Reading Blue Mountain & Northern, Part 2

In Volume Two of the Reading, Blue Mountain and Northern series, we step back a bit and visit various locations along the railroad from April through July 1991, including operations on the Minersville and Tremont branches.

We’ll begin at Temple on the original Blue Mountain and Reading former Pennsy line and work our way to Tamaqua and Cressona. We then chase the Mountain Job from Gordon to Schuylkill Haven and back to Cressona. And we’ll wrap up this Volume by pursuing the jobs out of Cressona on the Minersville and Tremont branches.

As seen in the first Volume, trackage on these branches was some of the worst on the railroad, with limits of 10 miles per hour or less. Stalling and going “on the ground” was always a high probability on these lines due to a lack of maintenance by Conrail and its predecessors.

Digitized from the videotapes of the Joe Bednar and Cressona Joe, Narrated with commentary by Mike Bednar.