On Sunday November 6, I took a ride on Reading Blue Mountain and Northern's last "Autumn Leaf" steam excursion for 2022. Being this late in the season, "Autmn Leaf," is a bit of false advertising, as nearly (but not all) of the leaves were off the trees. But it was still a scenic ride and fun to be in a dome car riding behind a steam locomotive.
We've been having some real nice weather over the last few weeks, so, of course, the day I went to take a scenic train ride in a dome car, it was cloudy and rainy. At least it was warm out. I left my house at about 6 AM, as it is about as 2 hour drive up to Reading. I missed a turn near my destination and ended up taking a minitour through downtown Reading. At least it was a Sunday morning, and there was no traffic.
When I got to the North Reading "Outer Station," I was surprised at how full the parking lot was. Railroad Police directed me to a parking spot, and then I dashed through the falling rain to a covered area where my ticket was printed. I still had over 20 minutes until the train left, so I could have wandered up front to get a good look at 2102, one of the last remaining Reading Railroad steam locomotives, but I really didn't want to get soaked, so I quickly found the dome cars and found a seat.
And here's the great view out of our former Milwaukee Road Super Dome, "Lehigh Gorge Explorer." Our helpful car host (unfortunately I didn't write his name down while I was riding) provided lots of helpful information and good stories (including the one about the Tamaqua Fore truck that drove around the crossing gates, beating out this train the previous week.) Eventually he passed out paper towels so each of us could wipe the fog off of our windows, and pretty soon after the trip started you could see pretty well outside the dome.
It's been a while since I last rode in a dome car, but I remembered that the seats were usually mounted on platforms elevated above the aisle. The provided the headroom to allow people to walk through, but elevated the seats so you could see out easily. On this car, there were no platforms, so you can see that a passenger is sitting a bit low for optimal viewing, which meant that we were standing a lot. The seats were fairly comfortable recliners, though perhaps it was time for the upholstery to be replaced.
They had another dome car, called the "Scenic View," whose provenance I don't know, but a car diagram posted on one wall suggested at one time it was part of a tour train called the McKinley Explorer. That one did have the raised platforms for the seating, but it had tables, the seats didn't look as comfortable, and the dome windows seemed smaller. So I decided to stick with the Lehigh Gorge Explorer.
The train also had two lounge cars and an observation lounge car, but we riffraff in Dome Class weren't allowed to go back and see how the ritzy folk lived. I did get one shot of one of the lounge cars through the door window.
Moving toward the front, where the peons traveled, they had two classes. "Crown Class" was a heavyweight reclining seat coach, late of the Rio Grande Scenic Railway, called the "San Luis Valley." I suspect the railway management will eventually repaint it with RBMN colors and give it a new name evocative of the Lehigh or Schuylkill valley or something from northeastern Pennsylvania.
I didn't get a chance to go back and check out the regular coaches. They seem to be old commuter coaches (Erie-Lackawanna, Reading, etc.) Not sure I'd want to take a 6 hour ride in them unless I was really hot to ride behind the steam engine and money was a bit tight.
The real star of the trip, though was the locomotive. No. 2102 was a T-1 built in the Reading railroad shops in 1945. (Actually it was a rebuilt Baldwin Consolidation). After the Reading gave up on steam, they used it for excursion trips into the mid 1960s. After moving around a bit, it came into the hands of the RBMN in the 1980s and used for excursions. In the 1990s it was sent up to Steamtown for a while, then returned for static display until it was recently restored to operating condition.
As for the RBMN (also called the "Reading and Northern"), unlike a lot of tourist and excursion lines, this is a real railroad, with a few hundred miles of track assembled from the wreckage of Conrail, mostly former Reading and Lehigh Valley lines.
The railroad seems the be the brainchild of a guy named Andy Muller, Jr. who owns it and seems to have a thing for passenger trains (up to a point), as their excursion business seems be operated with the same seriousness as the freight business. I think it was first put together to continue coal transport from parts of the anthracite region, but I think the coal industry doesn't have much of a future, so it seems that management is trying to see the route as a shortcut for freight heading from the mid-Atlantic up to Canda. The basic main line runs from Reading up to Scranton with lots of little branches to service all of those out of the way mining towns.
Stay tuned for the account of the wet ride from North Reading to Jim Thorpe and return.
