Located at the East end of the Penobscot Yard, once a very busy classification yard for coal brought up from the Wyoming Valley by the "Ashley Planes" and brought back to life a bit in the last dozen or so years since the Reading and Northern is the latest owner.

Older photos show a Roundhouse off to the left in what would be the Southern side of the yard. The R&N has a new office, resembling a control tower off to the left.Off to the right, in walking distance was the Lehigh Valley Main line. After the flood in 1972, the "valley" abandoned its tracks and took over the CNJ East of Laurel Run Junction (I believe)

The vintage photo was taken in the late 1940's. The recent image, last April (2012)

Saw my first steam right here, 1967 or so, when my Uncle was part of the Fairview Township VFD servicing a couple of steam engines. At least one other poster might have a somewhat better memory of those trips.

I can relate to your comparisons. I grew up a short distance from the Mundelein station of The North Shore Line. Aside from the sizable parking lot, there were gas stations on both sides of the street adjacent to the station, an A&P, a Jewel food store and a small diner called the The Top Notch. When I returned recently, there was no indication that any of the fabric of the neighborhood that existed then was ever there. You could call all this a archaeology of memory, and it underscored for me, that photographic history is as relevant as the preservation of the equipment that ran through these vanished environments.

I live in an area that is rather strange or maybe not. Everything of a street-scape is a collection of cookie cutter franchises and all the buildings are new, somewhat underscoring a sense of artificiality akin to a suburban Disneyland. All the shopping areas have nearly the same identical stores planted only a few miles apart.
There is no sense of place.

All of this leads me to thinking of IRM's determination to recreate the fabric of the communities that existed relevant to the rail equipment that ran past them which is a sort of wondrous recognition of the broader implications and context of vintage equipment.

http://www.irm.org/railwire/rw192a1.html

Pebnobscott, and Laurel Run presently.
Ed K. cp Laurel Run

"a couple of steam engines" in 1967? I'm betting the money in my wallet right now that it was Strasburg 90 and High Iron/Steamtown "127"...... that may have been the trip where one of 90's tender trucks (as I remember reading about it years later in Railfan Magazine) "started disassembling itself coming down off of Penobscot Mountain"......

"a couple of steam engines" in 1967? I'm betting the money in my wallet right now that it was Strasburg 90 and High Iron/Steamtown "127"......

Could be, I was about 5 or so when this occurred.


For those unfamiliar, Ed K's snowy 1/09/09 picture was taken in basically the same place as the initial pictures, except that the lens is directed about 30 degrees counterclockwise.

1967, warm weather? 1238 and 1286 on a HICO trip, August, I think.

1968, cold weather? SRC 90 and CPR 127(8) on the February HICO trips.

Howard P.

I looked through that site and found it was all dated from more than a few years ago, did they ever build this? I've never been to IRM and the website doesn't show anything like this that I could find.
If they haven't built it, I hope they do. Most museums lack that context of the 'real world' and how trains fit into it. Sacramento and parts of the RR museum of PA do great jobs showing context for the equipment.

The diner is already on site and is being rehabilitated and a former store was relocated which is also being rehabilitated and preserved. if you scroll down this post from Hicks Car Works. I am sure the folks or someone more in the know at IRM could provide a better more recent update.
http://hickscarworks.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html