2011 Road Trip – Railroad Depots (#2)

As we continued our road trip north through central Pennsylvania along US 11, we kept our eyes open for additional old railroad depots to add to my photo collection.  What we found was one success story plus a story of slow decline toward oblivion.

We’ll start out on a positive note!  This is the well preserved depot in Duncannon Pennsylvania.  It’s now an office and payment center for Blue Ridge Communication.  The Pennsylvania Railroad built this station as well as 4 others in a similar style, beginning in around 1900 and ending ca. 1910.  The other depots constructed in this architectural style are located in Alexandria Virginia, Chester and Irwin Pennsylvania and in Elizabeth New Jersey. 

Duncannon welcomed its first locomotive in July of 1849.  At first, there was just a single track with 2 passenger trains each way every day plus 3 freight trains each week.  Currently, the Norfolk Southern and Amtrak pass by the old station on a regular basis.  The old station is located on a mainline and Duncannon has become something of a train spotter’s ‘go to’ location.  Just go to ‘Duncannon’ and ‘railroads’ on the Internet…and there are several blogs about trains…to include a number of videos.

Then there is the sad looking structure shown above.  This is also a former Pennsylvania Railroad Depot and it’s located in Selinsgrove.  This depot was built in 1905 and it was expanded in 1923.  The first depot was built after the Middle Creek Railroad began construction of this section of its line in 1871. 

In 2001, the Borough of Selinsgrove purchased this depot from Norfolk Southern for $35,000.  The plan was to convert the building to accommodate the police department.  In 2002, the building was put up for auction after the Borough determined that refurbishing the structure would be too costly.  Apparently, there was a plan for a restaurant to be opened in the depot, but that plan also failed.

Selinsgrove was founded in 1787.  The first woman to be elected both as Governor and as a US Senator, Jeanne Shaheen, was born here.  So was Joseph Coxey, the populist who headed “Coxey’s Army” of unemployed workers on the first violent protest march on Washington, D.C.  Most interesting of all, on 4/30/88, the longest banana split on record was ‘built’ in Selinsgrove!  It was 4.55 miles long and used 33,000 bananas, 2,500 gallons of ice cream and 600 lbs. of nuts.

Just click on any photo to enlarge it…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave