This turned up on the Strasburg Rail Road's Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/StrasburgRailR ... =1&theater

For those who may have trouble accessing Facebook:

https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hph ... 2729_o.jpg

Besides being an amazing look at one of our iconic heritage roads in its early heritage years, there are several interesting questions that come out of it. One, of course, is "Who's in the photo?" Someone might be able to identify some early Strasburg people here.

Equally interesting, I think the white house and this small shop building are still there. If they are, I didn't appreciate the shop when I saw it; I thought it was an old garage that belonged with the house!

Which brings up the second question--what is the large structure partially visible at the left? If the date on this photo is accurate, this long predates the current shop building.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this look at the early Strasburg.

This is way up the line towards town. The building on the left is an old grain mill or warehouse, and I think it is a gift shop now. The area we associate as the terminal of SRR today did not exist in the beginning.

I want to know who's Cadillac that is the bottom right corner with the horse shaped hood ornament. That might help in identifying who's in the picture. That horse ornament is a custom piece.

MS

Aside from the house in the distant background, pretty much everything in the foreground is now gone. Well, except for #1... don't know if the Caddy or if the people (most likely they're some of the original "shareholder VP's" who basically operated the railroad back in the day) are still around today.

The Strasburg mill was a lumber and coal dealer in addition to being a feed mill. The building on the left was the lumber shed. I seem to remember the coal trestle being over on the that side of the railroad as well. The big brick feed mill buildings are behind the photographer and remain today as stores.

Today, the area in the linked photo has a modern home and another newer structure on that land. The biggest change is that the relatively new "Route 896 Bypass" cuts right across the scene and it and the new Choo Choo Barn parking area / back driveway has severed the SRC right of way to where it ends today.

To put the photo in today's perspective, the distant remaining house is behind the stores at the Choo Choo barn.

Regards,
Jim Robinson

There was still 1 rail in the asphalt near the Lumber Shed on Nov. 15, 2014

It appears that the track WAS a siding, and the enginehouse was built on it to accommodate the little engine. Notice the track continues through the house, and the house is really close to the "main line".

The photo shows, to the best of my knowledge from left to right Colonel Slonneger, unknown, Les Myers, Don Hallock, possibly John Bowman in cab, and Henry K. Long.

The only passing siding on the line was the track through the enginehouse. The track to the left went alongside an open sided lumber storage shed and continued through a large gray frame building which is currently an antique store. The track continued to Main Street along the north side of the still extant triangular shaped tobacco warehouse.

The tracks on the right came together at the west passing track turnout and then continued to Main Street on the south side of the tobacco warehouse.

I was waiting for Kurt Bell to chime in on this post since he is a definite authority on SRC history, second to none. Still hoping for that someday SRC history book... hint hint, Kurt! Anyway, Kurt detailed the Homsher Mill trackage in an RyPN message post (copied below) from 2004.

Regards,
Jim Robinson

The Homsher Mill was sold in March 1959 to I.B. Graybill and Son, including the railroad trackage. The company was a purveyor of coal, lumber grain and feed. The arrangement of the mill tracks looked like a backwards "N". Tracks ran along both sides of the Mill (in fact the rails are still in the dirt on the south side of the mill). The track on the north side of the Mill had a switch inside a shed; this reverse track ran pararell to Rt. 741 and ran out onto a long piered coal trestle, in the vicinity of what is now the AT&T sub station and the maroon ranch house. Where the tracks now end was the switch to the tiny garage-like one stall brick enginehouse which had a short run around that ran through it. This building as well as the rest of the trackage was torn up in the spring of 1978. Numerous lumber sheds also lined the cross-over track and main track. The milk station between the mill building and the tobacco wharehouse was torn down much earlier, sometime in the 1960s. In 1972 the complex was sold by the Graybills to the Stauffer family; freight ceased shortly thereafter (freight was pretty sporadic during the last few years of Mill operation anyway). I'm still trying to determine when the last freight car was shifted into the Mill, as the surviving records don't precisely record when this happened, and veteran memories are cloudy. It is safe to say that mill freight ceased sometime prior to 1973. I have a slide of #90 delivering an N&W boxcar to the Mill in the spring of 1968 (a very rare occurance), so it did indeed happen. The SRC stored some of the unrestored ex-B&M coaches at the Mill for awhile, and the some of the RRMPA's PRR locomotives was also stored on the lead track to the one-stall enginehouse and adjacent mainline in the early 1970s. Today the mill buildings are home to an antique mart complex, a shadow of their former railroad days.

If anybody knows when the last freight car was delivered to the mill complex, speak now or forever hold your peace! :-)

K.R. Bell

Posted as a follow-up comment in the same FB thread:

.

Point taken. Definitely not slighting Linn's first hand knowledge of the railroad!

Should also add without Linn's family, the gentlemen in the photo, and a handful of others there wouldn't even be a Strasburg Railroad today.

Regards,
Jim Robinson