The PJTHC is pleased to host its grand opening with the Port Jervis Transportation Festival, held at the historic Erie railyard in Port Jervis, NY on Memorial Day weekend. There will be three days of demonstrations and celebrations, including visiting railroad equipment and a variety of other organizations providing displays.

Additionally, the PJTHC's existing railcar collection is being joined by seven pieces of equipment from the Dining Car Society, which will be making Port Jervis its new permanent home.

Learn more about the festival at http://www.pjthc.org/festival, or read the press release at http://www.pjthc.org/opening.

The Dining Car Society is moving from the DL Side in Scranton to the Erie Side at Port Jervis.

The Society is bringing DL&W Budd Phoebe Snow diner 469 (EL 769) and Erie rebuilt heavyweight diner-lounge 741. These latter cars were used on EL 5&6 to the end in 1970 because there are only two DL&W Budd diners when EL needed three cars, and the Erie cars are diner-lounges covering both functions.

Also moving is NKP Plan 4167A Pullman 10 Rmt 6 DB sleeper 211 City of Lima which is similar to C&O's 4167 cars with the 6 bedrooms in the middle and 5 Roomettes at each end over the trucks. The more expensive space gets the better ride.

NKP pooled sleepers with DL&W (3 cars from each road) to provide two through Hoboken-Chicago services.

Unrestored DL&W diner 470 will remain in Scranton with the D-L Railroad.

Phil Mulligan

Good evening folks,

I'm looking forward to seeing what the new group in Port Jervis is actually able to do now that they are settling into their new home!

It will be really interesting to see how the Dining Car Society makes out in its new home. I always wondered why the group seemed to have struggled so in Scranton. I can only assume that once the group finds its groove and emerges out from underneath the "cloud" that is Steamtown, it will be able to thrive. It will be interesting to see if the stationary nature of its new home is a help, or a hindrance. Time will tell for sure.

I do wish the organizers good weather and much success at their grand opening event.

Port Jervis is an ideal E-L destination and home. Community is coming up, architecture is classic for upstate NY, and the yard is big enough to host a variety of railroad related displays. Rudy and Carolyn Garbely are dedicated to meaningful preservation and interpretation of rail history. Their eyes aren't studded with the sparkle of undertaking things which cannot be managed and kept in good condition. There is live rail connected the PJ and Rudy has cultivated strong connections to build relationships. I think this will be a new railfanning destination along the New York/Pennsylvania border, particularly for rotating exhibits.

Rudy - what prompted the Dining Car Society to move to Port Jervice? What does the Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad intend to do with the 770?

Thanks

Mike Martino

One thing Port Jervis has over Scranton is scheduled passenger service to Hoboken, meaning a properly equipped diner could go somewhere in a train.

https://d2g63oyneaimm8.cloudfront.net/s ... 4/mnbn.pdf

Scranton has done everything possible to get this service (they BOUGHT the railroad!) but thus far to no avail.

Phil Mulligan

DL may be planning to repair DL&W 470 (EL 770) and serve food in it. Since they are Delaware-Lackawanna, I would assume they will use the car's DL&W number and Phoebe Snow paint scheme.

Phil Mulligan

I will always have a fond memory of the Pt.Jervis community as it was a great partner for us when we ran the 24 614 trips from Hoboken to Pt.Jervis and turned the steam engine on their restored 100 ft. turntable.

Sure hope the new venture is very successful in every aspect.

Ross Rowland

So why isn't it called the Erie-Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society any more?

Sorry in advance for some slightly long-winded responses, but I wanted to give some more in-depth answers than what could be found in our press releases.


We were the group with the unpronounceable acronym, so most people simply referred to us as the "Dining Car Society" or the "Dining Car people" anyway - we just leaned into it. Also, we wanted to be able to expand our mission to preserve the railroad dining experience in general and provide different experiences to our meal guests - there's only so many times people will come back for the limited number of available, preserved EL recipes, but there's an almost infinite number of options if we also preserve and recreate meals and experiences from the SP, PRR, etc. Our DL&W and Erie diners still form the backbone of our collection and restoration efforts, but we have not ruled out acquiring diners from other railroads in the future.


