Stepne Manor in Chestertown, MD is a wedding and events facility including two commuter cars and a caboose. Staff at Stepne forwarded photos that identify the caboose as Conrail 19847 and the cars as Revel Railroad 106 and 108. What is the history of the Revel Railroad cars?

Thanks!

Wesley

The commuter cars look like ex Reading Mu's.

The headlight casing and cab give it away as a reading "Blueliner" MU car, and it's safe to assume both are. Unless someone undertook to fake a headlight casing, cab windows, etc. on one of many Reading/CNJ/etc. commuter coaches out there......

Now exactly which two, and how they got there, I'm flummoxed.....

Which two is a good question. One of the cars is a standard Harlan & Hollingsworth car. But the other is one of the eight cars built in the 1940s by ACF and may be the only survivor of that sub-series. Those cars had four motors, rather than the two of the earlier H&H cars; Commonwealth rather than Taylor trucks; and were paired with trailers in operation. They were numbered 889-896.

The cars are not on any survivor list that I have come across. They have been in the Chestertown area for a number of years. Both are Reading Company cars for sure.
The only reference I have found lists car numbers but I suspect they are wrong. The cars would have been numbered in the 800 series when built.

????
Harlan & Hollings. Coach Chestertown, MD Built 1930s, Number?, as 106, ex-9106?
????
Harlan & Hollings. Coach Chestertown, MD Built 1930s, Number?, as 108, ex-9108?

The Revell Railroad was the name given to the collection of commuter and freight cars once located adjacent to the CNJ station at downtown Wilkes-Barre, PA.

I first stumbled upon them during the early to mid 1980s. As I recall, the owner made his living selling arcade games. He bought the station and turned it into a decent night spot. Each commuter was divided in half to accomodate two nicely furnished rooms with bath for overnight lodging. He funded his acquistion of the equipment by selling the copper windings from the motors. I met him only once -- seemed like a decent guy. I eventually stayed overnight years later during the July holiday in 1989. Decent accomodations as I recall. The station was well done, too Nearby, a streamlined passenger car was used as a dinner- it was called Joe Palooka's.

Over the years, the facility suffer from fire, but I don't know the extent of damage. Eventually, the business changed hands and failed. I thought most of the commuter cars were scrapped on-site -- glad to see something survive. The station remains in sad state awaiting redevelopment or worse.

Hope this helps...

Thanks for the background information on this. I'm sure you're right that the cars in Chestertown are from the Revel Railroad hotel. I recall coming across another Reading MU car, 805, just off I-80 near Danville, PA some 15 years ago. It had this same medium green paint and the same air conditioners sprouting from the sides. As I recall, a close examination of the car sides revealed its original number, which had simply been painted over. An examination of the cars in Chestertown may reveal the numbers of these two cars as well. (Car 805, for what it's worth, went missing from Danville sometime in the last few years and I'm guessing it was cut up.)

A little more about the butcher of Northampton Street:

http://citizensvoice.com/greco-pleads-guilty-1.904017

http://standardspeaker.com/news/w-b-bus ... -1.1062294


http://citizensvoice.com/news/lcb-greco ... -1.1577039

http://www.timesleader.com/news/634642/ ... greco-suit


http://www.timesleader.com/archive/2054 ... axes117523

The facility really suffered because of the location. There's a housing project (formerly known as Okarma Terrace-Wilkes Barre's version of Cabrini Green) across the street. Over the years, the Station went from being a really upscale restaurant to a mish-mash nightclub (with an old Cadillac punched into the roof) and an appended box car called "The Gandy Dancer Cafe".

I was still single and night-clubbing in the early 90's; they attempted to distinguish the place from other gin mills by having the coaches as private rooms for rent; that didn't last because they were soon turned into dens of iniquity with hourly rent; the last time I went there "93 or 94) they were trying to upscale the facility with sand volleyball and tiki torch stuff, but were "wanding" entrants because nearby residents were coming in with 9mm's and other things that generally don't comport with alcohol and youth.

I have some pictures somewhere of the demolition in 2002.

“The headlight casing and cab give it away as a reading "Blueliner" MU car…”

“One of the cars is a standard Harlan & Hollingsworth car. But the other is one of the eight cars built in the 1940s by ACF and may be the only survivor of that sub-series. Those cars had four motors, rather than the two of the earlier H&H cars; Commonwealth rather than Taylor trucks; and were paired with trailers in operation. They were numbered 889-896.”

A “Blueliner” was a car that had been rebuilt back in the early 1960s at the behest of the City of Philadelphia Department of Public Transit in lieu of buying more Silverliner II cars. As the name implied, they were painted blue (and white) and were renumbered in the 9100-series. All other Reading MU cars were painted dark green. The combination of a 4-motor MU car and an MU trailer on the RDG was known as a “Bride & Groom”. They were semi-permanently coupled with each car having only one operating cab. None of the four-motor cars were ever rebuilt into a Blueliner. When the Silverliner IV cars were being delivered circa 1975, the trailers of the Bride & Groom sets were the first of the older cars to go. Up until then, the Reading still had every MU car they had ever owned. The four-motor cars remained in service a while longer but, having only one operating cab, they were less flexible when making up trains. While they lasted, a train with a couple of these “widow(er)s” in it had pretty good acceleration.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.
Reading Company Employee 1972-‘76

Here are a few pictures of the RDG cars from the current owner. I think one view (Stepne 2) is elsewhere since there are more than two cars shown. I am also a bit confused by the car numbers. There are only two cars on site but the photos show three numbers? 105, 106 and 107?

Wesley

The first of these photos depicts the Wilkes-Barre Depot Square location.

I've got an almost identical photo to the original one in post #1 which I took in October 2012.
Car #106 is the nearest one to the photographer. with #108 the furthest away. Other than the numbers on the headlight mountings, I could not see any trace of any other markings visible on the cars at that time. Was rather surprised to find them there, to say the least.
As an aside, the original Chestertown station building isn't that far away from where the MU cars are and looks well cared for..........



My activities that day were somewhat curtailed as that was the Sunday that "Superstorm Sandy" decided to arrive, eliminating my visit to the Dover AFB museum and meaning I was stuck in the USA for an extra few days...!

Here is a photo I took in 2011 of the car that was in Danville. It wasn't too long after I took this photo that it along with several boxcars that were also on the property were scrapped on the site. I had stopped and asked the crew scrapping them about getting one of the brake wheels off of the boxcars, but they said I had to contact the owner. I did but never heard back from him, and in a few days the cars were gone.