Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Railfanning Oaks, PA

My job took me to the Philadelphia area last weekend, and as part of this I drove out to the small town of Oaks, PA. Oaks is about six miles straight west of Norristown and lies on the edge of suburbia. Once I got there, I discovered some interesting railroad-related relics. It turns out that Oaks was once the southern end of the Perkiomen Railroad (later a branch of the Reading) that ran from a junction with the Pennsy at Oaks up the Perkiomen Valley to Allentown. The railroad is now gone, the right-of-way through Oaks replaced by a road called "Station Avenue" that was put in so recently that Mapquest doesn't know it exists, but the 1918 depot is still there. And out front is a bizarre little critter right out of Flash Gordon.

After a bit of research, I've come to the conclusion that this 3' gauge Vulcan (the name is cast into the back of the frame) gas-electric was built for the 1939 World's Fair in New York, along with a few identical siblings. It later made its way to the Kennywood amusement park and was sold by them about a year ago. Weird stuff! Further down Station Avenue is a piece of disconnected track perhaps 100' long with an 0-4-0T, a small four-wheel Whitcomb, a 44-tonner and a speeder. The first two are shown below; the tank engine, according to www.steamlocomotive.info, is Worcester County Electric #1, formerly in the Steamtown collection. I have no idea about the Whitcomb. These pieces of equipment seem to be essentially derelict. Sorry for the poor photo quality; I didn't have my camera with me so these photos were taken with my cell phone.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm told the Oaks, PA station is a replica, and not the original. Also right in the area was the junction with the ex PRR line, called the Schuylkill Division.

Randall Hicks said...

There's more information in this thread on RyPN:

http://rypn.sunserver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26899