains, railroads, and railroad people. When growing up in Cranford NJ, his local railroad, the Rahway Valley, sparked his interest in railroads and trains which led him to meet the people who made the trains go: those in the caboose, the engine cab, the wayside buildings, and the head offices. His second favorite railroad became the D&H digging its heels into the grade from Lanesboro, PA to Ararat, PA the other side of the family farm. The road from the farm to Susquehanna also brought through the arches of the Erie’s Starrucca Viaduct who’s history is well preserved in about a dozen editions of Bill’s Starrucca: The Stone Bridge. He published a magazine (Railroading) expanding some articles and issues into full fledged books, most notable: Tunkhannocvk: the Great White Bridge; Short Line Oddesy; Covered Wagons, The PA’s Story; books about the Unadilla Valley Railroad along with others. His early photographs were seen in TRAINS Magazine and Lucious Beebe books because of the same attention to detial in composing pictures as he showed in his writing. He leaves behind several cousins at that farm near Starrucca, a lot of good friends in the universal rail fan and railroad community, and a huge legacy of railroad writings and photos which all of us can learn from in both form and content. If there was one thing he and I would disagree on, was the value of his work and its popul
Mr. Young was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 30, 1928 and served in the Army during the Korean conflict.
Excerpt from Starrucca: Bridge of Stone
It is not a large bridge as bridges go, although it is large enough: 1040 feet long, 90 to 100 feet high, and about 25 feet wide at the top. In what must be one of engineering’s oldest and most persistent examples of lily-gilding, the dimensions of the Erie Railroad’s Starrucca Viaduct have been exaggerated in most sources for more than a century. If it had seven arches rather than seventeen it would still be a beautiful bridge, and one unique in America. Starrucca is justly venerated for its age: it passed the century mark back in 1948. Yet there must be more to this bridge over a narrow valley in a continent that is spread with fine stone bridges, some of them larger or older than the viaduct at Lanesboro, Pennsylvania. There must be more, and there is. No other bridge shares Starrucca’s graceful proportions, its exceptional unity of simple lines, tapered piers, and slender arches. The same battered piers, the same segmental arches were widely used in bridge-building; only in Starrucca were they used together, tall piers carrying high arches, to create a bridge that will always seem too frail for the loads it bears. If ever form followed function, it is in this magnificent illusion, this jewel of a viaduct built in the most expeditious way, of the most natural of materials, and according to the most ordinary of principles.
That would be enough, but there is also the history. Rushed to completion at great expense, Starrucca was thought of at the time as the world’s costliest railroad bridge. It was also the largest bridge on what was then the world’s longest railroad. Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Daniel Webster, and hundreds of thousands of immigrants and other nameless travelers rode across Starrucca. And from it, trails lead in all directions. To other railroads: the Western of Massachusetts, the Balt
WOW!
Thank you, Henry and Mike!
An amazing tribute, Henry! An informative and fitting eulogy. Thank you for sharing it here.
And Mike’s piece certainly is an illuminating piece of the History Mr. William S. Young shared with the rest of us.
Henry,
For the loss of your friend, you have my sincere condolences.
As for your comments about him and his work,
Well said, well said indeed.
Your friend would proud to read your thoughts…