Hike #1357; Centralia to St. Clair

Hike #1357; Centralia to St. Clair

9/20/20 Centralia to St. Clair with Jillane Becker, Jennifer Tull, Brittany Audrey, Kirk Rohn, Russ Nelson, Ewa Wdzieczak-Smering, Robin Deitz, Professor John DiFiore, Serious Sean Dougherty, and Justin Gurbisz

The posse having dinner at the end

This next hike would be quite a great one, and one that went up in part due to popular request.
I had already hiked through Centralia twice in the past.

The group in Centralia

I didn’t really feel a need to be going back there again any time soon, and the entire abandoned section of Rt 61, which people popularly refer to as the “Graffiti Highway”, had just been covered over completely with enormous mounds of dirt. I’d already seen most of the town there, and the only things that really still interested me there was the old coal infrastructure including the railroads, breakers, and colliery sites.
Centralia became a nationwide sensation when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania condemned the town through Eminent Domain in 1982, due to the hazards associated with the underground coal mine fire that had been burning since 1962.

On abandoned 61

The cause of the fire is much argued. Many believe it was because garbage was being dumped into the mines.
The coal vein, one of the largest in the world, continues to burn, but at this point the fire seems to have mostly moved away from the regular town location.
Centralia was once a pretty busy coal mining town, and there were still over 1,000 residents in 1980. By the time an agreement was reached between Pennsylvania and the seven remaining residents in 2013, most all of the homes and businesses had been removed.
Today, I understand there are only four residents of Centralia remaining.
My first timing hiking through was in 2010. There was some graffiti painted on the highway, but it wasn’t anything too particularly crazy. We could even still get a car onto it then.
Rt 61 was moved a distance to the east from its original location because the underground mine fires caused the highway to heave up.

Centralia

However, over the next several years, the highway had been discovered much due to social media, and the amount of visitors that showed up was almost inconceivable.

The police station

The highway was completely covered in graffiti. By the time I returned again in 2017, the entire highway was covered in spray paint.
It became much worse, and Centralia became the most popular tourist destination in Columbia County. People were coming from many hours away to walk the abandoned highway and leave their mark, or search for smoke emanating from the ground. Along with them came tons of trash. There was both illegal dumping of large objects, and day trash left by careless travelers.

Centralia Rt 61 in 2010

Things didn’t get any better in 2020. When the covid crap started, all the people off work flocked to Centralia in droves. Hundreds of cars were reportedly lining the roads, treating it like it was a typical hiking trail. The property was private, transferred to a local landowner, but public would argue that it was “historic” and that they had a right to be there.

The highway today

A few people walking through here and there was one thing, but the amount of tourists in 2020 was quite another. The amount of cars lining the highway were creating a traffic hazard, and the landowners could not ignore the liability.

Railroad St. in Centralia

Reportedly over four hundred dump truck loads of dirt were brought in to completely cover the “graffiti highway”, to keep people from wanting to go onto it.
I had been watching the articles about Centralia, like so many of us had, and I wasn’t thinking about really going back to the area any time soon.
Then, one night just a little over a week prior to this hike, Sarah Mascarah sent me a message telling me I needed to go to the Mahanoy Plane. I already knew that place, and hiked much of the Reading Railroad through Frackville from the top of the plane, and south of town, as well as other nearby lines, but she was recommending some other area things, and I ended up opening some maps of the area while we chatted.

Centralia

Sarah brought up Centralia as well. She well knows it has been a tourist trap, but cited that the dirt piles themselves are actually quite a sight to see. Of course, she was right.

Old 61

This was something I should go and witness for myself. They will probably grow over with weeds in a few short years, at least to some extent, and a path through the area will be established by ATVs. We chatted about some more places, and I started looking at St. Clair, another town I had never hiked to before.
Everything was coming together for this hike then.
I of course had to open my google earth with my anthracite railroads KMZ files, which showed me so much more stuff I wanted to see.

Old 61 in 2010

I came up with a route between Centralia and St. Clair, which looked really cool. It would focus almost completely on what was the Mahanoy and Broad Top Railroad built in 1860-61, but also some other stuff around the area including a couple of colliery sites.

