Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel

I have been trying to find out where the Bethlehem Steel Co. mill in Bethlehem PA (Modeled on the Lehigh Valley simulation route) got thier iron ore. While there were iron mines in the area they are small deposits of high grade ore which are exausted in short order so a plant of this size would need to get Great Lakes Ore (Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Michigan ore or taconite) or get ore from over seas or South America. The logical route for Great Lakes would be via the LV from a port near Bufalo or from a port like Erie using two railroads. Forign ore would come from LV or CNJ ports in New Jersey. Does any one out there know what route they used? What type of cars did they use (ore jenny hoppers, standard hoppers, or gondolas). Most steel mills used bottom dumping cars because they mixed ore at the high line so I doubt that they used gondolas.Second question - does any one know where Bethlehem Steel got coke from - onsite conversion or an off line coke plant - if off plant does anyone know where it was loacated.When I started my reserch I had the same questions about the NJZ plants at Palmerton on the route. However, I have determined that the zinc ore was mined in Franklin NJ and was shiped in special ore cars rebuilt from 50 ton coal hoppers converted to gondolas by the CNJ by removing the hopper doors. The zink ore was shipped over the CNJ from the east via Allentown. Coal for the NJX was brought from nearby coal fields to the west over the CNJ via Jim Thorpe.Be Seeing you.
Michael

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RE: Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel, rckambach, Feb-15-04, 01:05 PM, (1) RE: Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel, GaryH2, Feb-15-04, 06:18 PM, (2) RE: Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel, werner001, Feb-16-04, 07:46 AM, (3) RE: Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel, mquist, Feb-16-04, 11:02 AM, (4) RE: Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel, rckambach, Feb-16-04, 04:29 PM, (5) RE: Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel, werner001, Feb-17-04, 07:54 AM, (6) RE: Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel, mquist, Feb-17-04, 11:41 AM, (7) RE: Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel, rckambach, Feb-17-04, 04:00 PM, (8) RE: Lehigh Valley Route and Bethlehem Steel, chosenfrozen44, Feb-18-04, 06:50 AM, (9)

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-15-04 AT 01:06 PM (EST)

Michael,The only one of your questions that I can answer with certainty is Number 2. Bethlehem Steel had an on-site coke plant, and it was one of the last big operating units at the site to be closed down.We seem to be on the same research "track" (pun fully intended!!). I've been looking into all of the railroads that can be represented on the route, and was fascinated to learn about the PB&NE, Northampton & Bath and the Chestnut Ridge. Here are a few links that I've found helpful, in case you haven't found them.http://www.geocities.com/wmueller28/msts.html - Werner's Site
http://www.lvrrmodeler.net/ - An HO Site with info
http://raildata.railfan.net/index.html - About NJ railroads but helpful
http://ah.bfn.org/h/beth/ - A Bethlehem Steel Company historical site.If you (or anyone else)happen to find a good reference for the color scheme of the Chestnut Ridge engines at NJ Zinc, please let me know ... I'm trying to learn how to reskin/repaint, and I might try to do one for them, even if I only 'approximate' the scheme.Regards, Bob Kambach

"Home" is about 500 Yds. from the famous "Pequest Fill" on the abandoned "DL&W Cutoff"

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-15-04 AT 06:19 PM (EST)

FWIW, I believe the Reading used to run coal trains from the Joanna mines up to the Bethlehem Steel complex.Perhaps the plant had an on-site coal-coke plant. It sure was large enough the have a facility like that!In later years, I believe Conrail used to run ore up from the Greenwich yards in SOuth Philadelphia (I think I read that in TRAINS a month or two ago).Perhaps the iron ore came from the LV connection and the coal from the RDG?.GH

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-16-04 AT 07:50 AM (EST)

