I have a friend who is making models of the Wanamie Mine lokies that ran around the mine site. He is making them for a simulator game called Trainz, of which I'm sure some of you have heard of. I have been asked to make a small route to display and drive the locomotive (and its accompanying cars) on. I am excited about this project but after searching for a while have come across an apparent lack of track diagrams. Specifically, I'm looking for track arrangements around the mines that the 36" gauge Wanamie Mine Railroad ran so that I can model them in this simulator. The layout I will be making is going to be in model train layout form, so nothing extremely specific is needed, as I will just be compressing everything anyway. Just enough to be able to better understand their operations, and to make a semi-accurate layout. I figure I might be able to get a basic layout down just by studying pictures and the such but it's a long shot. If anyone has any aerial photographs of the mine (I've already checked HistoricAerials.com, it's not very helpful in this situation) or any kind of map showing track arrangement, it would be greatly appreciated. Even if you don't but know a thing or two about the railroad I'm all ears, I can either use it in layout design or can pass it onto my friend for use on his model.

Many thanks, Matthew B.

Have you tried Penn Pilot? Aerial imaging of Pennsylvania dating back to the ‘30s. Enter your place and era and a map will pop up with dots on it. The dots are the centers of the aerial images. The JPG images are downloadable in ZIP files that you can open on your computer. I don’t know why they zipped the JPGs, it doesn’t save much in file size and makes it a bit more of a pain in the butt. You might be able to discern most if not all of the tracks.

Link: http://www.pennpilot.psu.edu/

That's quite helpful! It's much easier to see more switches and "specifics", thanks! It will help a lot!

Thanks, Matthew B.

Here are maps of the track layouts at No. 198 Colliery and No. 19 Colliery at Wanamie. Posted for and from Bernie Perch. Maps located by B.J. Knapp.

Photos of the Wanamie operation can be seen at the Underground Miners website. Click on mine photos, and then photos from our friends, and then click on Tony Organek's.

Bernie

The Wanamie pictures are here:
http://www.undergroundminers.com/oldwanamie1.html

Keith

I'm assuming you know about this, but if not, there's a bunch of video of it AND maps on this DVD:

https://www.johnpmedia.com/dvds/short-l ... rq=wanamie

And a quite unbelievable "flying switch" done extremely well on the Wanamie! Worth watching just to see that!

Les

On a couple of occasions when I visited Wanamie, the cars stalled before clearing the switch, trapping the engine. Solution: hook a cable to the engine and to a journal box on one of the cars and pull ahead, moving the cars.

Sometimes, when they were really busy, they would run trains with an engine on each end, so no real need for a flying switch.

Why did Wanamie survive in steam so late into the 1960s?

This is mostly speculation on my part, but the reasons I feel the steamers lasted so long are that the owners of the mine knew that at some point in the near future the mine was going to close. The mines were flooding and closing north of there and it was only a matter of time before the mine would close. Wanamie was one of the last, if not the last, deep mine in the region to remain open. It was becoming more costly to keep the pumps operating. It made no sense to replace the locomotives if they could keep patching them to keep going. In the end they were in terrible condition. The company tried a small mechanical locomotive, but it was too small. I only saw it there briefly and did not photograph it.

In the end, there was valuable coal to be stripped where the line operated and it was replaced by a rotary dumper at the #19 site and the coal trucked to the #18 transload.

Two of the locomotives went to the Pine Creek Railroad in New Jersey and eventually left the property. The third locomotive was left at the #18 site in very stripped and derelict condition. As far as I know it was scrapped on site. I heard one report that it was moved but I cannot substantiate it. One of the locomotives (number 9) recently arrived at the Anthracite Miners Memorial Park in Ashley, PA for display. Some are hoping for operation, but if this is to happen, it will require much work as it is completely worn out and missing many parts.

If anyone can add to this or correct it, feel free to do so.

Bernie

I remember when the two Wanamie locos arrived at Pine Creek. They were the most worn out I have ever seen. The smokeboxes were patched with tie plates and furnace cement, the tires were almost nonexistent and there were a large number of nails in the tell tails of broken stay bolts.

I will echo the note above - Wanamie was quite a survivor by the 1960s, so the owners weren't going to spend an extra penny to maintain anything - that is how it survived so long with the wooden cars and the steam engines.

I understand that the area today is still being stripped out, so occasionally one of the old features turns up - such as a mine entrance - during the current stripping operations.

Also - can anyone map the vintage Wanamie mines to current Google maps?

I don't check RYPN for a few days... I come back... And a new wealth of knowledge is to be found! Wow, thank you all! I will send a few pictures of the Wanamie models that a friend of mine is working on, which is the reason I wanted all of this info to begin with. I can't say how grateful I am, thank you all!

https://media.discordapp.net/attachment ... height=468

https://media.discordapp.net/attachment ... height=468

https://media.discordapp.net/attachment ... height=468

Thanks a ton!