Old 61 in 2020

The inclusion of Centralia in the start of this hike was planned only in part because I wanted to see the dirt piles, but more so admittedly as a sort of bait to the hike.

Rt 61 in 2010

I figured if I posted something with Centralia in it, people would probably try to flock to it. It was going to be a great hike either way, but that would be a real draw to show people there’s so much cooler stuff.

Rt 61 today

Well, the Centralia thing actually did not attract any newcomers at all, and the group ended up only being regular participants. Honestly, I think I liked that better anyway. We had a great time.

Peace Sean in 2015

The meeting point for this one was at the end point in St. Clair, at the former site of the Eagle Colliery along the Reading Railroad. There would have been a siding there for it, right next to some new buildings with stores and a restaurant. The area we were parked in looked quarried out, but clearly it was some sort of past mine workings.
From here, we would shuttle north to Centralia and spot Russ and Ewa’s car in State Game Lands. We then took a roundabout way because I made a wrong turn into Centralia, and we parked on Rt 61 just in front of the old municipal building and police station, now vacant.

Peace Sean in 2020

Russ and Ewa were going to have their friend John come out and chat with us. He is one of the last residents of Centralia still living there, and they’d had all sorts of problems with people coming in and messing things up.
Things had indeed gotten much worse because the graffiti artists were not only spray painting the highway, they had moved on to the tombstones in the cemetery. They would also trespass on private yards to people’s houses still living there either because they thought they were abandoned, or to ask where the “ghosts” were. The frustration must be overwhelming.
John was not able to come out and join us due to previous engagement, so we walked a little bit to the south to the intersection with Railroad Ave. Ewa had found an old photograph of the site taken from there, and I used it to set up a then and now photo compilation.
This was a branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad that came into town there. The street is super wide, because the tracks used to run up it.

Centralia 2010

The Lehigh Valley Railroad Barry Junction to Mt Carmell was built 1864-65 by a small line. It became part of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1886.

Centralia, 2020

Early on, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Mahanoy Division went direct east, where the later line went slightly to the north, but that was abandoned by 1883.

Centralia 2010

I think most of that is pretty well destroyed, but one day we’ll have to explore for remnants.
There is nothing left on the road visible from Rt 61 now. Only pavement and trees.

Centralia 2020

We walked up the road for a bit and didn’t venture onto any side streets, then just headed over to the edge of the old cemetery.

Rt 61

There is an ATV path that goes onto abandoned Rt 61 from this point at the corner.
The highway was not at all as any of us remembered it. There were just piles everywhere. Walking though it was going up and down over piles of dirt. Some of the ATV riders obviously love it, because they basically just gave them jumps. However, I don’t think the ATVs were the biggest problems for the residents of the town anyway.
To the far left of the highway there was a better path the ATVs had been using to push through. We got over there and followed that, but everyone was dillydallying a bit too much.

Rt 61

Ewa and Russ decided to head out and walk the current highway instead of the old one.
We pushed on through the route, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Sarah was right, it was interesting in its own way, but still not nearly as interesting to me as the rest of what we would be exploring for the day.
We made it to the south end of the highway section where Russ and Ewa met back up with us.
I wasn’t expecting to see anyone else on the old highway, but there were a few.

There was one guy that came out to the end of it and watched us walk away from the very start. Then, there was a guy running the thing like a sort of skills course, up and down, and he passed us a second time. There was also a family with kids at the south side.

Rt 61

One spot was kind of missed going through, where some of the highway was shown through with no piles of dirt, but it was far enough in that no one would bother going out to it. There had already been a lot of erosion to the piles, because we could see watercourses between them heading gradually downhill.
At the south side, we cut into the woods to the left, where there was a side road going back gradually uphill in the direction we had come. I wanted to get down into the woods to the east, and so we followed this north for just a little bit, in the swath of woods between old and new Rts 61.

Old 61

The route eventually went downhill a bit and reached the new highway route.

Yummo

We turned to the right on the highway only briefly, and then cut into the woods on the other side.
Here, we reached close to the former settlement of Byrnsville. This is the more forgotten town that was abandoned due to the underground mine fires. Originally, it was called Repplier’s Upper Patch (A “mine patch town” was a name for a small coal mining town).
There are no homes left in Byrnsville today, just a couple of roads leading in to the site. The beginning of the mine fire was actually closer to this location.

