Historic Tamaqua, PA

Tamaqua is quite a neat little place to visit for anyone interested in anthracite coal history in general and "anthracite roads" in particular. It's a bit off the beaten path nowadays but in terms of history, it used to be in the middle of things. Two of my favorite "anthracite roads"; Lehigh and New England, and the Reading served this major coal producing area. Though my first visit was not under the most favorable of conditions in July (see prior post, we were previously soaked to the bone over in Jim Thorpe chasing the LGSR), I was still impressed enough to want to return on a future, hopefully sunny, day.

Here's a little history of the depot brought to you by the current owners. There's a lot of info there and I was able to get the background story for virtually all the features of the area from the time-line.

Among the first things to impress me was the fact that the park and gardens were not actually something new put into a previously blighted part of the downtown. Those gardens were there when the eight track passenger station was a very active part of the city. (see top photo)

On the way over to the depot itself we found plenty of public access and parking in the vicinity. Unfortunately, the single track of the Reading and Northern held little promise for rail action. Historically though, there were plenty of treasures. The R&N office, known locally as the "QA" station was the old yard office where local operations were dispatched. The letters were the old telegraph code for the station. Apparently it became the local operations office in the Conrail days after the passenger depot was discarded. The little tower across the street was the watchman's tower for the eight tracks crossing downtown. Locally it was known as the "little Swiss cottage" according to the prior history site. Looking around you could tell that some heavy duty railroading used to take place here. In the anthracite and passenger days this was a hub for a lot of activity. Passenger trains came up from Philly until 1961.

In terms of present day features, the depot seems to be prospering as a restaurant and retail spot. The local park appears to have expanded to include some of the yard. It looks like the citizens chose to create a nice space to celebrate their history rather than just ignore the potential blight.

A few local artifacts are located near the depot in a public park setting. The two locomotives shown here (a third from the distant Safe Harbor Power Plant was also present) appeared to be from local industry. Atlas Powder had a local plant that needed a "critter" to switch cars around. Atlas was one of two blasting powder companies spun off from DuPont to avoid anti-trust issues. It seemed to be heavily involved in mining applications for it's explosive products.

The larger "steamer" was actually a boilerless locomotive used by a local electric utility company. At first it looks like Thomas the Tank Engine but you will notice the face on the front has a light bulb nose and probably pre-dates Thomas, though I don't know about the blue paint. Apparently it needed to function in a tight place without the smoke and danger of a fire in a boiler and simply charged up on already abundant steam from a power plant. For some reason I didn't get the sign that told me some of this information.

The two former New Haven cabeese next to the depot are the only mystery, though as a New Haven fan I wasn't complaining. These are well maintained examples of Penn Central's lack of money to finish a task. The bay windows are in place but they didn't bother to remove the cupolas. Maybe they made cheap skylights. There is one located at the Danbury Railroad Museum which I posted a bit about in the past.

For the coal history enthusiast you can see that the Molly McGuire Auto Tour goes right through Tamaqua. Apparently I didn't look hard enough to find a free version of the tour. The sign says the depot area is "Tour Site 4". The restaurant in the depot shows up often when searching this stuff. Maybe I'll get the literature before I return.


BC