Category Archives: Locations

Locations along the S&NY

Finding Ghosts

Since this is the “Spooky Season”, I thought I would share an interesting way of using technology to find ghosts in in the woods. Specifically, the ghosts of railroads past…

This technology is called “LIDAR”, for “Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging”, and has been in use in various forms since the invention of lasers in the early 1960’s. It is commonly used to make 3-D terrain maps for various purposes. The increasing resolution of LIDAR systems (down to elevation differences of mere inches), and the ability to subtract light reflections from vegetation, has made LIDAR an invaluable tool for archaeologic research. This also applies to industrial archaeology, I.E., abandoned railroads.

Mapping LIDAR data removes existing structures as well as vegetation, but foundations of no-longer-extant structures can often be seen. The data is also most useful in more remote areas, where later alterations of the ground are less likely to have occurred over time.

This mapping technology is available on the internet from the United States Geologic Survey (USGS) at: The National Map – Advanced Viewer. To use the online browser, navigate to the site, use the map to navigate to the area of interest, open the “Layer List” tool on the toolbar, check the box next to 3DEP Elevation – Hillshade, and zoom in a bit to your area of interest. It will take a few seconds or a bit longer to load the data into the browser, so if you have a slow internet connection, be patient. You should be rewarded with a shaded grey-scale image of the ground. Clicking the three black dots opens another set of tools, one of which allows you to adjust the transparency of the shaded layer so the associated map layer can be seen.

 

USGS website and navigation map

 

3DEP Elevation – Hillshade

 

Topo map overlaid

The above examples show the course of the long-abandoned PRR Chautauqua Branch roadbed and the still-extant bridge over French Creek near Sherman, NY. This bridge can still be seen in the winter months from westbound Interstate 86.

We can combine the USGS LIDAR information with data from other online resources such as Google Earth as well. In this instance, the Susquehanna & New York Railroad roadbed and bridge site over Pleasant Stream dating to circa 1917-1920 can still be seen, despite several severe floods in the early to mid-2000’s which significantly altered the streambed. Images from Google Earth are not useful due to tree canopy cover, but the bridge can be seen in aerial photographs from the late 1930’s available online at: Penn Pilot (arcgis.com). The photos show the bridge abutments as they looked in 2000.

Penn Pilot

 

USGS LIDAR

 

Google Earth

Photo by Author

 

Photo by Author

Another interesting example is at Marsh Hill, PA. Here, the standout feature is the elevated ramp serving the coal dock along one leg of the wye track, still visible due to laser light and the power of applied mathematics 80 years after the S&NY was abandoned. The faint traces of the S&NY yard, the rest of the wye, and the roadbed heading east along Pleasant Stream can also be seen. These traces correlate with the Penn Pilot photographs but are nearly completely obscured by trees and modern structures on the Google Earth view.

USGS LIDAR

 

Penn Pilot

 

Bill Caloroso- Author’s Collection

 

Google Earth

One can spend hours following old roadbeds and hunting traces of “what once was” for fun, but the usefulness of this technology for model railroaders researching a particular prototype railroad cannot be understated.

Let’s do a couple more:

Here is a LIDAR view of the Masten area. In addition to the modern roads, both the “old” S&NY right-of-way and the “new” ROW leading to and from the Masten Loop (out of view to the right) can be seen. In addition, the remains of the log pond dam are revealed in the center of the image.

USGS LIDAR

Author’s Collection

Google Earth

Again, the ground surface details are completely obscured by forest canopy on the Google Earth view.

Let’s move to the Masten Loop area. The USGS LIDAR data gives us this view of the roadbed, associated cuts and fills, and the bridge site over Pleasant Stream:

USGS LIDAR

An old postcard view:

Author’s Collection

The view from the air circa 1938:

Penn Pilot

Ground view, date unknown, possibly mid-1930’s:

Walter Parmeter Collection via John Eastlake

And finally, the modern view via satellite:

Google Earth

Moving upgrade and northeastward, the outlines of the wye track at Ellenton can still be made out:

USGS LIDAR

1930’s aerial view:

Penn Pilot

Valuation map of the area:

Ground level view, likely during abandonment in 1942:

Bill Caloroso – Cal’s Classics

Current Google Earth view:

Google Earth

Foundations of long-gone structures can also be seen using this tool. In this view of Wheelerville, the foundation of the old creamery is visible adjacent to the S&NY roadbed, now called Schrader Creek Road:

USGS LIDAR

View of the creamery foundations in 2017:

Photo by Author

Lastly, let’s have a look at the Laquin area. Hard to make out much detail due to later flooding and the construction of a CCC camp. This is where other resources can come in handy:

USGS LIDAR

We can get an idea of what to look for, based on a map from Tom Taber’s book “Ghost Lumber Towns of Central Pennsylvania” and the Penn Pilot aerials:

Excerpted from “Ghost Lumber Towns of Central Pennsylvania”

 

Penn Pilot

On the LIDAR image, we can still see faint traces of the lumber stack area at the lumber mill, the stave mill area, and the chemical plant and associated trackage.