Old 61

My goal here was to find a mining railroad or tramway that connected the Locust Run Colliery #2 with the Locust Run Colliery #1. There is a large strip mined area between the two that segments it, and I was planning to cross it or go around somehow.
We walked through woods, and I found a sort of old road that seemed to go down a slope. I thought maybe the tramway was some kind of inclined plane.

Old 61

We started following it downhill, but it came to an extremely steep drop off to the strip mined area. I considered climbing down this, but it really looked like crap, and I didn’t want to get so involved in such bushwhacking so early on in the hike. I was starting to sweat pretty good at this poin.
I wore my full suit and tie on this one, for the first time this season. It was only supposed to be around sixty degrees, and I thought it seemed like a good idea. I’d gotten this suit from the home of a guy named Richard who had sadly committed suicide, and Jillane was asked to help clean out the place he used to live for the new land owner.

Ruins near the Resslier's Upper Coal Patch

The suite felt almost as though it was tailored to me, so it was quite comfortable.

Old 61

I decided we couldn’t try to follow this route down, and so we cut through weeds back toward 61 for a bit. In doing so, we came across some old steps and the busted up frame of an old building. This must have been accessed from Byrnsville, and when 61 was rerouted, it must have obliterated some of the original road connection. This spot was just a bit below the level of the highway, and probably has been abandoned since it was rerouted.
We continued from here following about the same land contour heading to the south.

Ruins

We moved away from 61 a bit, and tried not to descend too far. I wanted to stay where there was less undergrowth, although the terrain wasn’t the easiest to get through.

Ruins

I spotted, at the top of a small slope to our right, what appeared to be a clearing, and so I headed up to it. There, after a brief bushwhack through some thick invasive species, we reached a clear ATV path. This was what I had been looking for to access the areas to the east.
We followed the path gradually downhill, and it took us right through the deep chasm of the strip mined area. It was a really nice walk, but I started getting a bit concerned when it was taking us a little bit farther to the east.

Free hugs!

Somewhere in the area of this strip mine was the former site of Repplier’s Lower Patch. There doesn’t appear to be any remnant of a settlement back there at all now, as it was probably strip mined away completely.

This was awesome

The route to the Locust Run Collieries was probably out of the question by this point. My goal had been to try to locate the right of way between the two, which was more south of where we were, and then get on a spur from the former Reading Railroad that served the Mammoth Colliery, which was just a little below the Locust Run. We would then follow that spur out to the former Reading track bed. Unfortunately, this was not going to work this time. I had to change plans on the fly and figure out another route through.

In the old strip mine

The trail through the deep cut started gaining elevation, and we made our way out of it completely to an old cross mountain road that went north to south. We took a break there while I tried to figure out what we should do.

An old bottle I found from Mt. Carmel PA

Serious Sean had brought his electric guitar and amp, and was making some really awesome sounds that echoed through the disturbed old coal lands.
After studying a few aerial images, I decided we would head to the right, to the south just a bit. The old road turned abruptly to the west after a short bit, and that wouldn’t do. So, we all turned left off trail, and started to climb down as best we could into the next valley.
There was one particularly steep spot, but as long as we went slow, it was doable.

Old grades everywhere...

At a shelf just before the bottom, we took a break, and Sean and I were doing some Led Zeppelin stuff. I think it was Misty Mountain Hop and Black Dog.
We pushed on downhill from here through thicker woods, and made a bee line out toward the next woods road to the east, which I could see on Google Maps.
Once we came out to that, I was feeling much better about the rest of the trip. I knew at least most of what we were doing would be clear from this point.

The old mine hole

As we turned right and walked downhill on the road, we sang Ricky Nelson’s “Travelin’ Man”.
I don’t quite recall what we did after that, but there must have been something else.

Another old grade near the Enterprise Colliery site

The old road went by an enormous old mine pit to the right, which had a lot of junk and such dumped into it. A little bit past that, we started seeing what looked like railroad rights of way.
There was another spur line from the Reading line into this area to sere the former Enterprise Colliery. We were looking around through the woods to see if we could figure out exactly where this was, but couldn’t find it for certain.
We did find what looked to be more railroad grades.

