Adjacent to the western side of the station inTobyhanna was a switch-back track arrangement to a "house" track ending just short of the station. In 1975 this track was used for loading of pulpwood logs into gondolas using front-end loaders with pincer claws. In addition, a remnant of the helper wye off the westward main was being used for unloading of telephone poles at a Bell Telephone facility about 300 feet back from the mainline. In 1979, Dominic Keating shot several photos of the log loading from a Conrail local as it was switching the facility, and in 1975 Lou Schultheis took photos of an EL local switching at the station.
Following are Dominic Keating's photos from July 15, 1979:
Approaching the switchback
The area west of the
station, with loading area to the extreme right
Lou Schultheis took these two shots of the switching operation in the winter of 1975:
Looking west from the
station. Note the third track.
I'm still a bit uncertain about the operation and the industries. The track diagram in Bill Shepard's book "Schematic Track Diagrams of the Erie Lackawanna Railway" show an industry labelled "Chipco" where I'm told the Bell Telephone facility was, and Lou Schultheis' photos seem to show bulkhead flats being switched into or out of the west Wye leg in 1975. However, Dominic Keating remembers the two operations as being concurrent, and his photos show the gondola loading operation.
Could the telephone poles have been delivered on bulkhead flats? If so, why was the siding labelled "Chipco" on the track schematic? Were the locomotives in Lou Schultheis' photos returning from the crossovers west of the station after working the station "house" tracks (which were off the eastward main track)? Did the operations here change so significantly with the advent of Conrail that the pulpwood loading was moved to the station track? Any help is appreciated!