Rail historians Mike Bezilla and myself have both been busy interviewing former Pennsylvania Railroad employees for our forthcoming book on the railroads of Centre County, to be published by the Centre County Historical Society. We have come across some great stories about the PRR line from Tyrone up over the Allegheny Front to the summit at Emigh’s Gap, elevation 2,043 feet, and down again through Sandy Ridge to Osceola.
The railroad line over Tyrone Mountain, as this area is generally known, was built from 1858 to 1863 as the Tyrone & Clearfield Railroad, then was taken over by PRR in 1866-1867 as one of its major coal branches. The T&C had grades approaching three percent, and many sharp curves, the sharpest of all at nearly eighteen degrees across the Big Fill, a scenic attraction that was dangerous and often deadly for railroad crews struggling to bring coal trains over the Mountain. This line produced many wrecks and disasters, including the great circus train wreck of 1893. But there were some lighter moments too, or at least moments that didn’t result in completely dire consequences.
Engineer Paul Frank
Paul Frank of Osceola was hired as a fireman in the “Class of ’41,” a group that was taken on when PRR experienced a large pickup in business during the early days of World War II. To learn his job, he worked at firing on passenger trains between Altoona and Harrisburg for two weeks, then was given some fairly easy jobs firing on switchers around Altoona. He knew that working on Tyrone Mountain was much harder on firemen, who had to constantly toss coal into the fireboxes of hungry locomotives as they toiled up the grades, but he wanted to have a job that was closer to home. So one day he asked his foreman in Altoona if there were any Osceola jobs coming up. “You want to work at Osceola?” asked the incredulous foreman. “Sure, I live there.” The foreman lost no time getting on the phone to the trainmaster, where he chortled: “P. J. Frank’s coming over to Osceola as a fireman!”
When Mr. Frank got to Osceola, there were twenty-one engines assigned there, with more than twenty regular crews, and others on the extra board. H9 “hand bombers” predominated — elderly 2-8-0 Consolidation types that required a huge amount of work to keep in steam. There were a few stokered H10 Consolidations, much easier to fire, and later on some stokered L1 Mikados (2-8-2’s) and I1 Decapods (2-10-0’s). The Decapods, ungainly beasts known as “Hippos” by their crews, weighed so much that they could only be used between Tyrone and Philipsburg, where rail was heaviest; in getting around the Big Fill they had to be run very slowly or they would flip right over — the wheelbase was so long and rigid that the flangeless center drivers would be completely off the rail when rounding this tight curve.
Helpering the Passenger Train
One of Mr. Frank’s early jobs was on the helper of the passenger train from Altoona to Grampian. This job usually ran with two or three coaches, baggage car and mail car. If the train was longer, it often had a helper on the head end, since helpers were not allowed to push on passenger trains. The helper was used to keep up speed on the passenger runs — it was about thirteen miles from Tyrone to Summit, and the running time was thirty minutes, or around twenty-five mph, uphill all the way.
The helper crew would be called at Osceola, then run light to Tyrone and turn on the wye, picking any nearby siding to wait until the passenger train arrived from Altoona and stopped at the “Lehigh Valley” station on the west leg of the wye. They would then couple on and stay with the train all the way to Wallaceton, taking care of the major grades en route.
In this way Mr. Frank held a job connected with the passenger train, whose regular crew had so much seniority that a younger man could never hope to work on it. He recalled hand-firing H9 No. 777, a lucky number engine that was often assigned to the passenger train in those days. Going up the grade to Summit in either direction on a hand bomber, a fireman would be covered in sweat by the time he reached the top.
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