There were a number of factors that led to this decision. In no particular order:

- Storage: The Dining Car Society has never had a permanent "home." Our seven pieces of equipment are currently scattered to three different locations in Scranton and the surrounding suburbs. None of the storage locations have any available parking for events, nor do they have any access to utilities like power and water for volunteers to conduct maintenance work on the cars. With no ability to hold stationary events or perform maintenance at the storage locations, we were beholden to the Delaware-Lackawanna and/or Steamtown to move or host the cars every time we wanted to do anything. While the D-L has been a great partner, their ability to donate moves or shop time is understandably based on their availability, which doesn't always coincide with our needs. This resulted in a situation where nearly every single event or work session became an extremely costly endeavor that required repositioning equipment or operating a full-scale dinner train. In Port Jervis, we will have easy access to the cars for maintenance purposes, as well as ample parking and facilities for on-site dinner events.

- Competition: Since every event had to be a moving event, we were automatically "competitors" with Steamtown's own excursions on the Pocono mainline. Obviously, chartering a D-L crew and locomotive for the day and providing full meal service is much more costly than doing an out-and-back run with coaches and volunteer Steamtown crews, so our excursion prices far exceeded those of Steamtown's trains. To the general public who does not fully understand the differences between organizations, it was extremely hard to explain how they could be boarding a passenger train at Steamtown that cost three times the price of a Steamtown train. This was especially true the few times we tried to do excursions without meal service using our two Comet coaches. "Why would I ride the $45 train at 4:00 when I can ride the $15 train at 3:00?" In Port Jervis, there is no such competition, and there are also opportunities to conduct off-site excursions or partner with other local tourist train operators, rather than work against them.

- Saturation: Related to above, there is a LOT of railroad preservation going on in Scranton. Besides Steamtown, the Electric City Trolley Museum, the Anthracite Railroads Historical Society, and several other non-profits are working in the area. While it's certainly not a bad thing that it's a haven for activity, it makes it difficult for a newer or smaller group to find their footing with the public, who generally think when they donate to Steamtown, they're helping all of the "train people" in the city.

- Market: Scranton is not exactly a haven for "foodies." While we're obviously a railroad preservation group, we rely on our ability to sell an authentic meal experience as our main fundraising tactic. Scranton is not the kind of area where we can sell a $75 or $100 dinner with any regularity, and during past events, we struggled to even set the meal price high enough to cover our costs. Being able to hold stationary events in Port Jervis - a community that is much more supportive of its local upscale restaurant scene - will be a huge asset to our fundraising efforts.

- Funding: New York generally has many more available grant opportunities than Pennsylvania for organizations like ours. In terms of the longevity of the organization, there's a lot more opportunity for growth with more funding. Case in point - we received a grant of more than $30,000 just to make the move from Scranton to Port Jervis. There's a lot of financial support for our presence there.


The 470/770 (DL&W and EL numbers for the same car, respectively) needs some work that was beyond our volunteer resources, so much of the work would have needed to be contracted to the D-L anyway given our constraints in the Scranton area. After discussions with them, it was determined that they had much better resources to complete the restoration in all of our lifetimes and get the car back on the road, which is the best way to fulfill our mission. The D-L made an extremely generous deal for the car that will not only ensure the restoration of the 470, but will be beneficial to the restorations and longevity of our other equipment. They are slowly building their own excursion fleet, so the 470 will be restored for use on the Pocono mainline. I won't profess to speak for D-L, but I'm sure they're still developing their plans for the car, and I will be staying tuned for any announcement from them once it's restored.


Which also means that visitors from communities all along the route between New York and Port Jervis are able to visit and experience our dining cars via rail. It's much more accessible than Scranton, especially with regards to public transportation.

The scheduled passenger trains are between Hoboken and Port Jervis. You can connect from Penn Station NY or Trenton NJ at Secaucus Jct.

Here's the weekend schedule:

https://d2g63oyneaimm8.cloudfront.net/s ... 111421.pdf

Phil Mulligan

[quote=

- Storage: The Dining Car Society has never had a permanent "home." Our seven pieces of equipment are currently scattered to three different locations in Scranton and the surrounding suburbs. None of the storage locations have any available parking for events, nor do they have any access to utilities like power and water for volunteers to conduct maintenance work on the cars. With no ability to hold stationary events or perform maintenance at the storage locations, we were beholden to the Delaware-Lackawanna and/or Steamtown to move or host the cars every time we wanted to do anything. While the D-L has been a great partner, their ability to donate moves or shop time is understandably based on their availability, which doesn't always coincide with our needs. This resulted in a situation where nearly every single event or work session became an extremely costly endeavor that required repositioning equipment or operating a full-scale dinner train. In Port Jervis, we will have easy access to the cars for maintenance purposes, as well as ample parking and facilities for on-site dinner events.

