A photograph taken on September 15, 1910, of the groundbreaking ceremonies at Killinger, Upper Paxton Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, for the Midland Pennsylvania Railroad, which was to be constructed from Millersburg to Gordon, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
The following story was written by Lloyd M. Bellis and appeared in the Souvenir Book for the Bicentennial of Upper Paxton Township, 1767-1967:
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THE MIDLAND PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD
Shortly after the turn of the century, the air was rife with railroad talk. Much of this was wishful thinking. About 1905, Finley Acker, wholesale grocer, George B. Wells, a hatter, Wilmer Atkinson, publisher of The Farm Journal, and other Philadelphia men of means became acquainted with our valley, saw the latent possibilities of it, and began to add some substance to this wishful thinking.
In addition to the need of farmers to get their feed and fertilizer shipped in and their farm products shipped out, there were other reasons for a railroad. At that time the lumbering industry in the valley was still a source of income for many people. Props and laggings for the coal mines, railroad ties, telephone poles, and bark for the tanneries were still being produced in considerable quantities at both of our mountains, and hauled to distant points with six-horse teams. Coal had to be hauled long distances, many times in single-ton lots. The rural areas needed a railroad to get industries there and provide employment for those not engaged in agriculture.
Passenger service in the valley was non-existent. The Gratz Fair and the Elizabethville Campmeeting were drawing larger crowds of buggy and spring wagon people, but here was no public transportation for those not blessed with these conveyances.
These Philadelphians saw this valley as a great business opportunity and a chance to invest money, but they were also altruistically inclined, and felt they could be of real service to the inhabitants of the valley.
Much planning, surveying, financing and general organization had to be done for several years. The Lykens Valley Construction Company was organized with Walter E. Harrington, of Pottsville, as president. This later became the Midland Pennsylvania Railroad Company.
At first this company was thinking in terms of a trolley line between Millersburg and Ashland, a distance of forty-four miles, with spur lines to Elizabethville and Pillow. The estimated cost was one and a quarter million dollars. The company began selling stock both locally as well as in the financial markets.
As early as 1908 the company began buying a sixty-foot right of way in the lower end of the valley. By the end of February 1909 it had secured all but nine miles of it.
In late spring of 1910 the contract for the construction of the road was awarded to the Pinkerton Construction Company of Philadelphia. O. H. Bundy, the field engineer in charge, was completing the survey of the road with a crew of seventeen.
On June 24, a gasoline powered motor car for passenger service was tried out by President Harrington on the rials of the Lykens Valley railroad between Millersburg and Lykens. This car, after necessary adjustments had been made, was adopted for hauling passengers.
On September 15, 1910, at 10:30 a.m., ground was broken for the new railroad at Killinger in F. W. Lenker‘s field south of the highway, directly opposite the home of Benton P. Neagley, now [1967] the home of Myles H. Wetzel.
Grading did not begin at the Millersburg end, as originally planned, on account of the deep cut necessary north of Oak Hill Cemetery, as power equipment would be needed there. Instead all the grading in the fall of 1910 was in the Killinger area.
Late in December of that year a steam shovel was delivered at Millersburg, and early in April 1911 began cutting its way through this hill. This cuts maximum depth when completed was thirty-five feet, the width at the bottom sixteen feet, and the the greatest width at the top one hundred feet.
Making this cut was a bigger problem than the engineers had anticipated. The type of rock encountered was not at all what had been expected, and blasting was found to be necessary, with many of the charges disappointing. The engineers had set July 15 for the completion of the cut, but it was early fall before the task was done.
While the steam shovel was gnawing its way through the hill, much activity was taking place. Beginning in January 1911 a new section was being graded between Curtin and Berrysburg, which would join up with the Killinger job. Other grading crews were put to work between Berrysburg and Gratz that spring. Tie-laying had begun as early as May 20.
The delay in the completion of the Millersburg cut was a severe handicap to the progress of the grading, tie-and rail laying. All ties, rails and other equipment had to be transported up the line by wagon, because a supply train could not be run from Millersburg.
Arrangements had to be made for a terminal at Millersburg, the girders for the bridge across the highway east of Berrysburg had been placed on September 19, and plans were being made to continue the grading east of Gratz with dinky engines.
Late in September the company could not meet the payroll and about three-fourths of the teams and laborers quit. The management fired the Pinkerton Construction Company, claiming they were not pushing the work vigorously enough.
Late in November, a combination passenger and express car, gasoline-powered, was received at Millersburg. The management was dickering with a financial house in New York for new financing.
For the next four and one-half years the Midland seemed to be as dead as a dodo. The directors were no doubt trying to get the project moving again, but all the news valley people heard was discouraging. in 1913, Finley Acker, one of the two vice presidents, died, and in March 1916, Joseph F. Romberger, of Berrysburg, the other vice president, was also taken by death. In the meantime, Pres. Walter E. Harrington had resigned. The corporation now was virtually without a directing head.
But by mid-summer of 1916, the management had been re-organized, new financing had been found, and a new contractor, George A. Aldridge, of Audubon, New Jersey, had been engaged. Work on the grading and track laying was resumed on August 14 of that year. Another of the tasks that summer was the removal of earth which had been washed into the deep cut at Millersburg.
