by Gale E. Treiber/photos by the author
There were many advantages of living in a small railroad town. As I became more interested in trains, a few of my relatives started introducing me to a number of railroaders, and this article describes the results of one such introduction that occurred in August 1958, while I was visiting my Grandmother Treiber in Beaver Falls, Pa. She had talked to a good friend of hers, a Mrs. Mansfield, whose husband was a conductor on one of Pennsylvania Railroad’s Beaver Falls to Pittsburgh commuter trains, and she had arranged a surprise for me. My grandmother took me to the PRR Station to meet him when his train returned from Pittsburgh at the end of its run. We waited for a few minutes for the train to arrive, and then I met Mr. Paul Mansfield for the first time. After all of the passengers had detrained, he asked my grandmother if it would be okay for me to ride along with him while the crew turned the train and prepared it for the morning trip. She agreed, and away we went.
I do not remember what we talked about, but I’m sure it was small talk about the train — an Alco RS-3 pulling five Pennsy P-70 coaches, standard for the two remaining PRR commuter trains from Beaver Falls. Rather than reversing the train by uncoupling the loco-motive from the coaches, turning it on a turntable (if required) and then coupling it to the other end as done on the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie at College Station, the Pennsy turned their Beaver Falls commuter trains by running the whole train 4.6 miles north to Homewood Junction, where the Fort Wayne line turned west and the New Castle & Beaver Valley line headed north. The junction had a third leg, forming a wye, so that a train from any of the three lines could be routed to either of the two remaining lines. There was a tower named “Wood” located there, and it controlled the switches to allow trains to or from the single track line from the Great Lakes to access any of the four tracks of the Fort Wayne main line.
ABOVE: Two E7As, 5877 and 5856, are on the point of Train 13, the westbound “Mail and Express,” that will depart Pittsburgh at 11:35 a.m. and then take almost twelve hours to cover the 611 miles to St. Louis. The Official Guide notes that this train has neither a dining car nor Pullman service. The imposing building to the left of the locomotives is the Pennsylvania Railroad’s powerhouse.
When we reached the junction, we passed the tower, followed the curve to the west and stopped. After a switch had been thrown behind us, we backed on to the west leg of the wye, and when we were clear of the main line our trainman aligned the switch behind us so that we could enter and go a short distance up the NC&BV. Once our locomotive cleared the points, we stopped again while the switch was thrown back to its original (north-south) position. There we waited until the operator at Wood Tower gave a signal allowing us to return to the Fort Wayne and cross from the westbound to the eastbound main. With Mr. Mansfield’s concurrence, I had hopped off the train for a photograph of the operation. As I walked back to the train, the engineer asked me if I would like to ride back to Beaver Falls in the cab of the locomotive. After checking with Mr. Mansfield, I climbed onto the locomotive for my first cab ride — what a thrill for a fifteen year-old kid!
After we returned to Beaver Falls and tied the train up for its night in the coach yard, Mr. Mansfield walked me back to the station where my grandmother was waiting, still chatting with his wife. After a short conversation, he offered to take me with him on tomorrow’s commuter run to downtown Pittsburgh, and the arrangements were quickly made.
I arrived at the station early the next morning. I met Mr. Mansfield and we walked over to the train, which was patiently waiting for the day’s run. After a little preparation, the crew moved the train, number 424, to the station and paused briefly while the small band of commuters embarked. The run to Pittsburgh was a little over thirty miles and our scheduled time for it was fifty-seven minutes, which included twelve stops along the way…
