Heading Out Of Hazleton
While in Jim Thorpe for a long weekend I had one major photographic goal that did not involve the Reading and Northern. Norfolk Southern still has a limited presence in the area continuing to own their upper Lehigh Line from Allentown to Leighton then sharing the RofW and owning one of two mains from there to Jim Thorpe and on up through the Lehigh Gorge to Penn Haven. At that point the Lehigh Line continues north, under the sole ownership and operation of RBMN, while the NS' Ashmore Secondary climbs the grade to Weatherly and Hazleton.
For the last five years the upper Lehigh Line has seen nothing but local freights, and north of Lehighton they have operated almost exclusively at night. However a recent schedule change has seen NS running local H66 in daylight on Sundays making a late morning turn north from Allentown to Hazleton and back. After dropping off five tank cars in the yard the pair of SD60Es now have four covered hoppers as they start back east, seen again here on the Hazleton Running Track (the westward other than main track continuation of the Ashmore Secondary) at about MP 143.5 on rails of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad's Wyoming Divison. This area was once laced with a mind boggling maze of trackage and at one time this particular line which was built by the LV in 1871 was double tracked to support the flood of anthracite coal flowing out of area mines. While vastly diminished, there is still a limited market for anthracite and several mines remain active though today they are nearly all open pit strip mines with I believe only four active underground mines left operating.
The edge of one such open pit mine is seen in the background and has expanded such that the railroad used to run straight through where it is and had to be relocated creating the dog leg seen in this photo and the one posted earlier. This is the Atlantic Carbon Group's Stockton Mine located here on the eastern portion of the Hazleton Coal basin which primarily extracts coal from the Mammoth seam, which reaches thickness of over 20ft in the bottom of the basin, with additional reserves in the Primrose, Diamond, and Orchard seams. Atlantic Carbon is the second largest Ultra High Grade (UHG) anthracite producer in the United States. In June of this year the company was purchased by Delta Dunia, an Indonesian based holding company and you can learn more in this press release: deltadunia.com/post/737/delta-dunia-group-completes-acqui...
And here's a nice local news piece on the modern day market for anthracite coal: www.standardspeaker.com/2024/01/20/anthracite-and-coal-th...
And lastly, if the name Stockton Mine rings a bell you might be a history buff as the original underground mine located nearby was site of a freakish disaster in 1869 which you can learn a bit more about here: wynninghistory.com/2019/12/18/remembering-stockton/
Hazle Township, Pennsylvania
Sunday October 6, 2024
Heading Out Of Hazleton
While in Jim Thorpe for a long weekend I had one major photographic goal that did not involve the Reading and Northern. Norfolk Southern still has a limited presence in the area continuing to own their upper Lehigh Line from Allentown to Leighton then sharing the RofW and owning one of two mains from there to Jim Thorpe and on up through the Lehigh Gorge to Penn Haven. At that point the Lehigh Line continues north, under the sole ownership and operation of RBMN, while the NS' Ashmore Secondary climbs the grade to Weatherly and Hazleton.
For the last five years the upper Lehigh Line has seen nothing but local freights, and north of Lehighton they have operated almost exclusively at night. However a recent schedule change has seen NS running local H66 in daylight on Sundays making a late morning turn north from Allentown to Hazleton and back. After dropping off five tank cars in the yard the pair of SD60Es now have four covered hoppers as they start back east, seen again here on the Hazleton Running Track (the westward other than main track continuation of the Ashmore Secondary) at about MP 143.5 on rails of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad's Wyoming Divison. This area was once laced with a mind boggling maze of trackage and at one time this particular line which was built by the LV in 1871 was double tracked to support the flood of anthracite coal flowing out of area mines. While vastly diminished, there is still a limited market for anthracite and several mines remain active though today they are nearly all open pit strip mines with I believe only four active underground mines left operating.
The edge of one such open pit mine is seen in the background and has expanded such that the railroad used to run straight through where it is and had to be relocated creating the dog leg seen in this photo and the one posted earlier. This is the Atlantic Carbon Group's Stockton Mine located here on the eastern portion of the Hazleton Coal basin which primarily extracts coal from the Mammoth seam, which reaches thickness of over 20ft in the bottom of the basin, with additional reserves in the Primrose, Diamond, and Orchard seams. Atlantic Carbon is the second largest Ultra High Grade (UHG) anthracite producer in the United States. In June of this year the company was purchased by Delta Dunia, an Indonesian based holding company and you can learn more in this press release: deltadunia.com/post/737/delta-dunia-group-completes-acqui...
And here's a nice local news piece on the modern day market for anthracite coal: www.standardspeaker.com/2024/01/20/anthracite-and-coal-th...
And lastly, if the name Stockton Mine rings a bell you might be a history buff as the original underground mine located nearby was site of a freakish disaster in 1869 which you can learn a bit more about here: wynninghistory.com/2019/12/18/remembering-stockton/
Hazle Township, Pennsylvania
Sunday October 6, 2024