Most of the equipment had been unsheltered for five years, and the elements had taken their toll. Much of the equipment had to be repaired. The passenger and freight cars had to be repaired, scraped and painted. A large new locomotive was purchased.
One Sunday in late September some boys were playing on three flat cars standing on the track on an upgrade. They removed the planks the crew had thrown across the track as a safety measure, and released the brakes. The cars headed down the grade. At the same time contractor Aldrich and a party of men were making an inspection tour on a small train with Lewis Stence at the throttle. As they rounded a curve, they were confronted with these runaway cars approaching them down the grade. Stence quickly ground the engine to a halt, reversed it to get out of the way, or at least minimize the impact. But time was too short. The cars crashed into the engine, damaging the rear car badly, and also doing some damage to Stence’s engine. (At least some of these boys must still be living. Who are they?)
Not long after the resumption of work, the track-laying had progressed to a point above Killinger. On October 24 the Midland ran two excursion trains from Millersburg to Killinger, carrying 324 round-trip passengers and fourteen one-way. The crew for these trains was John Bowers, conductor; Charles Freeburn, engineer; Arthur Albert, fireman; John Herrold, baggagemaster; and Norman Barnhart, flagman.
Everybody wanted to ride on these first trains. The Pleasant Hill Grange at Killinger had prepared a chicken-corn soup supper, which many of these excursionists enjoyed. The ladies of the Grange served 350 people, made $77.00 for their treasury, and their only regret probably was that they had to snuff out the lives of twenty-four chickens to bring this all about!
A Millersburg couple had the knot tied that day, and took this train ride to Killinger and ate chicken-corn soup. The husband recently told the writer, “That was our honeymoon trip.” (Modern brides, take notice).
That summer the late John Ulsh, later to become the community’s sales crier, with a crew of men, had planted poles and strung wired for a telephone line along the newly graded railroad line from Millersburg to a short distance below Gratz.
The track layers kept on the move. In early November excursion were run to a point above Curtin. The Berrysburg Band over-rated the track laying crew’s ability and had to postpone an ox-roast scheduled for November 18.
But the crews did get through to a point below Berrysburg before winter set in. At this point that winter of 1916-1917 much freight was handled, both incoming and outgoing. Coal and fiel were shipped in, mine timber and flour were sent out. Boyer and Weaver had established a coal yard at Killinger, which was supplied by the Midland. Excursions were being run to below Berrysburg.
Everything looked so rosy, but again there was trouble between the contractor and the Midland Company. The contractor had to suspend wage payments, and the employees quit work late in December. This did not affect the service to Berrysburg, which continued most of the winter.
The difficulties were ironed out and work was supposed to resume in April. A turntable was built that month in Millersburg, and three carloads of rails and switches arrived there late in May. But there was no grading.
An April 7, 1917, the United States entered World War I. This event, creating the usual war-time shortages, no doubt had something to do with the discontinuance of construction of the road.
Not until the close of World War I were there any developments. In late 1918 a group of New York financiers acquired the franchise and holdings of the Midland. Some of the equipment had fallen prey to the elements and was collected and burned for the scrap iron. Wagons, carts and scoops with value were salvaged and sold.
The task of dismantling the track, which had been laid to a point one-half mile east of Berrysburg, was begun about January 1, 1919. The rails and ties had been sold to firms in Lebanon and Baltimore. The rolling stock was sold to Leo Stern of New York. This was repaired in the shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Northumberland and then sold to other railroads.
Through legal proceedings in the Dauphin County Court, a committee of bondholders became the sole owner of all the remaining property for a consideration of $33,000. Benjamin F. Moore became the liquidator. The late James D. Bowman became agent for Mr. Moore for the purpose of selling the right-of-way back to the previous owners.
So again, the people of the valley did not get their railroad. The ever-increasing car and truck registrations may have been one of the difficulties in the financing of the Midland. Men with financial judgment had probably foreseen that the days of the railroad as a financial investment were rapidly coming to an end.
Many vestiges of the Midland remain with us. In April 1921 the Millersburg American Legion Post acquired ownership of the dite of the engine house and later built their home there. Leon E. Kocher‘s Coal Yard occupies the cut that had made the builders so many heartaches. The fill made from the earth removed from the cut is still to be seen west of Shippen Creek, although some of it has been hauled away.
The abandoend route can easily be trace by taking the north-south roads leading off Route 25, the northbound ones as far as Killinger. A little east of George M. Lebo‘s barn the railroad crossed the road. From that point to the remaining bridge piers east of Berrysburg the southbound roads must be followed.
Between Berrysburg and the end of the line near the former Gratz Airport the Midland stayed north of Route 25. A short distance east of the Wesleyan Methodist Church west of Gratz is the farm of Paul L. Crissinger. Behind a new silo, a cattle barn and the home is a fill which at its deepest point is over sixteen feet and marks the eastern end of the construction. The writer knows because he helped to put this fill there in 1911!
Note: The writer thanks the staff of the Millersburg Sentinel for graciously permitting him to use their files.
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