The Great Train Robbery

An undated photograph of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Station at Tamaqua, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. The station is featured in a memory written by Rev. William F. Walton, and published in the West Schuylkill Press, Tower City, November 3, 1967.

In addition to other churches, Rev. Walton served as the pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Tower City, 1966-1972, and Simeon Lutheran Church, Gratz, 1979-1986, when he retired.

The story presented here tells how Walton and his grandmother “robbed” the Reading Railroad of one round-trip fare to Philadelphia. It also gives the reader a memory of early twentieth century railroad travel.

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THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

By Rev. William T. Walton

Once a year, every fall, it was my grandmother’s custom to travel by rail to Philadelphia from our home in Tamaqua.  From the time I could walk until I could drive, she took me with her.  The Reading Company issued her an annual widow’s pass in lieu of a husband for one round trip to Philadelphia, or the “city,” as she called it.

In those days, as many as ten passenger trains ran through the Shamokin division to Philadelphia, but our train never varies.   Every year we took the 6:07 a. m. express.  Long before dawn on the appointed day, I was dressed and waiting!  It hardly seemed possible, I thought, as I looked at a Pennsylvania map, that I would be almost four inches away from kith and kin as the map reads.

At 5:07 a. m. we were at the station.  The Reading Company, in its wisdom, had fashioned a passenger station at Tamaqua of palatial proportions, at least to my nine year old eyes, and they had equipped it in a marvelous way for assuring the impatience of a small boy.  A high iron fence surrounded a triangular shaped garden.  Behind the fence was the height of wealth — a fountain surrounded by flowers and walks.  In my whole life I never saw one person in that locked garden.  It was just there as another opulent symbol of the Reading Company.

inside the brown and tan passenger station were two waiting rooms separated by the station master’s ticket office.  One of the rooms was labeled “men,” and the other waiting room was labeled “women.”

As a small boy I had a privilege which I was sure my grandmother did not have — that of walking from one room to the other.  To my knowledge, she had never seen the men’s side; so I would describe it all to her.

The ladies’ waiting room had as its chief attraction a huge witch’s-hat shaped couch.  The waiting passengers sat around the brim, so to speak, and leaned back against the peak.  The couch was made of a black leather covering on indestructible frame.  Even when I jumped up and down on the seat, which was forbidden along with spitting on the floor, the springs gave no more than a half inch.

On the men’s side stood the marvels of the town — two large brass spittoons.  These huge mouthed jardiniers were not the puny things one sees in present day Post Office but monstrous, businesslike and very shiny — the very height of luxury.  Besides and above all this show of wealth was the chewing gum machine.  For one cent the Dentyne people would deliver into my small hot hand any one of seven flavors of gum.  It was wealth untold, the the heady choice of gums made a boy light-headed with the freedom of it all.

After exploring the station, my remaining time was spent before the gum machine.  I never told my grandmother, but for 25 pennies and the luxury of choices, I would have forgone the trip to Philadelphia.  What more wealth and fascination could the city hold them that I had already found.

As the train time approached, my grandmother reminded me of my “traveling age,” which was six, although in truth I had first seen the light of day some nine years before.  This was the third year for me to be six, Reading railroad age.  All the rest of the year I was a tall skinny nine years of age, but by a wonderful family formula on one day of the year, I became six again.  The reason for the metamorphous was obvious; the railroad allowed children under seven to ride free when accompanied by a parent or guardian, as the saying is.  To my grandmother, this small train robbery was a way of life and indeed a challenge.  Somehow we knew that no matter how much we got away with the we were only pikers compared with what the company was doing legally.  I remembered that big luxurious brass spittoon and cornucopia of chewing gum.

in the distance the whistle, the rumble, the steam flying and the smoke, the overgrown green railway express wagons rolled toward the tracks.  The train from Shamokin to Philadelphia had arrived!  I had only a moment as we boarded the coach to look up at the shiny black engine with its four huge white rimmed driving wheels higher than a man.  It spoke in an irregular bass voice with deep pants and hisses.

The conductor the whisked me up the high first step next to my grandmother.   “My goodness, Sadie, your grandson’s a big fellow,” the conductor said.

“He may be big, John, but he’s only six this year, and don’t you forget it!”

And sure enough when the conductor came around for the tickets, he didn’t forget.  The great Reading train robbery had happened for another year — but sadly for the last time.

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Story from Newspapers.com.

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