Dave Blaze Rail Photography posted
Hometown High For this week's Steam Sunday here's a fresh one taken just last weekend of the one and only Reading and Northern 2102 on the famed Hometown High Bridge. I have shot steam here twice prior but never got sun, so decided to give it another try. Not sure if it was the sage smudging my gf insisted on the night before to ward off the negative energy after a horrible Friday, but whatever it was it sure did work because I finally scored with perfect light and even some early fall color. Quite the Hometown High indeed! They are leading a 14 car train up from North Reading to historic Jim Thorpe across the most spectacular location along the route, the famous Hometown High Bridge, a more than 1000 ft [305m] long steel trestle that stands 168 [51m] (or 161 or 157 depending on where you look!) feet above the Little Schuylkill River at its highest point. This is MP 107.3 on modern day RBMN's Reading Division mainline, though historically this was the Central Railroad of New Jersey's Nesquehoning Branch. A little history of the line courtesy of Rush Township's home page: The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad Company, part of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, built a 17-mile rail spur from Mauch Chunk (modern-day Jim Thorpe) to Tamanend that was finished in 1870. It connected with rail lines that were leased and operated by the Philadelphia & Reading Coal and Iron Company near Tamanend. This major freight and passenger rail interchange was at the small village of Haucks, which no longer exists today but was near the current Air Products facility near Quakake. Throughout the late 1800s, there were railroad interchanges in Haucks, Tamanend, and Quakake. On March 23, 1871, the Nesquehoning-Tamanend line became part of the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ), which leased many LC&N assets on that date. Millions of tons of anthracite coal and freight would pass over that rail line in the early 1870s, and the demand for anthracite coal reached historic heights. In 1874, a financial panic led to a downturn in anthracite demand that would last several years. The CNJ, which had continued to rack up debts as it leased other anthracite assets across Eastern Pennsylvania, could not meet its financial obligations. The company continued to operate until the 1920s, at which point the United States Supreme Court ordered CNJ and other railroads that owned coal companies to divest (that is, to separate the coal companies from the railroad companies) because their joint operations violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Hepburn Act. By 1921, the Central Railroad of New Jersey was out of the coal business – and railroad traffic on Rush Township railbeds continued to decline. The Nesquehoning-Tamanend line features the railroad “High Bridge,” which spans the Little Schuylkill River at a height of 157 feet. The bridge is cited in historical documents dating back to at least the early 1880s. The bridge, formally called the Hometown Trestle, is 981 feet long. The original bridge was a massive wooden structure, but it was rebuilt out of steel in 1931. As for 2102, the stout 4-8-4 was built in the Reading Company's own shops in 1945 and from the railroad's corporate website here is a bit of history: The company, using parts from a former 76-foot Class I-10sa Consolidation 1923 Baldwin locomotive, created a fleet of 30 middleweight engines in the T-1 series. The goal of building these locomotives was to be able to haul both freight and passenger traffic along the rails. The original Baldwin-built I-10 class, which were large 2-8-0 locomotives, would become the T-1 class, converted to much larger 4-8-4 engines by redesigning and lengthening the Boiler and replacing the Frame and Wheels with brand new parts. Baldwin supplied the parts, but the rebuilding was done in the Reading Railroad’s own Shops right in Reading, PA. Rush Township, Pennsylvania Saturday September 5, 2024 | 
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