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Railroad History Comes Alive in White Deer
By: Lisa Z. Leighton
Previously printed in Lancaster Farming; reprinted with permission by the author.
White Deer, Pa. – Off on Interstate 80’s White Deer/Watsontown exit, at 148 Depot Road, history lovers will find a hidden treasure of railroad history.
Upon entering the parking lot for the White Deer Railroad Station, which is part of the White Deer & Reading Railroad system, you can close your eyes and easily envision the bustling passenger traffic that must have occupied the station decades ago.
While the station is not in use today, volunteers with the Central PA Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society (NRHS), are actively restoring several rooms of the station building (built in 1872, burnt down in 1909, rebuilt in 1910), including a waiting room, the ticketing room, and a baggage room.
Ronald Johnson, President of the Central PA Chapter of the NRHS and Station Master, spends his Sundays at the site giving tours and sharing his passion for and knowledge of railroad history.
A Notable Railroad Station
Johnson shared the following: The White Deer Station would seamlessly carry passengers from White Deer to the world, thanks to connecting train lines. The last passenger train that departed from that station was on January 5, 1951 and freight service was discontinued on August 14, 1976.
Inside the station, visitors can sit on wooden benches in the waiting room and get a sense of what life was life for train passengers in the early-to-mid 1900s.
The ticketing room includes a station manager’s desk and a distinctive map desk dating to 1892, featuring 33 individual drawers of maps, one for each state that had railroad lines. The map desk is a treasure worth seeing on its own! At that time, there were 1,190 railroad lines, including 112 in Pennsylvania.
Another treasure in the station building is a crew board, where workers would indicate if they were working or off-duty. This wooden board provided a quick glance of worker activity for station managers and fellow crew members.
Train Cars On-Site
The organization is actively restoring several train cars – the organization formerly owned six passenger cars and two hopper cars, but now own three passenger cars and one hopper car. All are still located on-site, however. A generous grant from GAF is funding much of the train car restoration projects.
On site are: a yellow and green Reading caboose, a red Reading caboose, a CF Tank Car, a Penn Central caboose, a Round Top Boxcar, a Wooden Boxcar or Chicken Boxcar, the 85-foot long Urbana, one of 225 cars built between February and May 1925 for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), the 84-foot long Torrance, one of 50 cars built between June and September 1926 for the PRR, and the 82-foot long Voyager, one of 2 cars rebuilt from Trombley in November 1931. Each car weighs about 80 tons, with trucks that weigh an additional 9 tons. The hopper car on site came from the PPL plant in Shamokin Dam.
One of the train cars is a 12-bed work train that served as a living space for rail workers. It featured a smoking section for men, bunk beds, rudimentary air conditioning using a unique system of ice and fans for air direction, a work stove, and water tank.
Inside another train car is a massive train library, filled with nearly 500 books and historical artifacts related to train history.
The site is open to the public on Sundays from 1-4 p.m. and accepts donations, which are used for ongoing restoration projects.
The Central PA Chapter NRHS will host their 49th annual train show and sale on Sunday, August 24 from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Warrior Run Fire Department Social Hall, Second Street, Allenwood. Trains will be available to buy, sell, and trade, including all scales and gauges of model trains, model train supplies and railroadiana. Admission is $5 per person and children under 12 are free.
For more information, search for their public group on Facebook: White Deer and Reading Railroad NRHS.