- Competition: Since every event had to be a moving event, we were automatically "competitors" with Steamtown's own excursions on the Pocono mainline. Obviously, chartering a D-L crew and locomotive for the day and providing full meal service is much more costly than doing an out-and-back run with coaches and volunteer Steamtown crews, so our excursion prices far exceeded those of Steamtown's trains. To the general public who does not fully understand the differences between organizations, it was extremely hard to explain how they could be boarding a passenger train at Steamtown that cost three times the price of a Steamtown train. This was especially true the few times we tried to do excursions without meal service using our two Comet coaches. "Why would I ride the $45 train at 4:00 when I can ride the $15 train at 3:00?" In Port Jervis, there is no such competition, and there are also opportunities to conduct off-site excursions or partner with other local tourist train operators, rather than work against them.

- Saturation: Related to above, there is a LOT of railroad preservation going on in Scranton. Besides Steamtown, the Electric City Trolley Museum, the Anthracite Railroads Historical Society, and several other non-profits are working in the area. While it's certainly not a bad thing that it's a haven for activity, it makes it difficult for a newer or smaller group to find their footing with the public, who generally think when they donate to Steamtown, they're helping all of the "train people" in the city.

- Market: Scranton is not exactly a haven for "foodies." While we're obviously a railroad preservation group, we rely on our ability to sell an authentic meal experience as our main fundraising tactic. Scranton is not the kind of area where we can sell a $75 or $100 dinner with any regularity, and during past events, we struggled to even set the meal price high enough to cover our costs. Being able to hold stationary events in Port Jervis - a community that is much more supportive of its local upscale restaurant scene - will be a huge asset to our fundraising efforts.

- Funding: New York generally has many more available grant opportunities than Pennsylvania for organizations like ours. In terms of the longevity of the organization, there's a lot more opportunity for growth with more funding. Case in point - we received a grant of more than $30,000 just to make the move from Scranton to Port Jervis. There's a lot of financial support for our presence there.


The 470/770 (DL&W and EL numbers for the same car, respectively) needs some work that was beyond our volunteer resources, so much of the work would have needed to be contracted to the D-L anyway given our constraints in the Scranton area. After discussions with them, it was determined that they had much better resources to complete the restoration in all of our lifetimes and get the car back on the road, which is the best way to fulfill our mission. The D-L made an extremely generous deal for the car that will not only ensure the restoration of the 470, but will be beneficial to the restorations and longevity of our other equipment. They are slowly building their own excursion fleet, so the 470 will be restored for use on the Pocono mainline. I won't profess to speak for D-L, but I'm sure they're still developing their plans for the car, and I will be staying tuned for any announcement from them once it's restored.


Which also means that visitors from communities all along the route between New York and Port Jervis are able to visit and experience our dining cars via rail. It's much more accessible than Scranton, especially with regards to public transportation.[/quote]

Rudy - I apologize for not responding sooner, but thank you for your detailed answer to my questions. My wife, my son and I rode one the Christmas trips aboard the City of Lima from East Stroudsburg to Gouldsboro in December, 2018 and had a wonderful time. Is the Society planning similar trips from Port Jervis this year?

Also, is Pete Shepherd still on the Board?

Thank you

Mike Martino

Hey Mike! We do not have any trips planned for 2022 - once our equipment is moved to Port Jervis, we will be taking the opportunity to use the new facility and perform some much-needed maintenance on several cars. The City of Lima needs some substantial truck work, diner 469 will finally get its exterior DL&W paint job, and some mechanical and electrical work will be performed on both our power car and the ex-Ringling baggage car. We expect that the first off-site trip will be Operation Toy Train's 2022 toy collection train, with further off-site operations commencing in 2023.

Pete Shepherd is no longer on the board of the Dining Car Society.