They were taken about two days after a railroad accident at Brandtsville, a railroad station between Carlisle and Dillsburg PA.  At the time this was a busy track and the railroad quickly cleaned up enough to restore the track and get traffic moving again on one track.  This accounts for both the smoke coming from some of the wreckage, the crane and the piles of trucks in the one picture.  

Map from Google Earth

Looking at the map Carlisle is to the left and up, Dillsburg to the right and down.   The map is from Google Earth with a path drawn on it to show the area of the wreck.  This was the second wreck in this area in less than 10 years and there was another bad one some years later.  The road along the railroad track is called York Road.  It begins in York as Carlisle Road and passed through Rossville, Dover, Dillsburg and Brandtsville,  on it’s way to Carlisle.  In Rossville the name changes.   The building between the tracks and the York Road near the center of the picture is the old Brandtsville Railroad station.  These were not unusual in farm country.  Trains stopped for passengers, and to load and unload freight.  Brandtsville had a siding that cars could be pushed off on to allow the train to continue while they were unloaded and loaded.  That siding is still there, the switch still in the line to allow shunting off cars but a derailer sits on the siding to derail anything that would go on that track.  You would think that railroads would want to keep cars on the track not derail them.  But at one time the siding had a bumper, a device to stop a car if it got to the end.  That has rusted away and without it cars would just go off the end and out on the road if accidentally shunted there.  The bumper was replaced by the derailer.  Imagine coming across the bridge on York Road from Carlisle and have a railroad car come off the end of the siding in front of you.  It could ruin your whole day!

I found a picture of a bonafide Derailer. Note the red piece will both divert the wheel and raise the flange on the wheel to effect a derailment.  It is locked to prevent it being deactivated.  This is on the siding that remains at the Brandtsville site.  It will be needed for parking supply and recovery cars including cranes if there is another derailmant in this area.  They are thinking ahead.

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This shows the line leading up to the accident area.  In fact many of the derailed cars were between the curve and the place I stood to take the picture.  There were two sets of tracks at the time of the accident. One has been removed.  The dual tracks shown in the foreground is a switch that allows diverting to the siding that has the derailer above.  It is to the right of this picture.  Note the little green sign which tells the switch is in the open position for through traffic. Also if you look carefully you will note that the through line is polished steel, the siding rails are rusty from lack of use.

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This shows the accident scene. The building was once a bustling train station.  The trees in the background were not there at the time of the accident.

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This home was there at the time of the accident and remains today.  It is one of two that were in the area at the time.  These houses narrowly escaped the fire – partly because the fire companies hosed them to prevent them catching fire in the heat.  The occupants were evacuated before the chlorine tanker ruptured and spread the deadly gas.  It bleached and killed corn in the adjacent field.

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The above is a picture of the main line (note the polished rail) with spikes not driven home or more likely working out.  This weakens the track structure. A few like this isn’t a problem as there is a safety margin.  Many of us thought the reason for the repeated accidents was something like this. Note that the rail is welded to the left of the picture, something that makes a smoother ride and if done properly is stronger however sufficient expansion joint space is needed to handle temperature change..

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This is on the siding and is far less important but it sets a tone.  The fish plate (the term for the piece under the rail that the spikes go through) has no spikes in it.  The wire on the rail is to make electrical continuity through the rail, something the railroad uses for many things including warning of approaching trains.  Aa an example, a recent fatal accident in the Washington DC subway system was caused by a voltage being set too high – the train did not short it to low enough to signal it was coming.  The plate with the bolts allows for expansion as mentioned above. 

The force of the accident can be seen in the following pictures.  

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You can see the torn up track under the cars, the newly constructed track with the new ballast and the damaged cars pushed back far enough to clear trains.

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Here is one of the things EMS units fear, the tank car. One of the tanks involved was loaded with Chlorine which escaped.  A second was loaded with Propane which escaped and exploded.   The crane in the background is working to clear the accident.

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This shows the bottom of one of the tanks.  Note that the trucks (the wheels and the holders for them) are missing and framework is bent.  The the tank was then on its own and it was breached.

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Here you see another tank and the crane.  Note the cars along the road.  These are mid 50’s ford and Chevrolet. I believe the one on the left edge is a Buick, possibly 53 or 54.  This is York Road.  The chimney of the railroad station can be seen just above the Buick.

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Some of the cars were pushed into the creek by the accident.  This one still smolders

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This is another view of the two cars in the previous picture.  Look under the car to the left you will see bent railroad rails.  These are solid steel.

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The trucks of the damaged cars were stacked to later be hauled away.  For now the main thrust was to get the traffic flowing.  To do that the crane had to clear the area to replace the track and a switch and siding had to be fixed to get the crane out of the main line so it could be used for through traffic.

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Note the wheels of the box car under it, the axle is broken.  These axles are 4-6 inch diameter steel.