We've been having some real nice weather over the last few weeks, so, of course, the day I went to take a scenic train ride in a dome car, it was cloudy and rainy. At least it was warm out. I left my house at about 6 AM, as it is about as 2 hour drive up to Reading. I missed a turn near my destination and ended up taking a minitour through downtown Reading. At least it was a Sunday morning, and there was no traffic.
When I got to the North Reading "Outer Station," I was surprised at how full the parking lot was. Railroad Police directed me to a parking spot, and then I dashed through the falling rain to a covered area where my ticket was printed. I still had over 20 minutes until the train left, so I could have wandered up front to get a good look at 2102, one of the last remaining Reading Railroad steam locomotives, but I really didn't want to get soaked, so I quickly found the dome cars and found a seat.
And here's the great view out of our former Milwaukee Road Super Dome, "Lehigh Gorge Explorer." Our helpful car host (unfortunately I didn't write his name down while I was riding) provided lots of helpful information and good stories (including the one about the Tamaqua Fore truck that drove around the crossing gates, beating out this train the previous week.) Eventually he passed out paper towels so each of us could wipe the fog off of our windows, and pretty soon after the trip started you could see pretty well outside the dome.
It's been a while since I last rode in a dome car, but I remembered that the seats were usually mounted on platforms elevated above the aisle. The provided the headroom to allow people to walk through, but elevated the seats so you could see out easily. On this car, there were no platforms, so you can see that a passenger is sitting a bit low for optimal viewing, which meant that we were standing a lot. The seats were fairly comfortable recliners, though perhaps it was time for the upholstery to be replaced.
They had another dome car, called the "Scenic View," whose provenance I don't know, but a car diagram posted on one wall suggested at one time it was part of a tour train called the McKinley Explorer. That one did have the raised platforms for the seating, but it had tables, the seats didn't look as comfortable, and the dome windows seemed smaller. So I decided to stick with the Lehigh Gorge Explorer.
The train also had two lounge cars and an observation lounge car, but we riffraff in Dome Class weren't allowed to go back and see how the ritzy folk lived. I did get one shot of one of the lounge cars through the door window.
Moving toward the front, where the peons traveled, they had two classes. "Crown Class" was a heavyweight reclining seat coach, late of the Rio Grande Scenic Railway, called the "San Luis Valley." I suspect the railway management will eventually repaint it with RBMN colors and give it a new name evocative of the Lehigh or Schuylkill valley or something from northeastern Pennsylvania.
I didn't get a chance to go back and check out the regular coaches. They seem to be old commuter coaches (Erie-Lackawanna, Reading, etc.) Not sure I'd want to take a 6 hour ride in them unless I was really hot to ride behind the steam engine and money was a bit tight.
The real star of the trip, though was the locomotive. No. 2102 was a T-1 built in the Reading railroad shops in 1945. (Actually it was a rebuilt Baldwin Consolidation). After the Reading gave up on steam, they used it for excursion trips into the mid 1960s. After moving around a bit, it came into the hands of the RBMN in the 1980s and used for excursions. In the 1990s it was sent up to Steamtown for a while, then returned for static display until it was recently restored to operating condition.
As for the RBMN (also called the "Reading and Northern"), unlike a lot of tourist and excursion lines, this is a real railroad, with a few hundred miles of track assembled from the wreckage of Conrail, mostly former Reading and Lehigh Valley lines.
The railroad seems the be the brainchild of a guy named Andy Muller, Jr. who owns it and seems to have a thing for passenger trains (up to a point), as their excursion business seems be operated with the same seriousness as the freight business. I think it was first put together to continue coal transport from parts of the anthracite region, but I think the coal industry doesn't have much of a future, so it seems that management is trying to see the route as a shortcut for freight heading from the mid-Atlantic up to Canda. The basic main line runs from Reading up to Scranton with lots of little branches to service all of those out of the way mining towns.
Stay tuned for the account of the wet ride from North Reading to Jim Thorpe and return.
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What was interesting to me was that as the train passed, I didn't get a nose full of sulfurous coal fumes or a head full of cinders like I did when riding the Western Maryland Scenic Railway. I believe RBMN fuels its steam locomotives with locally available anthracite coal rather than the more common bituminous coal used by most steam powered railroads. Of course, in the sealed dome car, one didn't get the breeze and smells of the outside. Also, we got pretty specific instructions not to stick any part of our bodies out of the doors or windows, so leaning out the Dutch doors to take pictures as out of the question.
