I can undertsand Bob's passion. I have hoped for years a grass-roots effort would come up to save the incredibly intact Lehigh & New England Pen Arglye, PA shops which others have written about on this board.<p>Instead, all that has come up are misguided efforts to strip it of things like the turntable bridge, rather than work on saving a very worthy, intact, complex. Ironically, the planned NJ museum which will have NO authentic structures but feature a recreated "Disney-esque street scene -- that is NOT an insult", will sit 25 miles from the VERY signifcant and deteriorating Pen Arglye site.<p>Of course, state borders are state borders. And logic never crosses them. Thus efforts are underway to move the Pen Arglye turntable bridge to NJ for the repro site, rather than build a museum on the historic site. <p>Oh, my!<p>Interesting, isn't it, that while Scranton ignored saving its downtown and following the mall-alternative development plan which called for a resotred Lackawanna Avenue streetscape with trolleys, the NJ guys are planning to build a repro of the same ilk as what Scranton blew up (and continues to blow up as the Hotel Casey which was designed inside to match the DL&W station will be the next $19.95 video from the city of Scranton dept. of explosives). Odd, to say the least.<p>Following up on Dave's question about how may is too many...<p>Dave, we already have too many restored mainline steam locomotives. Take a look around. Unless we send them all to Steamtown or Wisconsin, the are half-million dollar shop queens. <p>Patch<p><br>



MrPatchTown@aol.com

I think you are wrong here. Unless you get big $$$$ you cannot save the Pen Arglye Shops as a museum. The NJ state museum, which is planned for Phillipsburg hopes to rebuild the PRR engine house, but the turntable is gone. They checked the Reading turntable at Bethlehem but the Reading Tec group got there first. They then checked the Pen Arglye and at that time there was some type of plan to put a railroad car on it. A man who works in Win Gap got word that they planned on filling in the turntable pit. We have 2 turntables that are now lined up to go to museums and not cut up.<p>As for the NJ museum site not being historic. Not only do we have the PRR Bell-Del yards and engine house (what is left of it) but the Tippit and Wood plant whom had years ago made turntables and water tanks used by railroads and the Morris Canal's Port Delaware. We have lost a lot by not having a museum to save it. A few years a go the Ingersol-Rand Plant in Phillipsburg gave a Ingersol-Rand locomotive they made the engine for in the 1920s away to the ILL. Railroad Museum do to the fact there was not a museum near by to take it. This engine would have been cut up if no one had taken it. This is what museums do save historic things but do to cost they cannot save it all or run locomotives that cost too much run.<br><br>



lvrr@enter.net