A grade near Enterprise Colliery

To the left of us at one point, we saw what looked very obviously like an inclined plane, which I thought might have been the Girard Plane that worked on counterbalance rather than a stationary steam engine, but I understand that was actually a little bit further to the east, so we’ll have to check out more of that.
The rail bed we were on started to kind of disappear, and we ended up having to go down a steeper slope to get to the old Philadelphia and Reading Railroad right of way.

This looked much like an inclined plane here

This was originally the Mahanoy and Broad Mountain Railroad, bult in the 1860s. It was reportedly the original main line before being moved a bit further to the south. It was then Mahanoy and Shamokin Railroad, and finally Philadelphia and Reading. Pretty much the entire remainder of the hike was to follow this route back to St. Clair.
There was an awesome looking cut to the east of us where we came out, and the line went over a fill to the west. I’ll have to come back to follow it to the west a bit one day.

Old Mahanoy and Broad Mountain cut

I had been on a piece of it on the previous trip, but didn’t follow it for far.

The old Reading line

We turned to the east and walked through the very impressive cut, which was probably only single track. That’s probably why the main line eventually shifted to the south side of this valley instead of the north.
After the cut, we were on a very high cut above the east side of Ashland. The Lehigh Valley Railroad had a branch that served Ashland as well, and the station used to be directly below us in the town from around this point.
We continued on the grade for a bit, and eventually came to some no trespassing signs.

Old Reading RR cut

There were two sets of them before the railroad bed went into a smaller cut, with lots of logs and slash blocking the way. A good ATV path went off to the right onto Oakland Avenue nearing the mine patch settlement of Big Mine Run.

In the cut

Oakland Avenue in this area is actually the former route of the Pottsville and Danville Railroad.
This line has been called the “Poster Child” of the speculative risks of railroad construction and finance. The line never reached the two towns in its name, and had an eighteen mile gap never completed in the middle between two completed sections.
The first section was opened in 1834, and even included the second railroad tunnel in US history, the Wadesville Tunnel, which has now been destroyed through strip mining.

The rail cut

The western section still has a segment in use today, because it was more usable as a standard railroad. The eastern section had six inclined planes, and otherwise the trains were pulled by horses. It was one of the earliest railroads in America. It’s a shame I didn’t know anything about it until well after the hike was over!
Clearly, I am going to eventually have to do a series on this one as I read more into it and see what might be remaining of it.

The rail bed

We walked the road to the east into the little settlement of Big Mine Run, and there was once another Reading branch that would have crossed, probably overhead, just as we came to the first ones. This was the Big Mine Run spur, built by Mine Hill and Schuylkill Haven Railroad in 1860, and it became part of the Reading 1864.
Also in this area was the “Big Mine Run Geyser”, which is a local little thing.
This is the only geyser in Pennsylvania, which is directly related to the mine fires of Centralia also. It exists due to pressure on water in the mines underground near Centralia.

Big Mine Run Geyser

The pressure can be very little at times, or very big, which at times creates a geyser of as much as fifteen feet high. It is right along the road in Big Mine Run, on private land.

The rail bed near Big Mine Run

The water found its way out by way of an old mine vent hole.
Had I just remained in the woods a little bit from here, I would have found another rail bridge, which was either Pennsylvania Railroad or the other Reading branch. I need to do further research here.
We continued east down the road through Big Mine Run, and could see where the old Reading line went up behind the houses as we walked to the east.
It soon came to the point where it used to cross over Oakland Avenue.

The old rail bridge over Mahanoy Creek

Only the north bridge abutment still remains today. We turned to the right and climbed up to the grade on the south side of the road, and then came to where the line used to cross over the Mahanoy Creek.

Where Reading crossed in Big Mine Run, formerly rail bed.

I had thought we would be able to cross here, but both approaches to this trestle had been completely removed! The main frame of it, an odd looking X-truss, spanned between two abutments, but there was no fill on either side of them. Either there were once more spans, or fill on either side, but they removed it.
There was evidence of previous bridges at this site, which had been removed and replaced, because we could see the subsequent upgrading of the bridge abutments from original stone to concrete.

Mahanoy Creek bridge

There was no way we could get up on top to get on this bridge, and even then, it would have been a pain to try to cross.

Big Mine Run community

The options were to either wade across the Mahanoy Creek, which was running bright orange with acid mine runoff, and rather strong, or to walk up to the road and then reconnect with the line we were walking in Girardville.
Most of the group opted to go up to Girardville and meet up with us there. I decided I wanted to stay on the same route, and got across the acid mine runoff pretty easily. Serious Sean and I looked insane; me in my suit and tie, and him with an electric guitar and amp strapped to him, wading across a creek!

Mahanoy crossing!

Jillane followed us across somehow, although I don’t know where she crossed. I think otherwise it was only Sean, Kirk, and I.

On the rail bed

Another thing I did not know at the time was that the former Lehigh Valley Railroad was the grade immediately on the north side of the creek, right before we crossed. There was a stone retaining wall along the creek that was associated with that railroad. I had no idea at the time it was what we were on. It’s yet another thing we’re going to have to return to explore.
As we headed on the other side, we went up a ramp, but there was no remnant of the fill from this older Reading line. It took us to the tracks of the later route, where we turned to the left.

On the rail bed

Somewhere right in this area was the location of the Preston Colliery #4, just up the slope to the south.

Rail bed

My understanding was that the line that is still active to the west of us here was built probably around 1865 to replace the original main. It too was the Mahanoy and Shamokin Railroad starting in 1870, and it became part of the Philadelphia and Reading in 1871.
We soon started reaching Girardville. We saw someone in the same color shirt as Professor John below us on the road, and we thought he was looking for a way up to find us. I think some of the others had been down there and saw us above too.

Old bridge site

Somewhere in this area, the Preston Colliery #3 was also just up the slope from the tracks.
The rest of the group was waiting for us at the grade crossing at the connection to Upper Railroad Street in Girardville. John wasn’t with them, and we thought he was a bit behind, so we all waited a bit for him in this area until we realized he somehow got ahead of us and was further down the line!
We all got on this route and started heading to the east, and then came to about the point where the Girardville Station used to stand.

Girardville Station

The structure is gone, but the steps to the lower road and a ramped access were still there where they used to approach the structure built in 1880. It replaced an earlier one from 1875 I understand.

About at the old Girardville Station site

I tried getting some then and now shots of the former station site, and tried to figure out where they were taken exactly, but I couldn’t quite figure it out.

Big bridge abutment

I took several shots I thought I had gotten right, but I totally screwed them up and will one day have to go back and try to do it right.

Girardville break

We had a long and pleasant walk to the east in this section. There was some sort of other colliery site that used to be to the south, and it used to have a siding track or maybe earlier main line going to it, but remnants of that are gone now.
I at one point found a side right of way that weaved around a bit, and was rather sure it was an earlier alignment that had been straightened. I followed that for as long as was practical as well.
We continued along this route until we got to the former base of the Mahanoy Planes.

Mahanoy Plane historic scene

The area was rather obscure, because I didn’t realize it, but the entire lower end of them had been completely mined away.

Mahanoy Plane

This was a drag, because I had several historic photos taken at the bottom, and there was no way of emulating them if there was nothing there to even tell by. I want to go back and explore more of this, because there is just so much more to see.
This plane was completed in 1861 to traverse Broad Mountain between the towns of Frackville and Mahanoy Plane. The 524 foot plane, with a 28 degree pitch at its steepest, was 2,460 feet long and was powered originally by a 2,500 horsepower stationary steam engine that could hoist three car loads of coal at a time, or 200 tons. It could get the job done in three minutes.
After a fire in 1886, the original engine was replaced by a 6,000 horsepower engine, understood to be the most powerful in the world, and surpassed only by the engines powering the locks of the Panama Canal. Between 800 and 900 coal cars traveled over the planes every 24 hours.
The Mahanoy Plane ceased operations in 1932 due to a decline in the coal industry, as well as having easier routes to carry the coal to necessary markets.

