Hike #1371; Hazleton and Lofty Loop

Hike 1371: 11/8/20 Hazleton and Lofty Loop with David Adams, Daniel Trump, Kirk Rohn, Jennifer Tull, Karen New, Tony V., Justin Gurbisz, Jennifer Berndt, Jennifer Tull, Diane Reider, Professor John DiFiore, Brittany Audrey, and Serious Sean Dougherty

Hikes like this one always leave me with a lot to say, and a lot to learn. Such is life when it comes to the tangled web of railroads found in the Anthracite coal region.
For whatever reason, Hazleton had been left on my radar but unexplored for many years while I was covering literally everything all around it.
Maybe it was because I knew what going down that rabbit hole would be taking on. Probably more because I wanted to do more stuff leading in to it.
By this time, I had already done a few hikes into Hazleton, and I'd never done anything of the coal country to the south of town, so I created this loop to do just that.
Terrace Plaza was a strip mall on the south side of town, along Poplar Street that I'd chosen as the meeting place.
I can't really keep track of everything through these areas, so I rely on others to help me with the details. That's where facebook has always been really good for this, because I simply don't know.

Thinking back on it, this one really didn't have a very good starting point. There were things along the road that I wanted to see, such as some of the remnants of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad Audenried Branch, which zigzagged and crossed over Jeansville Road.

We walked Poplar Street south, which becomes Jeansville Road, and then becomes Chestnut Street in Tresckow.
We simply went uphill on the road for the first part of it, and the only ones of us that really nerded out on this were Dan and I. Actually, Dan introduced me to his friend Tony on this one, who is really cool and very into the old railways as well, so it was more just the three of us mostly nerding out.
We walked the road uphill from Hazleton which was hot and rather boring, but we did point out where either the Lehigh Valley Railroad right of way came through, or another interurban trolley right of way, which was closely parallel. I'm not sure which one was which.
The Lehigh Valley line served a J. C. Mason Company coal mining area that was on the east side of Jeansville Road. I suppose the little settlement we walked into from the north might have been Jeansville itself.
There was a Railroad Street in the middle of the settlement that was all of two blocks long. These were locally known as "Coal Patches", or "Coal Patch Towns".

We walked a little further ahead, and then reached an old church and cemetery. The cemetery wall had a plaque on it denoting having been built by Daniel Freyman in 1884 and 85.
We walked through the cemetery, then cut out the rear of it onto a road serving strip mining in back.

We turned right and skirted the operation, and then entered the woods where the road continued.
It was a formerly paved roadway going ever so slightly uphill toward the settlement of Tresckow.We followed the road which came out into the back of a small ball field park on the north side of that town.
Tresckow was originally known as Dutchtown, and I'm not sure where the current name derived from.

We continued out of the park and headed down Chestnut Street toward the southern side of the town.
My plan was hopefully to get into the former mining areas, now sort of remediated, where the German Pennsylvania Coal Company and Breaker used to be. In that area, several railroad beds came together. One of them was the Central Railroad of New Jersey's Audenried Branch.
This line was built by the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad, a subsidiary of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, and later leased to the Jersey Central. The line is much obliterated through the mitigation efforts through that area, but I have a google earth KMZ file to show where it went.

We tried getting out there in Tresckow, but there was no way to it beyond chain link fences, so we had to walk the in town streets to West Oak Street, which leaves the town.
We followed this and saw some other rights of way.
The edge of the road wasn't so gated off that we couldn't get out there to get on the railroad bed.
We walked Oak Street south for a bit, and found an entrance just about on the location where it crossed.

We walked out into the mitigated area, and I tried to follow the route as closely as possible.
Some of what we ended up following a few different things that I thought looked like grades, as well as a bit of an ATV path. I eventually realized we'd gotten off of the right of way and had to cut back more to the south.
We found our way to it pretty soon, and the route was somewhat obscured where a utility right of way joined in.

Old road into Tresckow

Historic view of Tresckow

The town of Beaver Meadow was to the east of Tresckow, and that was the terminus of the original Beaver Meadow Railroad, one of the oldest of the anthracite railroads. Almost all of this route became part of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which is why some of that ended up where we were.

The right of way once we got past the power line was in great shape, and a heavily used ATV trail.
This was just a great section; the kind of stuff I really love because it's not officially a rail trail, but it's totally clear an no one is going to bother anyone that uses it.
This segment made its way around a long hillside, and then weaved from eastbound to southbound, then westbound again. We skirted the edge of Spring Mountain, and with no leaves on the trees there were great views into the valley of Silver Brook, which is a tributary of the Quakake Creek.

We continued to head to the west, and eventually came to Rt 309, where there is no longer a bridge to carry the former CNJ line beneath. We had to climb up, and then back down the other side to continue on.