They iron ore for the Bethlehem plant had several sources.First, as Gary mentioned, Bethlehem Steel had their own ore mine at Joanna, PA, south of Reading, PA.
The Reading shipped the ore with unit trains of hoppers (no special ore cars) via Reading and the East Penn Branch to Allentown (thus East Penn Jct. on the MSTS route). From there the Reading had trackage rights over the CNJ thru Allentown Yard to Bethlehem. Another source of ore was Philly harbor. Imported ore was shipped by the Reading (also in unit trains of hoppers) directly to Bethlehem.In both cases the Reading interchanged with the PBNE at Iron Hill Yard.Imported ore from Philly also came up the Pennsy's Bel Del line and was taken over at Phillipsburg by the Lehigh Valley (both hoppers and Pennsy/PC ore cars). The LV shipped it to Florence Yard, where the PBNE interchange was, but LV power often brought the cars to Iron Hill yard or Laubach Yard, thru the plant.During steam times ore also came down from the Great Lakes on the LV, mostly via a connection with the Pennsy at Mt. Carmel.The coal was either anthracite (until the 1950s) that came down the valley or (later) soft coal from the Reading's WV connections with the B&O and C&O, like the Joanna ore it came via the East Penn and thru Allentown Yard to Iron Hill.The coke plant btw. will be added to the route with the update i'm currently working on, the steel plant will then be complete!Werner

--> Visit the Virtual Lehigh Valley <--
www.geocities.com/wmueller28/msts.html

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-16-04 AT 11:14 AM (EST)

Thanks for the info guys. The question about coke conversion was spured by the lack of a plant in the model - Werner answered that. Looks like most of the ore traffic is on the Reading and on the east end so I guess if I want to run long trains of lake ore they will have to be fictional - perhaps I'll look into a nice fictional 24' ore hopper in LV scheme.Concerning the Chestnut Ridge Railway. It was built originaly to transport white clay bricks from a a quarry and brick kilns located in Kunkletown. The thirteen miles of main line was opened in 1900. Went bankrupt in 1901 and was bought out by CNZ at that time. The railroad operated passenger trains from the start to about 1935 mostly comuter runs for the Zinc plants. Fright service was mostly interplant operations at NJZ along with ore and coal shipments ariving and shipments of refined Zinc outbound. Other industries on the line were North American Refractories (NARCO) shipping ganister rock from Little Gap and Aggregates Inc shipping from Aquashicola. Ganister would be shipped as crushed rock in standard open hoppers and was probably routed to Mt Union PA where NARCO had a large refractory brick plant. Aggregates Inc minerals could be shipped in coverd hoppers. I would also expect to see shipments of white clay from Kunkletown after the closing of the brick kilns there in coverd hoppers for bulk loads and clay in bags shipped in box cars. Steam motive power included eight locos. A 2-6-0 and two 4-6-0 for road use and five switchers - one large 0-8-0 and four 0-6-0 in a mixture of tender and saddle tank arrangements. The great oddity of the early roster was a Mack/Brill 25 passenger rail bus purchased in 1922 continued to operate into the 70's as a MOW vehicle. This vehicle bore the number 51 and was black with a yellow stripe under the windows with the railroad name in black. The roof was white. There is a rather close model to this in the library (railbs51.zip) stangely with the same road number but a differnt color scheme and railroad - needs a repaint. This unit had a tiny shed of blue corigatrd steel and a tiny turntable which I think Werner missed on his model. Also I don't think there was a trailer unit and in the later days the car was equiped with bar coupers for use with small MOW trailers.Diesel motive power was a pair of Alco S2 switchers bought in 1946 (Nrs 10 and 11) and four almost identical Alco S2 lettered for CNJ (Nrs 20-23). Diesels were black with owners name ("Chestnut Ridge Railway Co" and "New Jersey Zinc Co") in yellow on the sides of the loco hoods. Numbers were located in yellow on the cab sides and smaller on the center of the hood nose. There were also number plates on the upper front corner of the hood. The Chestnut Ridge units also had yellow safty striping on the fronts of the locos - lacking on the NJZ units. The Chestnut Ridge had a red welded steel caboose with out a cupola with two small windows on the sides. This unit was letterd with the railroad name and Nr 602. The Chestnut had no fright equipment in its name but the NJZ had a large collecton of old cars used mostly for interplant service with reporting marks NJZX which included wood boxcars, 50 ton hoppers, gondolas, and flats. There were also several attractive side dump cars which were used to haul tailings to the dumping area.Reference for this info is "Pennsylvania Short Lines In Color, V1" from Morning Sun Books which includes info on the Chestnut Ridge and the Ironton RR. Unfortunatly the N&B and the PBNE are covered in the forthcoming V2. Be Seeing you.
Michael