Mahanoy Plane

Just to the east of this point, the Danville and Pottsville Railroad had its own Mahanoy Plane, Plane #5, built in 1834. It only saw less than ten years of service before abandonment by 1844.
Russ pointed out that we were getting close to where the plane should have been, and we walked a path into the woods from the active tracks to try to find the base. We were already beyond where the base actually was. There was even a stone ruin of some sort in the weeds next to the tracks, which may or may not have had something to do with the plane.

Historic image atop Mahanoy Plane

We ended up getting onto the plane by heading up an ATV path beyond where it had been mined away, and then reached the grade. There were still some obvious railroad ties on it, and it was a very obvious grade to the plane.

Mahanoy Plane

We started walking up it, which was rather eroded but still very nice.
After a good distance up, there was a bit of a disturbance, and then an interesting tunnel beneath the plane. I have been told both that this was a tunnel for workers to get beneath the plane, and that it was a narrow gauge mining railroad that went under the plane. I am more inclined to believe the latter, because it was so much wider than necessary for any pedestrian use.

Tunnel under the plane

Of course, we had to go down and try to walk through it. I at first thought it might be a mine because it was dark looking in, but it simply curves and then emerges at the other side. It was actually a really cools surprise to find.

Tunnel beneath the plane

We continued uphill on the plane past several more interesting ruins, and a masonry lined peak to the plane where power house and other ruins were on the left.
There were both stone and concrete components from the different generations of technology, none of which I am good enough to identify what I was looking at. I had one photograph of the top of the planes, but the workings of it are a mystery to me.
There were steps leading to the left along the ruins, and the typical graffiti of phalluses, swastikas, and stuff like “fuck humans” everywhere.

In the tunnel

We checked out some of the ruins, but we simply didn’t have enough time to look at everything. We’re going to have to go back out at a time when we can devote more attention to this awesome ruin.

Top of the plane ruins

We pushed beyond the top of the plane, and crossed a power line clearing with a view to the north. We then reached Rt 924. There certainly would have been a bridge here in railroad days, but we had to climb down and back up the other side to pick the grade back up.
It was in this area somewhere that the earlier 1824 plane came back up. I didn’t know to look for it when there, but we’ll make our way back.
The rail bed turned and entered an area of wide mowed grass. I suppose this was probably a small rail yard of sorts for waiting and connecting at the top of the planes.

Top of plane ruins

We walked through it, and then out to the end of a sort of driveway that took us through to Spring Street, where abutments remain from where the railroad crossed.

Ruins

Some of the group walked up the highway from the previous crossing and met back up with us there.
We continued walking from here Cherry Street. The railroad bed continues south parallel with Railroad Street and Middle Street.
I set up a then and now showing the original site of the 1875 Frackville Station. There was a second station that followed that one in the same area, which was later moved to Temple PA where it still stands in use.

Ruins

The station stood on the same site as the earlier 1832 constructed Danville and Pottsville Railroad station.

Bridge site in Frackville

Apparently, when the Mahanoy and Broad Mountain Railroad built here, they utilized some of the right of way of the earlier line since that section was abandoned by 1844. I’m not sure where it would have turned off to the south, but that had to be somewhere not far off.
We weaved around on the streets from this area following the right of way as close as we could.
We walked south to the Econolodge parking area where we turned off and went over to Altamont Blvd since the rail bed went into some bad weeds and is in a storage area that we likely can’t get into anyway.

Frackville, with the 1875 station

In this area to the south side of Frackville, there was once a wye on the Reading line and a branch that went off to the east presumably to an old coal mine area, or maybe a colliery or something, but I don’t have any record of what that one was, only that it was a dead end.

Frackville original station site...and...weird truck

We headed down to cross under Interstate 81, and there was a section of railroad ties in some grass there. Just on the north side of 81, there was a graded but never completed Altamont Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad that would have broken off.

Evidence of the railroad

The right of way follows to the north side of 81 to the east, and then connects with another PRR branch that way, which also connects with the Reading line further to the south by way of Mill Creek gorge (Jillane and I had hiked this line to a good amount in 2010).
Once under 81, the line went straight ahead into part of the on ramp to the highway. We walked around the left side of the on ramp. The Frackville Mall used to be right above us to the right in this area, and is now completely destroyed. Jillane and I had visited there twice, the first time while backpacking, on her birthday in 2010. It’s still amazing that it’s gone.

