Customers before D-L started operations?

Outside of the Chrysler ramp and the army depot, There wasn't much business until you hit Gravel Place. And that was serviced out of Allentown.

When Conrail shut down the Lackawanna line, they intentionally sold (for cheap) the parcel of land inside the NE corner of the wye in Scranton to the beer distributor to make sure no other rail carrier that might acquire the line could make a direct high speed move coming from Binghamton and heading east towards E. Stroudsburg.

When D-L restored the wye, the new track is a much tighter, lower speed curve. I don't know if they purchased part of the land back, or were given an easement from the beer distributor.

I have always thought that wye looked a little poorly designed. Now I know why.

I can't imagine the removal of that leg of the wye and the decrease in speed associated with the new alignment would be considered anything more than a moderate annoyance to anyone attempting to operate a through train.

The trains that DL operates tend to move very slowly through the area nearest the college anyway as the atheletic fields are accessed by pedestrian crossings of the tracks. I would imagine that if any major carrier were to begin operations over the line a pedestrian bridge would be built.

How many miles was the Pocono Northeast? Why did they have such a short timespan of operation? How much of their trackage they acquired is left? Any maps of this stuff?

The PNE properties are now for the most part owned by Luzerne County and what is active is run by the Luzerne & Susquehanna.. The total track-miles operated by the L&S are roughly 60, while the track miles owned by Luzerne County Rail Authority are up around 90. Realize this isn't point-to-point by any means, the Wyoming Valley contained and still contains a snakes-nest of trackage.

-Micah

I've heard, and mind you this is all rumor, that the Pocono Northeast was not managed very well. In all honesty, as poor as the economy is up here these days, back when PNER took over things were probably even worse.

I've heard it was pretty much a joke.. But I didn't want to say anything, haha..

It was poorly managed by design, original investors of PNER wanted the line to fail so they could scrap the right of way and recover the coal that was used as fill under the ROW. The largest investor put the line into bankruptcy after getting into a dispute with the IRS. He then in turn mortgaged the line to Luzerne County. Probably made about $5 Million return on his investment by doing so.

I'd heard that it was run haphazardly, coal was being taken out of the ROW's, and random pieces of track had the habit of disappearing. Also, the principal investor was named DeNaples, lately of casino fame..

Mr. DeNaples has one of the most interesting reputations. Depending on who I speak to up here he's either the:

a) devil himself, a felon with deep mafia connections and a trail of questionable dealings with the cities/state

or

b) a misunderstood saint...though always with the caviat that the mafia isn't really all that bad and that things were much better when they were in charge anyway because they kept "these people and their drugs out of our part of town".

My father says it reminds him of people's opinions of Mr. Imperiale of Newark, NJ and Mr. Gotti of New York, NY.

I don't know the man personally and I don't like judging people based on other's opinions, so I'll wait until I sit down with him for dinner one day.