Hike #1410 Muhlenberg to Virginville

Hike #1410: 4/29/21 Muhlenberg to Virginville with Dan Trump, Karen New (Ezzo), Kirk Rohn, and Diane Reider

This next hike would be a point to point, once again keeping with my theme of returning to tie up loose ends and such on past initiatives that I'd seemed to walk away from.

This would be the old Schuylkill and Lehigh Branch of the Reading Railroad, which I had not done another section of since 2014.
I was intent on finishing walking the line way back then, but I got involved in other things and just never returned to it.

There were two things that inspired me to go back to this one.
One of them was the fact that I was obviously trying to get back to different series that I'd walked away from in the past. A lot of things have been going on in my life that woke me up to these things.

I was never really walking away from this stuff, I just got distracted with other things I wanted to see. I still do to this day, but I am trying to do better to keep sight of the things I want to finish. Especially when they're these "low hanging fruit", things I can actually complete but didn't get around to.
The other inspiration for this one was a friend, Gregory Pawelski, who does amazing then and now history compilations. He even has a group for this particular railroad.

Although Greg and I had never met in person, we share a great mutual friend in Daniel Trump. He had gone and hiked some of the stuff on this line that I hadn't done with Dan, and I had done everything as closely as I could east of Virginville. Greg was posting a lot of amazing historic photos of the line, and I was just enamored and amazed by it. I had to return to it.

One of the problems with this was that the stuff I wanted to walk was not really appropriate for a huge group. We'd have to go some places that would be difficult and others where we weren't technically supposed to be, and having a fun and loud group was not the way to go about it.
As such, this was the perfect hike to post on a weekday after having worked a long weekend at work. I'd get fewer people, but still those who really enjoyed this sort of thing would be there.

My one condition to post the hike was to be Dan's availability. When he said yes, the trip was planned.

I planned a trip that would meet in Virginville PA, and then we would shuttle to the west to Muhlenberg at Fairgrounds Square Mall to begin the hike on the old line.
The Schuylkill and Lehigh Branch of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad was organized in 1871, and completed in 1874. It broke away from the main line in Reading PA and continued out across Berks and Lehigh County to Slatington on the Lehigh River, where it joined with a branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad that served slate quarries near Slatedale. 

The line not only served as an artery between the coal resources at different ends of the anthracite region, but also farm goods and an important passenger connection. Even children going to school would ride the trail, which was nicknamed "The Berksey".
Passenger service continued until 1947.
An excursion line operates the section between Kempton and Jacksonville area, known as the Wanamaker, Kempton, and Southern, and that is the only remaining passenger service on the entire line.

Freight service continued through on the line until 1972, and then the segment from Jacksonville to Slatington was abandoned, and the section from just south of Kempton west to Evansville was also abandoned, leaving the WK&S Railroad stranded without any connection to the national railroad system.
A segment of the line from Temple to Evansville is still used today as a quarry spur. The western end of the line was also abandoned, and connections were made instead with another Reading branch as well as a former branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

I had first hiked this branch back in 2007. I gained interest in it from old USGS maps. I had planned a hike that would take us from Leaser Lake in Jacksonville all the way back to Slatington.

That turned out to be a really fun and well attended hike, and everyone seemed to love it, despite it being a little complicated to try to trace the right of way. The next one in the series looked even more promising.
However, I did not get around to doing that one until 2014. I decided to do a trip to Crystal Cave, then a road walk to Virginville where we would pick up the old railroad line and trace it as closely as we could to the northeast and end at Leaser Lake.
That hike also was a lot of fun, but then again I didn't bother returning to the remainder of the line until this time.

There were problems with some of this route in that there were missing bridges and private property issues. We would end up having to walk some parallel roads with some of it, but it was still only Spring, and it wouldn't be too terribly hot just yet.
I arrived at Virginville and immediately started doing some then and now compilations, starting with where there used to be a weird sheet metal covered railroad bridge over the Sacony Creek a tributary to the Ontelanee Creek. I used an historic photo that Greg posted from the Benjamin Bernhardt Collection to get the now photo. I also noticed that the old underpass that was built to carry Dunkels Church Road beneath the never completed Allentown and Auburn Railroad had collapsed.

On my last hike on the branch in 2014, we walked through this culvert built for this incompleted railroad in the 1850s. It was in ill fated attempt by Cornelius Vanderbilt to connect Port Clinton PA and the Schuylkill Navigation with the Lehigh Valley. Work came to a halt in the Panic of 1857, and resumed after the Civil War, but the only part that got built was from Topton on the Reading Railroad as far as Kutztown. Other sections were graded and structures built, but nothing else happened.

It was sad to see this piece of history had complete collapsed. The ceiling was bowing pretty badly when we had gone through it seven years prior, so I guess we knew it was going to happen.