Although there were three accidents on this small stretch the reason for all three accidents was faulty rolling stock, i.e. one of the trucks or axles on one of the cars failed, not the track.  Put another way, these accidents could have happened somewhere else.  That somewhere else could have been in a town or populated area not out where there were only two homes close by at the time.  

Emergency and Disaster services see a rail line as a disaster waiting to happen.

Other articles and pictures by Ralph Brandt

Episcopal Church: York Springs, PA

Once a Church in York Springs, PA

Dr. Flickinger Home and Office: York Springs, PA

Smiling Female Biker at Gettysburg Bike Race

Home and Office in York Springs Pa

President Obama, a Victim of The Right

Obama – Misuse of Presidential Power

This is not a joke.  The quaint home pictured below is directly across the street from the one above.  I have been asked if this home was occupied and I can honestly say I am not sure.  This area was at one time a back woods area but today people have built very nice homes in the area and at times they are cited next to or close to some of the older homes.  It is interesting to note that some of the older residents of these areas complain about the encrochament in their areas where they could ten years ago pretty much do as they please.  If they killed a deer, in or out of season, they could hang it in front of the home to dress it and nobbody would bother them or even consider callling the game warden.  With all of this ‘civulization’ as they pronounce it, you aren’t allowed to shoot a deer, even in season.  One resident of another area like this told me, “They call this civilization?  I think not.  You can shoot a person and get away with it but you can’t shoot a deer for food.”  And he has a point.

This is not a joke. 

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Historic exchange building.

This will amaze some who know what CO buildings generally look like but this was the telephone exchange building in 1956.  Both of my older sisters worked here as telephone operators for a few years after they graduated in 1954 and 5.   I am not sure what year the dial replaced the operators but it was before I graduated from High School in 1961.  This exchange handled both regular phones and Magneto phones.  The Magneto phones are the ones which you saw on Mayberry and Petticoat Junction TV shows.  We actually had a magneto phone for over five years in the home where I grew up.  The last magneto phones in the US were phased out in the early 1970’s.  The board is in the Bell Museum in Springfield IL, set up with a mannequin in period dress.   It was actually more primitive than the boards in Mt. Holly Springs.  This exchange was different from Mt. Holly in one way, all the lines on it were magneto and it was operated by a small company that had only that exchange.   Mt. Holly was operated by United Telephone (Embarque for this month) and provided exchance support for the area.

For the regular phones the caller lifted the receiver, a light came on the board and the operator plugged into it.  On the magneto lines the light lit when they cranked the phone.  Our number was 906R11 that meant we were on line 906 which we shared with about 25 other parties.  There were really not 900 lines, the magnetos were all 900 series and they were grouped on one row on the board.  The 11 after the R in the number meant a call for us had one long and one short ring.  Moose’s store was 906R41, four longs and one short.

We heard the rings for everyone who got a call.  Imagine the privacy nuts going bananas if that happened today.  We were just about five miles from the exchange.  That was ten miles of number 18 copper wire per line and two insulators on a crossbar every five hundred or so feet.  That is ten poles a mile or fifty poles and 100 insulators for each line.   If the number of wires exceeded ten, or five lines the second crossbar was needed on every pole.  The crossbars were nearly six feet.  Fifty of them make quite a pile of lumber.  So everyone in an area was on one line to keep the line costs down.  We didn’t have an option when we got the first phone unless we wanted to pay the construction cost for a line to be run the full five miles.  The wire for that today would easily cost $1500 and the insulators another $500.  Labor today would be easily $10,000.   We would be looking at $1500 for the line at best, about a quarter of the price of some homes in the area at that time.  The 906 line actually covered two side roads from Route 94 Victory Church Road and Smith Road.  They added together another three miles of wire.

This was before the days of 911.  Fire calls went to the telephone operator.  In the back of the exchange room was a box that turned on the siren to alert the volunteer firemen.  They didn’t have radios at that time, they would pick up a phone, give the operator a password and the operator would give the location to them. 

