Scranton’s Steamtown is a museum of North American railroading. But it is also a citadel of Lackawanna heritage. It is the respository of Lackawanna equipment and artifacts.
In its heyday more than a century ago, Lackawanna was an increadibly busy and very profitable railroad. In 1915, some 32 freight and passenger trains in each direction would work the mainline east of Scranton on a daily basis. Today these rails still host the occasional freights operated by Genesee Valley Transportation’s Delaware-Lackawanna, but its a far cry from the busy thoroughfare it was once.
Outside of Scranton, fragments and vestiges of the Lackawanna survive, but decades have passed since these represented a cohesive and vital transportation network. West of Binghamton, New York, little remains of the Lackawanna main line.
It was a bright morning in Scranton, and I thought there was no better time to make sunlit photos of the old Delaware, Lackawanna & Western station than at first light.
This is now the Radisson’s Lackawanna Station Hotel, and we were staying on the 6th floor in the room behind the clock.
I grabbed my Nikon Z7-II, and I walked around the street-side of the classic Kenneth Murchison building making photos from various angles.
No Phoebe Snow this day and we weren’t ‘off to Buffalo,’ yet this classic old building still feels, looks, and even smells like a traditional railroad station.
One of the great things about Steamtown in Scranton, Pa., is that admission is free.
Last week, Kris and I arrived shortly after the park opened and spent several hours wandering around. There’s a lot to see and I hadn’t visited inside the museum in a number of years.
I made these images using my Nikon Z7-II and performed post processing using Adobe Lightroom. I’ve lightened shadows, reduced contrast and warmed the images as required for improved presentation.
I work with different cameras to make various types of photos.
For this post I’m displaying a few photos made with my Panasonic Lumix LX-7 of the Radisson Lackawanna Hotel in Scranton. Using the Lumix lent to a distinct view point and the photos exposed offer an alternative to those that I previously made of the same building with my Nikon Z7-II.
These are not better or worse, just different.
Playing with myriad camera systems allows for a continued exploration of familiar subjects.
Back in the winter of 1985, I was delighted to have photographed a Delaware & Hudson Alco RS-3 working at Colonie Shops in Watervliet, New York. My only regret was that I made all of my photos using black & white film.
Last week on our visit to Scranton, we had the fortuity to witness a local freight operated by Delaware-Lackawanna (a Genesee Valley Transportation short line). This featured a pair of antique Alco diesels including a former D&H RS-3 recently repainted into the classic lightning stripe livery.
I made these digital photos of the American classic as it switched the former Lackawanna yard adjacent to the Steamtown complex. I also exposed a few 35mm color slides (but no black & white views).
I never would have imagined back in 1985 that a Delaware & Hudson RS-3 would still be working in revenue freight service forty years later! Today, I wonder if any of the diesels working today will still be in service in another 40 years.
Last week, Kris and I stayed at the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel in Scranton.
I remember when this architectural masterpiece was but a forlorn ruin.
Today, it is a testimony to the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and architect Kenneth Murchison.
I’ve previously written about this station in my book Depots, Stations & Terminals, published by Voyageur Press ten years ago. Below is an excerpt:
Murchison, was a respected New York architect who earned several important commissions for railroad stations in the early twentieth century. Murchison had studied in Paris and made prominent use of the Beaux-Arts style in his railway architecture. Among his significant early projects was Delaware, Lackawanna & Western’s new Hoboken Terminal on the west shore of the Hudson River across from New York City. This elaborate station complex replaced an earlier facility that had succumbed to fire and made prominent use of copper sheathing believed to be left over from the erection of the Statue of Liberty in nearby Upper New York Harbor.
Murchison followed up his success with Hoboken with an impressive five-story station for the DL&W at Scranton, Pennsylvania, constructed in 1908 . . .
. . .The importance of Scranton to Lackawanna, and to the competition from a host of other railroads here, mandated magnificence on the part of DL&W’s new Scranton station. Murchison was the right man for the job. Working in French-Renaissance style characteristic of the Beaux Arts movement, Murchison imparted Continental elegance on this Pennsylvania coal capital. He used massive colonnades on both the street and track sides of the station, and maintained classic symmetry. At the center of the roofline an enormous clock was flanked by stone eagles. The building was faced with Indiana limestone. An unusually deep hanging canopy encircled the structure to protect passengers when arriving and boarding trains, while Bush-style smokeless sheds, originally designed by DL&W chief engineer Lincoln Bush for Hoboken, were installed trackside. In the 1920s an additional story was added.
It was in this 1920s addition that we stayed on our recent visit. Our room was immediately behind the fifth story clock that faces the parking lot. (See below).
Photos exposed in July 2025 using my Nikon Z7-II with 24-70mm lens.
With Norfolk Southern SD70ACe 1021 leading a heavy freight [train symbol 11Z] in our review mirror, we drove south on Highway 11 toward Nicholson, Pennsylvania—location of the famous Tunkhannock Creek Viaduct.