We shuttled from Virginville to the Fairgrounds Mall, and there was lots of construction going on there.
We cut through some lawn and out to an access toward the tracks to the north of George Street.
Route 61 was just to the west of us, and I wanted to get to see where the old branch line used to cross over the Reading main in this area.
We headed to the north, and I guess we found a watermelon on the tracks that everyone ate.
A train went by and we stayed out of its way, and then we continued to the north when there was a junction to the right with a more heavily used branch. This was a reroute Dan explained of the East Penn Branch. That line originally went through Muhlenberg and Temple, but was rerouted a bit. This newer line joins the original line, which is now Muhlenberg Rail Trail to the east. at Blandon.

We continued walking straight, and we passed underneath two abandoned bridges. One was beat up with ties and an open deck, and that was the Schuylkill and Lehigh Branch.

The other closed deck one was a branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
We continued past this just a little bit more to the Reading, Blue Mountain, and Northern Railroad's Outer Station.
There was a handsome steam locomotive parked in the parking lot at this point, a few passenger cars, and a really nice tower. I'm not sure if that is an original tower, or if it was one of those very nice reproduction towers made by Andy Muller, who owns the line.
Whatever the case, it was a pretty attractive site.

We climbed from this point up to to East Bellevue Avenue and walked to the east just a bit.

To the left off of this road, we were able to turn left onto the former Schuylkill and Lehigh Branch, into a weedy area. Both the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading went side by side here. It used to cross Bellevue where we turned in, but there's not much evidence left of that.
We passed through an obscure cut, and then got closer to the current alignment of the East Penn Branch again. There were still rains in place in these weeds parallel with that.
Some of this area Dan explained to me was rerouted because the one set of tracks fell off into the quarry at Laureldale! This quarry is immediately adjacent to the active tracks to the east. 

We made our way to parallel with the active tracks, and there were sets of piers in the distance that carried a bridge between sections of the Laureldale Quarry.

We made our way to the north here, and under the former bridge site, then crossed over Water Street on the parallel track. Just a little further took us to the grade crossing at Tuckerton Road.

There was a station at this point, at the location historically known as Tuckerton, but known now as the Temple Station.
This was a more familiar site than I knew before Dan mentioned it to me. What we were looking at he tells me was actually the old Frackville Station from the Reading Railroad up there. It was moved from that location to here years ago, apparently another Andy Muller project. It was pretty cool to see, and we of course had to walk around it a bit for a closer look.
The two sets of tracks divered at this point, and the former Pennsylvania went left, and both East Penn and Schuylkill and Lehigh Branches went to the right.

I think we walked through an adjacent cemetery to the left of the tracks at first to avoid any problems.

Just to the north of this spot, the Schuylkill and Lehigh Branch went to the left of the East Penn Branch anyway. It's much less used beyond that point.
We made our way onto that, and the tracks crossed over Rt 222, then passed by a scrap yard on the right.
A little ahead, they crossed over Huller Lane.
This was a pretty exposed area, and I thought we were doing alright, but then there was a train straight ahead of us.
We scurried down next to the bridge and onto Huller Lane. From there, we opted to turn to the east and follow Huller Lane out to Leesport Ave and go north. This was a bit of a busier road, but there was no better choice at this point. At least we could pretty much see the railroad from where we were walking.

The Schuylkill and Lehigh Branch crossed over the Willow Creek on a double culvert right before where we got back on it on Leesport Ave.

From this point on it was just a beautiful walk. There was great farmland scenery on both sides of the of the tracks. We crossed Snyder Road, followed by Heffner Lane and paralleled Slater Road.

1953 Robert Wanner

We crossed Bowers Road and Orchard Road, and then passed beneath Lake Shore Road beneath a bridge.

Just beyond this point was the Calcium Road underpass, the predecessor of Lake Shore Road, at the little settlement of Maiden Creek. This was a station stop.

1951 Robert Wanner

I forget how they came up with Maiden Creek, but as I recall Ontelaunee was a native American maiden, and so they also call it Maiden Creek from place to place.

We approached Calcium Road underpass and checked out the former site of the Maiden Creek Station. The foundation and steps were still in place and very easily recognizable.

Bill Dubya collection

I took so many photos at so many different angles of this station site. There are so many of this one it really provides a sense like you could be at that very site.

Dan West Collection

I can't really even include all of my compilations in this journal entry because there are just too many. Plus I need people to follow the facebook page and if they see it all here, there's no point!

We continued from the Maiden Creek Station site through some lovely woods heading east. 

We passed a sort of stone ruin to the right of the tracks, and we saved a Box Turtle who was stuck between the rails in this next section.

We crossed the Peters Creek, which apparently originates in an interesting spring in a cemetery, and then skirted the active quarry as we approached Evansville.

This section all went very fast. We saw an office building as we approached the end of service on the line, abruptly at some woods past the quarry.