As a 13 year old boy I was interested in electronics and got a chance to be in the exchange late one evening for a couple of hours and got to see the operation of the board and actually handled several calls.  They chose the time after the call volume fell off.  The back wall of the room had a string of 24 glass case lead acid batteries that provided power if the commercial power failed.  The staffing of the boards (there were three actual boards ganged together) varied from one person overnight to up to three in the late afternoon and early evening.   Each board had cord pairs that were used to connect calls.  Each line terminated at a jack with a light below it.   When someone picked up the phone on a line the light lit.  The operator would pick up the one cord, plug it in, flip one of the three switches (called keys) to the position to allow her to hear that end of the cord and said, “Number please”.   If the number was on her board she took the other plug of the pair, checked that the line was not busy and inserted the plug.  She then threw the key on the called line to ring and did the ringing.  If she flipped the key the wrong way the caller got the ring in his ear.  When the person answered she turned set the keys to connect the parties.  When they hung up the lights on both lines would flash.  At that point you would pull down both cords.  They retracted into the board.  If the call was not to a line on her board she would either reach across to connect it if it was near or hand the plug to the adjacent operator if the cord would reach. If not she would use a cross patch.  This was a set of twenty lines that appeared on boards one to three.  She would plug into an open one, the light would go on for the operator at the other end and she would take the number, the first operator would set the line through and clear the call.  The second operator would complete it with a second set of cords.  These calls took nearly twice as much intervention.  If the call went outside the exchange there were trunks much like the crosspatch except these went to Carlisle.  An operator there would connect to it when the light went on.  The operator there would then connect to the outside world.   Even Boiling Springs which was five miles away went through Carlisle.  A call to New York took as many as five operators to complete.  Toll tickets were recorded manually by the operators.

When United Telephone prepared to go to dial service they had to buy out the incumbents who had provided magneto service and replace the lines and phones that were compatible.  They installed about ten miles of 50 or 100 pair cable on the path. They installed phones that support the dial service with the replacement of a blank faceplate with a dial.  Our phone number became 234J2.  Mt. Holly at that time had less than 300 lines (they fit on three boards in the exchange).  There were three other parties on the line, 234J1, 234R1 and 234R2.  If someone called us the operator would plug into their line, take our number, take the other plug on that cord pair, plug it into line 234, switch the ringer to our side of the cord and pull the ring key toward her in two ring patterns.  If the call had been to J1 on our line she would have pulled it toward herself in patterns of one long ring.   If the call were to the R2 party she would have pushed the ring key away from her in two ring patterns.  We could only hear the J rings, the R parties could only hear the R rings but only one party could use the line at a time. These lines had up to eight parties and continued to have them after the dial conversion for some time. 

When the dial conversion occurred the CO moved to a more “CO looking” building in the alley behind the old exchange.   The exchange name was Hunter six (today 486).   One exchange name allows for up to 10,000 lines.  Mt. Holly is still probably within that number but is probably getting close.  At one time these were seriously hardened buildings but as time went on the accountants got into the act and the reliability of phone service during natural disasters has deteriorated.  Total failure of telephone, cellular, and emergency services radio systems in New Orleans only made Katrina more of a disaster.  If you look at this building it is built like the proverbial brick outhouse.

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The First Holly Dial CO

40° 6′55.89″N  77°11′23.86″W

This has been replaced, almost certainly for space reasons by a new and larger CO building along Pine Street but it is within two blocks of the original exchange.  Keeping it close made extending the existing lines to it easier and less costly.  To give an idea of the growth there were less than 75 phones on three lines that extend about five miles south on routes 34 and 94 in 1956.  There were about twenty magneto lines then with over 430 phones.  Today the number of phones will easily exceed ten times that number and more important almost all if not all are on private lines.  This means that those 4000 phones are not on 200 lines but 4000.   In 1950 not every home had a phone, in fact it was probably less than one in five.  A few years ago few homes didn’t.  The trend today is for some homes to have only cellular but that is only a small percentage.   If you are considering cell keep in mind that will be your emergency phone and it must be kept live and locatable.  Most still depend on two copper wires into the home to provide phone service, not far from the technology of early phone systems.

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The Current Mt. Holly CO.

This road is called Whiskey Spring road because many farmers in the area turned their corn into whiskey before taking it to market– it was easier and cheaper to transport in that form and brought more money.   This spring was on the road across the mountain, it was a place the farmers could stop, get a drink, water the horses and rest them before the hard pull over the mountain that goes up several hundred feet in a short distance.  The picture above shows the view of the road from the spring. 

Often whiskey was hidden in the woods above the spring if the farmers learned that the federals were in the area checking.The area behind the spring is rocky and rugged as shown in this view.

Here is the spring, not an impressive thing but it was the focus of this. A wider view of it is below.

Fifty years ago this was back woods, now it is the fancy digs of those who can afford to put nearly a mill into housing.  Look at this house through the woods.

The Adams, Cumberland county area still had moonshiners with working stills in the area in the 1960’s – a check of records of that time will show at least one found and the operator arrested near Aspers PA. 

The still was illegally on the property of the company my dad worked for and he found it while checking the water ponds – the man operating the still had a pipe into the pond and a battery pump to pull water for mash and cooling the still out of the pond.  My dad got a chance to see the still before it was dynamited and was pretty sure he knew the welder who built it for the moonshiner.  He worked as a welder for the company my dad worked for!  My dad told me, there are few welders who did that good of work in the area and could also do the brazing of the copper container for the actual still.  Building the still was not illegal, making moonshine is.  If he was right the man who built it went to school with me and grew up within two miles of where I did.