As regular readers of Tracking the Light are aware, in recent months Kris and I have made several visits to this momental vestige of the late, great, Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad.
From our earlier visits I had my spot picked out on a side road a little ways from the village. I wanted to arrive with ample time to get into position set up in to time to catch the train crossing the bridge.
Dappled sunlight filled the valley as we heard the freight approaching.
I made a sequence of digital images using my Nikon Z7 with 24-70mm lens. Five locomotives were in the lead with a lone DPU (locomotive set up as a radio controlled remote ‘distributed power unit’) toward the rear of the freight. [NS 11Z runs from East Binghamton, NY to Roanoke, Virginia via Enola, PA.]
Afterwards we drove back under the viaduct and paused at the visitor’s parking area where there is literature and photos of the bridge on display. Our dog Boomer got to stretch his legs and mark his spot. He was delighted, it was his first visit to the big bridge!
I wrote about the DL&W bridge in my book Railway Masterpieces (Krause 2003) The viaduct was designed by DL&W’s bridge engineer Abraham B. Cohen and completed in 1915. The late historian-photographer William S. Young researched and wrote extensively about this bridge and Lackawanna’s early 20th century line relocations. He had interviewed Cohen’s descendants. I met with Young on a couple of occasions while researching bridge projects.
Last Sunday, we exited Interstate 81 at New Milford, PA to get gas. This was the last leg in our big move, and our third drive from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania in the last month,
My plan was to follow old Route 11 toward Clark’s Summit. This avoids the traffic on I-81 and largely follows the old alignment of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western. In fact in many places Route 11 is built on the old right-of-way.
We had Boomer-the-Dog with us and this was his first trip to Pennsylvania.
As I was fueling the car, I heard the unmistakable roar of modern EMD diesels. It was a southward freight on the Lackawanna!
I concluded pumping gas before the tank was filled, and we headed south after the train.
Several miles south of New Milford, Route 11 runs adjacent to the Lackawanna, now operated by Norfolk Southern. We pulled over to roll the train by at milepost 637.
Here, Kris made a video with her phone, Boomer got to witness his first BIG freight train, and I exposed this sequence of digital photos.
Milepost 637 as measured from Mattawamkeag, Maine, dating from the brief period in the 1980s, when Guilford Transportation controlled the Delaware & Hudson, which then own this section of DL&W line.A wink of sun at just the right moment made for an even better image.NS 1021 is an EMD SD70ACe.
Soon we were off after an even bigger prize . . . (stay tuned).
In October 2005, I traveled with Delaware-Lackawanna’s PT98 that operated from Scranton to Slateford Junction, Pennsylvania.
At Tobyhanna the eastward freight stopped to switch, and I made a few photos on Fujichrome using a Nikon F3. It was pouring rain, so I made the best of it.
I scanned this image using a Nikon Coolscan 5000, and adjusted the TIF raw file in Adobe Lightroom to correct the color temperature and color balance while adjusting contrast and shadow detail.
In March 2007, Pat Yough and I made a visit to the abandoned former Lackawanna Paulins Kill Viaduct in western New Jersey.
I was researching a book on railroad bridges, and needed to fill some gaps in my photographic coverage.
This was one of several massive concrete bridges built by the Lackawanna in the early 20th century. It has been disused since Conrail abandoned the Lackawanna Cutoff in the early 1980s.
Since that time the line has been repeatedly studied for reopening.
Previously on Tracking the Light in Jan 2014 I featured color photos of the bridge exposed the same day as these B&W images.
I made these photos on Fuji Neopan 400 black & white film using my Contax G2 rangefinder with 28mm Zeiss Biogon lens. I processed the film in Rodinal Special mixed 1-32 with water at 68F for three minutes and 15 seconds.
In December 1982, my father and I visited the former Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Hoboken Terminal on the Hudson River waterfront opposite Manhattan.
I thought this ancient decaying relic of the Golden Age of American railways was just about the most fascinating place on the planet.
Rotten, yet grand, elusive, yet filled with intrigue. I exposed a series of Kodachrome slides using my 1930s era Leica 3A with Sumitar lens.
There’s no doubt; I was born in the wrong era. At age 16, my interests lay in the world decades before my birth.
Lackawanna Terminal has been tidied up since that day. Today, one of the old DL&W electric multiple unit cars serves as Conway Scenic Railroad’sdining car Chocorua, while another former DL&W car is coach 3202 Hurricane Mountain. Oddly enough, I write this in the shadow of Hurricane Mountain in North Conway, New Hampshire.
I scanned the slide portrayed here just a little while ago. I offer two versions. One is a scaled RAW scan without interpretation, the other is an ‘improved’ version of the same scan. I lightened this, adjusted the contrast and color temperature.