Some of the group had different ideas about this, and headed to the right I believe to the active railroad overpass, formerly Lehigh Valley Railroad. Dan, Karen, and I took the lead on the old CNJ line ahead, and found an old cast iron pipe that carried water beneath the right of way. This section was a lot more beat up, but recognizable despite there not being a good path.

We soon came toward another old Coal Patch called Haddock. From there, we could see the right of way was going into some back yards. We opted to turn right and bushwhack out to Haddock Street.
We ended up following an ATV path uphill a bit, and reached a spot along a power line, and then got on an abandoned branch of the Reading Railroad. In this area, we made our way to the former site of Silver Brook Junction, between the CNJ branch we were following, and the Reading line.

 From that point, we continued on the former Reading line to the south for a bit.
We continued for a ways, and I watched the GPS as best I could until we got to right above the Lofty Tunnel.
Lofty Tunnel is one I've wanted to see forever. I knew it had been blocked from the east portal so no ATVs could get in next to private land, but they can still access from the other side.

The tunnel was built for Catawissa Railroad in 1854, originally named Summit Station Tunnel.

The 1,135 ft long passage became part of the Reading Railroad until formation of Conrail made it redundant.

Stone and concrete facades were added in 1913 and 1916.

The Catawissa Branch was abandoned here, some report, in 1976. Others say it was the early 1980s. There are some photos that I have found that are labeled 1980, such as the Howard Snyder photograph below.

Whatever the case, the tunnel has been abandoned for over forty years it would seem, and is still holding on pretty well. We couldn't climb directly down from where we were, and there is a very close private home.

We very quietly descended near the home, and then went off trail down the first opportunity we could get to reach the east portal of the Lofty Tunnel. The right of way was full of water, but no worse than most other tunnels we have done before.

We didn't hang out for too long, and soon entered the Lofty Tunnel. I went ahead pretty quickly, and had pretty wet feet. By the time I was half way through I could hear Serious Sean's electric guitar echoing in the darkness. It was quite awesome.

 

It may possibly have been the most awesome electric guitar acoustics I've ever heard.

We came out on the other side, and it was quite a lovely, quiet, natural spot to hang out for a bit. I had come through very quickly, but it was going to take the others some more time to get there.

We hung out for a while, and before everyone was out of the tunnel, and army of quad ATVs showed up at the west portal. They were only there to ride around, party, and have fun. So, when they saw us, they were certainly pretty amazed.
Serious Sean immediately started getting requests for redneck classics like Free Bird and other Lynard Skynard stuff, and I think I heard someone yell out some really crappy country hit. I don't know quite how to hide the look of pain on my face when I hear someone request a crappy country song.

Someone offered a beer, but it certainly wasn't my calibur, and I showed them what I was drinking, which was more 11.8% abv Weyerbacher stuff. 

One of the quad drivers offered Karen a ride through the tunnel and back, and she accepted. 
We hung out here for a little while longer, and then took an ATV trail up from the north side of the west portal, on up to the active tracks of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad, which we followed to the north a bit.
The tracks went along and under Interstate 81 and its exits in a very pleasant section here. Just after the exit underpass, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Silverbrook Branch used to make its way up. We all climbed down from the active tracks and followed the abandoned old branch all the way to where it used to have its junction entering McAdoo. Our buddy Jim DeLotto was going to meet up with us there, but he got stopped by Blue Mountain, Reading, and Northern police because he parked on the tracks, and he wasn't able to meet up with us, though I don't believe he got a ticket. I'm thinking the reason we didn't have really any problem is because were were down on the old Silverbrook Branch rather than on the active tracks.

We continued back to the tracks and over Rt 309 when we got through McAdoo, and then headed north.
I actually remember it being somewhat of a haze at the end, walking the tracks to the north, the sun going down. I remember going by the cemetery and enjoying the ambiance of walking it out there, but the route to the end point had to be changed. We weren't going to go all the way back to where we'd originally planned. The mileage was getting up there and it was getting late.

I seem to recall getting the rest of the group together and heading to the east on a power line right of way that led from the tracks toward a local park, and then back close to where we had started off of Rt 424.
We stopped for dinner at some place in Hazleton as I recall, but I don't recall which one!

There's just too much going on in coal country, and this one was kind of overdoing it for me in terms of what I can begin to interpret. When I do these hikes, it's easier for me to focus on one line, but because I tried to make this a loop, and because it involved so many different lines, I was just a mess trying to figure out how it all worked together. I didn't even scrape the surface of everything that we criss crossed within the first half hour of this hike.
One thing that really stood out to me on this one was the Reading Catawissa Branch. I'd really like to hike that entire branch as a series maybe soon. I just have too many things going on, and keep starting new things, so it makes it difficult. One of these days!