By Mike Bednar
It’s hard to believe that the city of Allentown, Pa., once had a rail system that supported the operation of four signal towers as late as 1968. The Jersey Central (CNJ) owned 2 of them – R Tower at the west end of Allentown Yard and J Tower, which was manned by the CNJ, but jointly operated with the Reading at East Penn Junction. The Lehigh Valley (LV) had two towers also – East Penn Jct. (designated as “OJ”) and Union Street (call letters “US”), located on the passenger line where the LV and CNJ’s Allentown Terminal Railroad crossed. Union Street was jointly operated with the CNJ, but manned by LV personnel.
East Penn Junction was on the LV at Mile 92.5 where the relatively small East Penn Yard was the focal point of the interchange with the Reading in Allentown. This interchange was one of the largest on the LV system, handling 120,000 carloads in 1963. East Penn Tower was responsible for the territory from Catasauqua (MP 97) to the west and Calypso Yard in Bethlehem to the east (MP 89). In 1965, the LV, CNJ, and Reading restructured the interchanges between the railroads by making joint use of Allentown Yard and renaming it Allentown Consolidated Yard. Some employees (some say most) renamed the Allentown Consolidated Yard to Allentown “Constipated” Yard, but that’s another story altogether!
ABOVE: The crew in charge of Reading GP30 #5506 and Fairbanks-Morse H-24-66 Trainmaster 807 have just completed turning this set of power before heading back west to Rutherford in April 1964. J Tower stands on the left and the East Penn servicing facilities are on the right. The Reading engine crews preferred not to have FM’s on the lead because of the fumes they encountered in their cabs. —Kodachrome by Ken Von Steuben, collection of Mike Bednar.
The LV eliminated lots of jobs with consolidation, which was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s (majority owner of the LV since 1962) goal in its downsizing plan for the LV. With no interchange at East Penn, the towermen had less to do and that meant that the axe would eventually fall on the jobs there. East Penn Junction tower closed on April 6, 1968. This left only the three towers of the Allentown Triangle to move the traffic. The three towers that remained: R Tower at Allentown Yard’s West End; J Tower at Auburn St. on the Reading’s East Penn Branch main line; and Union Street Tower on the CNJ and LV, formed a triangle that included a wye on the Allentown Terminal Railroad.
This wye came in handy for passenger trains coming in off the Reading into the CNJ station at Allentown and reversing back to Harrisburg, as well as turning engines for the CNJ and Reading. When I worked at Union Street from 1966 until it closed in 1969, there were no longer any passenger trains coming off of the Reading or LV. The CNJ still had one passenger train out of Allentown to Jersey City that left in the morning (Train 102) and returned in the evening (Train 199). This ended on April 29, 1967, with the Aldene Plan canceling all service to Jersey City. The Pennsylvania PUC forced CNJ to run a shuttle train from Allentown to Easton for a short time, but that disappeared in September 1967…
ABOVE: I was working 1st trick R Tower in December 1977. Conrail was now in control. Anthracite coal destined for Port Richmond in Philadelphia was running heavy out of Hazleton, so a pusher was called to assist train AP-20 to Blandon. This pusher had two ex-LV Alcos shoving hard on the ex-Penn Central bay windowcaboose. What a display for an “Alco-holic” to see at this “last stand” for ex-LV RS11 7644 and “Hammerhead” RS3 5487 (ex-LV 211). —Kodachrome by Mike Bednar