We just continued straight on into the woods, and the tracks remained in place but overgrown for quite a while.

This got to be a really rough bushwhack. At points, I was crawling on my hands and knees to get through on these old tracks. This made it even harder to locate the former site of the Evansville Station, but I think I figured it out. 

The actual settlement of Evansville was originally on the north side of the Ontelaunee Creek, and was one of the settlements obliterated through the construction of the Ontelaunee Reservoir. There was a road that descended and once crossed the creek before the reservoir near the station site, and I think I located that and thereby the station.

We continued through on the railroad, and it got to be a bit more passable as we walked.

It started seeming more like a regular trail as we got to be further out, near the where Water Street came down along a little creek. It was at that point that there was a spur line that went out to an iron furnace near Molltown.

The railroad crossed over the creek at what was later the confluence with the reservoir, and only abutments remain of it today. On the west side, there is now a sort of wildlife observation blind near the west abutment. Quite a nice little area.

At this point, we had to walk upstream a bit on the old rail spur, then use the first path over the creek to the other side and follow another trail back to reach the railroad bed. While walking this side trip, we found what looked like it might have been some sort of an ore shaft, filled in, but not sure.

There was a very good clear path on the other side of the creek that brought us right back to the railraod bed. There were no more rails in place on this side any more.

The rail bed was a very nice, clear mowed trail from here for a while. A very nice little section.

We came out on Lake Road near the village of Mosalem. Here, the railroad bed went into private land to the left, and we had to walk parallel Lake Road to the north just a bit.

We approached Moselem Spring Road, and the station used to be along side it at the bridge that goes over the Ontelaunee Creek to the left of us.
This was formerly the site of the Moselem Springs Covered Bridge as well, adjacent to the station. 

I would suppose the bridge probably had to be replaced and made longer when the reservoir was built, but I'm not entirely sure how long it lasted.

We couldn't walk the railraod bed further north from this point because it went onto private property and crossed over a bridge over the Moselem Creek that is now long gone.

Old maps show that there was a tunnel just over the north side of the creek bridge. It appears on old atlas maps as well as old USGS but I can't find much on it. If there was one, it must have been daylighted early on. 

After I set up a few more then and now compilations, we turned right on Moselem Springs Road. There was once a railroad spur that followed along the south side of the Moselem Creek to reach a mill that was at the intersection with Forgehill Road. 

We passed McArdles Pub and turned left on Forgehill Road. We would have liked to stop at that pub for dinner right then, but we needed to get done with the hike and we could come back to it. 
The old mill on the corner had all sorts of interesting knickknacks out in front of it including a  tin man caricature. 

We crossed the Moselem Creek and climbed the hill, then turned left on Becktree Road. This took us past a tree stump with a happy face on it, and then down close to where the railroad would have been again. 

There were some pretty historic buildings on this stretch, but also some really interesting personalized properties including a lawn that was just strewn with all sorts of metal fabrications and what looked to be Zeus in the middle.

We continued on along Becktree uphill a bit and through pretty farm land. We were away from the railroad bed at this point and wouldn't be getting back to it.
Becktree turned to the right again, and went down into a little dip where there was an old man working on a fence to the left. We stopped and said hello to him.

He was curious what we were doing, and we told him we had been hiking some of the old Reading Railraod line. He said that he used to walk on through on that, it went through the back of his property, the Beck Tree Farms. I didn't realize at first that the road was named for him.

I didn't bother asking if we could have permission to walk through this time, but we had enough of a nice time chatting with the guy. He was now in his eighties, and he had sold the property to his son who was still running things. He explained that he liked to get out and tinker around with things. I told him my grandfather was in his eighties too, and that was what keeps him going, just always being busy in some sort of way.

Mr. Beck had a utility vehicle there, with his tools and such in it. I suppose the early 70s when the railraod was abandoned doesn't seem so long ago to him. Even for me, I'm surprised it was still in service that recently.

We bid him goodbye and walked along the rest of the farm, which had a covered bridge out in the fields to the right, and we turned left from Becktree Road on Rt 145 which took us right back into the town of Virginville.

We walked into the parking lot in the back of all of the buildings in town where we were to finish. an and I went meandering and looking for where the railroad station would have been. There was a young girl back there walking her dog or something, and we asked if she knew. We got an answer that the line used to go out back, but we soon got to realizing that we knew more than most of the locals we'd talk to would know.

We headed out toward the point where we knew the railraod came into town, and we were able to narrow down exactly where the station was using a few different historic photos of the area. As soon as we had one photo of the station with the background determined, we were able to figure out the angles of all of the historic station photos. It was close to where they store salt and stuff in the municipal lot there.

We walked around and got all of the shots of the former station, site, and then went back around the back where the others were waiting. We headed from there down to the McArdles Pub in Moselem Springs for some food to close out another fun and informative day.