Mill Creek culvert

Once we were beyond the on ramps, we had to walk the road just a little longer until we could see the right of way just into the trees. It was almost obscured by wildflowers growing through it, but it cleared up quite quickly once we were on the right route.

Reading RR grade south of Frackville

We passed through a bit of a cut, then a little fill, and then a service lane joined the right of way. It was even clearer than I’d remembered it being back in 2010.
The right of way weaved out and away from Rt 61 quite a lot, and was a really beautiful route.
When we got to where the Mill Creek went underneath, Jillane was already down there checking it out. I climbed down to have a look at the beautiful stone culvert as well.
We continued to walk to the south, still sort of parallel with 61, which we kept weaving closer to or further away.

Ham

Above us, the former Pennsylvania Railroad route started coming in. Jillane and I had walked this bit of the Reading south from Frackville in 2010, and then climbed the first ATV path up to the Pennsylvania Railroad back to the north then. This time, we’d continue to the south on the Reading line.
The Pennsylvania branch was originally the Pottsville and Mahanoy Railroad built 1885 86, and went to a couple of different companies before finally becoming officially part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system just after 1900. A spot where the line joined the Reading ahead was known as Wetherill Junction, but another remained higher up above us.
We continued further south, and there were some wooden posts and such lined the edge of the right of way. Apparently, the clearing we had been seeing since the last time I was there was part of a rail trail project, a branch from the Schuylkill River Trail to the north. There were no signs or anything, but it was much more done up than before.

Another old bridge

We crossed another stream on an old bridge, and then came to an old stone bridge abutment to the left, the remains of the former Dark Water Trestle. This was where a branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad crossed the Mill Creek below us to the right and to the other side, to the former Dark Water Station. I’m going to have to more extensively explore this old line one of these days as well.
We hit an access road in the Bolivar Run area, and then crossed to another grade on the other side. I thought the railroad bed we were on might have remained down on the road, but we continued on the upper right of way, which ran beautifully parallel through Rhododendrons.
We followed this until it came out to the road again, and at that point the road was definitely built over it. The road turned hard right over the Mill Creek by Bolivar Run I guess it was, and the rail bed continued on through the grass next to the Schuylkill County Municipal Authority brick building, and we could see some railroad ties in the grass.
We stepped over a fence here and continued to the south.
We were getting really close to the end, and I was feeling pretty great, but the others were obviously getting a bit tired. Russ and Ewa cut out further to the north where the state game lands lot was, and headed to the end to meet up with us for dinner.

Ruins near St. Clair

Before reaching the lot, but when I could see it in the distance, I spotted an old building above the right of way to the left. I have no idea what it was, and the only thing I had to go on based on what my KMZ files were telling me was the Eagle Colliery a little further south where we were parked.

Ruins near St Clair

No one else wanted to go up, so I climbed up to enter the ruin. It was an interesting concrete frame with an angled roof shape, but no roof remaining.
I climbed back down and made my way onto the right of way toward the lot, and just before we got there, there was an opening just off to the left.
Justin and Brittany were already over there, and Justin saw a way into it.
This was an old coal mine. I was surprised to see this gangway going directly in at such an obvious place, and so easy to get to.

Ruins near St. Clair

The inside had metal bracing and a pipe, and the front part of it was a concrete doorway shaped tunnel. It also had a brick doorway further in. A side tunnel went rather steeply down to the right, deeper into the mine. I wasn’t going to chance going down that. Who knows how soon it would just drop off and I’d be gone.

Old coal mine

We didn’t go back all that far, but clearly we could go back a long way should we have chosen to. I don’t know enough about this one or the air quality in it to be heading into it, so I figured I’d ask some friends about it first, and then maybe consider a longer trip in there.
We emerged into the parking area and got back to the cars, and chose to have dinner at a little Italian place that sits basically right on the spot where the Reading Railroad used to travel, and had quite a nice dinner.

yo yo yo

I really loved this one a lot. I felt like it opened a lot of doors for learning and for more exploring. There are so many places I wanted to see from doing the hike alone, but the research that followed only accentuates my eagerness to return soon.