A second reason is that track condition on the line had deteriorated to the point that a large amount of money would be required to bring the track up to the point where it could safely be used. One reason was that freight shipments over the line had declined seriously over the years. In the spring of 2006, the K&K ceased both freight and tourist service. Today, the roundhouse is in a considerable amount of disrepair, with three of the four tracks having been removed. ![]() There was also a four bay roundhouse built in Marienville. So the K&K built a wye there, specifically to turn its steam locomotive. As the B&O never saw a need to turn locomotives at Marienville, there was no wye or turntable in that community. A Tangshan Locomotive and Rolling Stock Works-built 2-8-2 steam locomotive 58 was acquired to power the tourist trains, also the K&K had a 2-8-0 steam locomotive, a Baldwin Built. The K&K also operated a tourist railroad operation over the segment of the line from Kane to Marienville (originally the site of another of the Knox Glass Bottle Company's plants), and back to Kane. The last coal shipper on the line, Zacheryl Coal, went bankrupt not too many years after the K&K acquired the line, which materially reduced shipping over the line, and thus reduced income. ![]() A conductor's report from one northbound freight train (Foxburg to Kane) in the early 1960s showed in excess of fifty loads of coal shipped north out of Lucinda, most of it bound for ports on the Great Lakes. During the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, under B&O ownership, coal loadings from this area were quite extensive. Clarion's town fathers declined this honor, so the railroad cut back service to the west side of the river, which was eventually abandoned as well.Īt one time, the K&K derived some revenue from shipping out car loadings of coal from what had once been an extensive coal mining complex in and around the village of Lucinda, a few miles north of North Clarion Junction. The bridge over the Clarion River needed replacement and the railroad requested that the town help with funding the project. This branch was discontinued at around the time the B&O purchased the P&W. This ended the use of the Shippenville interchange.Īfter the Knox segment was embargoed, the southern terminus became what was known as North Clarion Junction, where there was a fibreboard plant and a wye, the tail track of which had been the P&W's line across to the east side of the Clarion River to the borough of Clarion (county seat of Clarion County). Operations in to Knox, which had been the original southern terminus of the K&K, were discontinued around the time the only real customer in Knox, the Knox glass bottle company, ceased operations. The B&O and NYC crossed each other not too far west of Shippenville for many years, but there had never been provision for interchange between the two roads. ![]() To ease this situation, a connection with the Conrail (originally the New York Central Railroad) line through Shippenville was put in place. ![]() When the segment of the B&O from Foxburg to Knox was taken out of service, shipping raw materials, mostly glassmaking sand, to Knox Glass became difficult. This line was a part of the old Pittsburgh and Western Railroad, originally a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow-gauge line created in the latter third of the 19th century from a merging of various earlier narrow-gauge lines. The track and right of way was bought from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1982 when the B&O discontinued operations on the old Northern Subdivision between Foxburg and Kane.
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