The Philadelphia & Erie Railroad
The Erie & Pittsburgh Railroad
Erie, PA
Looking Back...
Bob Rothrock remembers the Pennsy in Erie:
I grew up in an old section of the far west side of the city, and our neighborhood backed up
against the Pennsy's (now long-gone) Dock Junction yard. That area was a rail enthusiast's
paradise back then, with the NYC main line bordering DJ yard on the south and the Nickel
Plate main line just across a drainage ditch from the NYC. And as if that wasn't enough, the
Bessemer & Lake Erie ran into town over the NKP and kept a yard engine at their W.12th St.
facilities just east of our neighborhood.
Some of the earliest sounds I remember are from late at night, when the pops would lift on
the Dock Junction yard engine while awaiting the arrival of the 3rd trick crew. I got my first
glimpse of DJ when my grandfather took me there to show me where he used to work when
he was a 19-year old Pennsy section hand. As we walked around, he pointed out where there
had been a water plug and a passenger station, and explained things like what the wye
was used for, and how you should always step over the rail, never on it, etc. Those visits
stuck with me, and I resolved to go back there as soon as I was old enough to get around on
my own.
By that time the PRR was all-diesel, as were the Bessemer and NYC (there were many
westbounds on the NYC with nothing but white-lined steam locomotives in the consist,
destined for scrapping at the NYC's Ashtabula reclamation plant), but the Nickel Plate kept
their wonderful Berkshires in 1st class shape and ran them through Erie until 1958.
I had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of the Dock Junction yardmaster and the
2nd trick city crew, and basically "had the run" of the PRR property...I used to run home from
grade school to watch the late afternoon passenger trains on the NYC main come through,
and often did this from the cupola of an N6a cabin car spotted in the yard by the scale track.
There were two tracks from DJ yard going down to the lake, and (later) I'd
walk them to and from high school, often encountering ore and/or coal trains en route.
There were still kerosene switch lamps along the yard lead almost all the way out to
Pittsburgh Ave., a working scale house, a section gang house with motorcar and trailer, a car-
knocker's shanty, a compressor-house (used to charge train lines via pipes in the ground), a
phone shack out by Lakeview Forge that the PRR crews used (and never snapped the lock
on!) to call the NYC dispatcher for getting clearance onto their main running tracks out to
Girard Junction, a crossing tender's shanty at Pittsburgh Ave., and even a Pennsy cop for
those who got too far out of line.
During the years I hung out there, the yard and industrial freight business was worked by a
2nd trick crew called out of Pennsy's OD yard on Erie's east side...they'd come over via the
bay front with a cabin car behind an EMD SW-9 to switch out the city jobs along the north
runner going east into town, adjacent to the NYC. I got to ride with them a lot, and there were
usually setouts & pickups for the B&LE, Louis Marx Co., Hamilton Lumber, Wittmann-
Pfeffer Coal Co., Erie Builders, and G.J. Gebhart Coal & Coke.
Much of DJ's yard capacity was (by that time) given over to storage of bad order cars that
were beyond practical limits of repair at the big OD car shops across town, and sat there
awaiting the scrapper. You could literally climb up an end ladder and traverse the length of
DJ's west yard (from just west of the yard office, almost to Pittsburgh Ave.) by using the
roof walks of those cars, many of which were round-roofed double and end-door boxcars.
And evidence of steam was still abundant...from the thick carpet of cinders underfoot (which
ironically, yielded up some of the best wild strawberries you ever tasted) to the burnished
railheads where three or more pairs of drivers broke loose when the friction of journals on a
cold day exceeded the available tractive effort.
An occasional splash of color was provided by the appearance of jointly-owned
(PRR/B&A) Bangor & Aroostook geeps on the Pennsy in summer...I never got on one of
them, but I sure remember how nice their paint jobs looked (those silver trucks really stood
out) compared to what we were used to seeing around DJ. Quite often they'd be used as
helpers on the grade up to DJ from the Lake yard, shoving on the tail of a consist led by
Baldwin Sharks, or you'd see them in yard service, screeching around the tight, rusty curves
of the old Vulcan siding that ran behind the Marine Corps Reserve building and down to W.
12th St.
The Pennsy's OD yard along 18th st. by East Ave. had a roundhouse & turntable, car shops,
and a big freight house that fronted on Parade St. with an early intermodal (PRR Trailvan)
loading site. I used to hike over there via the NYC tracks on weekends, walking through
Union Station and taking in all the sights along the way...it was still an era of lineside phone
shacks and section gang shanties all over the place...lots of character.
I don't know if it was good luck or the waning economies of the rail business that allowed it
to happen, but in all my ventures I never got hassled by anyone...Sundays I could crawl up in
the cab of an idling RS-3 in the roundhouse at OD and sit there listening to that wonderful
Alco music, watching the water slosh back & forth in the inverted glass jug on the
cooler...likewise, OD was a storage/maintenance depot for snowplows, flangers, and all kinds
of other unusual equipment along with the pool cabs laying over on the cabin
tracks...porthole-windowed N-5's, etc. stenciled for the Lake Region that I crawled over and
looked at, free as a bee.
The car dumper that had been down on the bay front was moved to Ashtabula Harbor
around '59 or '60, and other than a brief upturn when Litton Industries put in a siding for a
shipbuilding pier, and ongoing service to the Ruberoid (still active) and Penelec (coal which
eventually came in by truck), that pretty much spelled an end to the Pennsy's lake business in
Erie.
In retrospect, it always seemed (to me, at least) like an entity unto itself...that is, I never
thought of it in terms of the E&P and P&E divisions...although you got a sense of a distant,
bigger PRR from the wall calendars in the yard office, and knowing that westbounds ended
up at Conway, and that the tuscan passenger coaches on the south tracks of Union Station
could offer travel connections beyond Emporium Junction...the Pennsy in Erie at that time
had the appearance of an independent, regional operation.
I miss the friendly ambience of it all. The DJ yard office, with its pungent mix of
cigar/coal/lantern smoke, and perhaps most of all, the characters who made up the working
populace of rail operations...the "railroader's slang" you'd hear on the magneto-crank
dispatcher's phones, the flicker of kerosene switch lamps along the ladder track at dusk in
Winter...the sounds of a Bangor geep winding up with cut of cars while flat switching...so
much of what seemed like it was "forever" has vanished. As a kid, there was something
happening for me trackside no matter what the day or hour...it was all so fascinating, and so
accessible. Looking around today, it all seems like a dream.
(Copyright 2001) Bob Rothrock
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(This page last updated July 23, 2008)