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Michael,From my end, you gave much more info than you got !! Curiously enough, I've come across other stuff to suggest that at some point NJZ might have owned a Whitcomb, .. and this link is to a color picture of a GP7 #11, that they bought from the Shawmut, in a 'kinda' Conrail blue with a white stripe, still in service in 1999.http://members.aol.com/Dlswpfl/psr2000a.html So if I read right, omitting the steam equipment, I could try any of:2 RS2's (#10&11) Chestnut Ridge lettering and safety striped noses.
4 RS2's (#'s 20-23) NJZ lettering and .. no safety stripes.
1 repaint of a raibus and possibly 1 GP7 .. the caboose and assorted other rolling stock.HeHe .. for a railroad that I never knew existed until Werner came along !! I'd been thinking of doing some switchers for the fictitious companies on some of the fantasy routes, but this might be even more challenging and fun. Many thanks for the info and the motivation.Bob Kambach

"Home" is about 500 Yds. from the famous "Pequest Fill" on the abandoned "DL&W Cutoff"

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Michael,i was aware that the Chestnut Ridge had a small service facility with shed and turntable for the railbus, as i once found a picture of it in the net.
However, as i was not able to find out where it was located i left it away, but if you have that information i would like to include it in the route.
I think (from the pic) it could bee somewhere near the point where the routes to the western plant and to the CNJ interchange yard diverge, but i'm not sure about that.Werner

--> Visit the Virtual Lehigh Valley <--
www.geocities.com/wmueller28/msts.html

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Bob Kambach - Not RS2 but rather the basic switcher body S2. If you are interested in doing a repaint I'll see if I can get my scanner going and if so I'll send you color scans of the equipment. By the way I am convinced that the Rail bus is the same one in the model I mentioned from the C&W perhaps Chestnut Ridge bought it from the C&W. The vehicle in later years had a bell mounted on the roof and a relocated headlight moved from the hood to the upper windshield. The car also sported oil fired classification lamps above and in front of the doors. The pictures I have also show a wooden platform around the engine hood with bits of wood, pails, and tools on it - this was probably added after entering MOW service. I looked around for a caboose but a relatively modern steel body cab with no cupola or bay is quite unusual. Repaints of the locos would be great as the CHR and the NJZ are the only big missing equipment gaps left for the LV2. As far as a Witcome is concerned that would be a steam era loco and I have no info on CNJ equipment prior to the S2's. Werner - I don't know either. The pictures I have show a track running into a cut on one side of the engine house and another track on the other side with a turnout on it so I think is is at a diverging track junction. These pictures were taken in 1977 so this was still there near the end of NJZ operations. If I can get the scanner working I'll send you the pictures I have. Another thing you might want to look at for your next rev is the switch at Jim Thorpe LV switching ftom Jim Thorpe 2 to Jim Thorpe 1 just off the Station siding. The switch is too close to the previous switch (station siding to Jim Thorpe 2) so that it is very dificult to throw manually which most activities would require. If you look closly you will see the switch lever for this switch in the center of the station siding track. If you could move that switch down a few feet that would fix the problem. There are also a few bushes on the LV main line in that area.Be Seeing you.
Michael

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Michael,I'm sure glad that I re-capped what I might try .. and you were able to set me straight before I went way down a wrong road !! As I mentioned, I'm just starting to try repainting .. but a picture sure wouldn't hurt.My interest in this comes from a family history that is loosely tied to the PA coal region, the ABE area and Bethlehem Steel. I also live not too far from the former NJZ mine location at Franklin, NJ.Thanks again .. research continues .....Bob K.

"Home" is about 500 Yds. from the famous "Pequest Fill" on the abandoned "DL&W Cutoff"

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-18-04 AT 06:51 AM (EST)

RDG/PC Through Allentown yard is what I always thought.....Chuck

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