Google Earth

The modern Google Earth view is much less useful, again due to the tree canopy.

Hard to believe we have this technology to research the past right at our fingertips. Truely, we live in an age of miracles. Give these tools a try, and maybe you’ll find your own “ghosts”!

S&NY in Color

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts a couple of weeks ago, and one of the guests happened to mention several places online that would colorize old photos for free. (Well, nothing is free, but I’ll touch on that in a moment.) He had tried out several places, and found that the MyHeritage genealogy website did the best job, in his opinion. He wanted to colorize an old photo to use as part of a model railroad backdrop scene. (His blog post is HERE.)

This really piqued my interest, as nearly all of the S&NY photos in my collection are, of course, black-and-white. If some could be colorized, I thought it might make the railroad seem more real, somehow.

So, I set up a dummy account on MyHeritage and tried it out. Here’s where the “free” part comes in. I am assuming that MyHeritage (just like Facebook and all other online social-media sites) retains all uploaded photos in a database for their own internal use, most likely to increase the accuracy of their colorization algorithms, but also to use sophisticated facial-recognition software to link long-deceased individuals to other living and deceased relations. For this reason, I deliberately used old photos that lacked any identifiable people. With that in mind, I tried it out:

Not bad, for “free”. Color is a little washed out, but it looks like an early spring photo, and there is probably not enough for the algorithm to work with. I assume also the software is designed to work with faces, and not inanimate objects. Still, pretty cool! The varied weathering patterns and colors such as the areas of rust on the pilot and the streaking on the smokebox and boiler are very very good, in my opinion.

Wow, this one was more impressive. Looking at it, I think the algorithm makes a reasonable assumption that, in old photos, lighter colored buildings are likely white-washed, and darker buildings are more or less “barn red”.

Again we can see that darker building colors get mapped as variations of red, and lighter colors map as variations of whites. However, the information I have is that S&NY stations were painted yellow (buff?) and green. I tinkered a bit with Photoshop, and got this:

Might be a little closer to “reality”, but who really knows 80 years later?

A couple more, for fun:

 

On the whole, I think the online software does a spooky-good job. This will be a great tool for modeling, as the algorithms are pretty good with the weathering patterns on the locomotives, among other things; and gives us in the modern-day a much better feel for how things might have REALLY looked back then.

Wordless Wednesday #158

Author’s Collection

Wordless Wednesday #157

Author’s Collection

Talky Tuesday #113

This “Talky Tuesday ” will refer all the way back to “Wordless Wednesday #155” of May 02, 2018. How time flies! (Mostly due to family and work obligations.) Hopefully any future hiatus will not be so long. However, my supply of decent unscanned and unpublished S&NY photos is dwindling, so the “Wordless Wednesdays” will definitely be spaced out further, and future posts perforce will tend to be centered on the model S&NY.

Anyway, “WW #155” is a simple shot of #119 at rest in the Towanda engine facility, date unknown.

S&NY Towanda Office

A better title for this post might be, “They look, but do not see.”

Several years ago, I purchased a couple of digital scans of photos from glass-plate negatives in the Bradley-Hahn Collection at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, this collection is not digitized, and I picked the images based on a written description only.

One of the images was a city scene that showed no trains, to my disappointment; or so I thought. Thus the image sat unused in my digital collection for years, until recently while looking for more “Wordless Wednesday” material I looked a little closer…

Bradley-Hahn Collection, RR Museum of PA

The neat thing about these old glass-plate negatives is the fine detail they contain:

Bradley-Hahn Collection, RR Museum of PA

Behold! The S&NY business office at Towanda, located in the Towanda Opera House.

Bradley-Hahn Collection, RR Museum of PA

And around the corner on Washington Street, the LV-S&NY freight house with a Boston & Albany boxcar on the siding.

So, there was railroad content in the photo after all. I just didn’t look close enough. There is a lesson there somewhere…

Same corner in the modern day via Google:

Google Earth

 

(Note: No “WW” or “TT” last week, this week, and possibly next week due to family commitments and the NMRA MidCentral Region Convention in Cincinnati.)

Wordless Wednesday #155

Bill Caloroso – Cal’s Classics

Talky Tuesday #111

Cylinder cocks open, #116 vents her cylinders while pulling slowly away from the Towanda turntable in last week’s “WW #153”. Must be a little dry up in the woods, as the #116 has a spark arrestor placed over the stack.

Wordless Wednesday #153

Bill Caloroso – Cal’s Classics

Talky Tuesday #109

S&NY 2-8-0 #115 rests at the Towanda turntable in last week’s “WW #151”. Several of the S&NY’s engines sport small tanks in various locations on or near the smokebox. After studying this photo, my best guess is they are likely reservoirs for mechanical lubricators for the valve gear.