This website has been archived from TrainWeb.org/eastpenn to TrainWeb.US/eastpenn.
MARCH 24, 1998 |
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EASTERN RAILROAD NEWS
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According to PENNDOT, Amtrak plans to replace about 75,000 ties on the Philadelphia-Harrisburg line between April and October. No rail replacement is contemplated at this time. He said the tie work would be concentrated in the Paoli area and west of Downingtown. Don't know if this will do anything to upgrade the 60-70 MPH top speed that has been in effect west of Lancaster for the past ten years. Anyway, it appears that PENNDOT and Amtrak are playing with a limited budget that will not result in any true high speed service over this corridor until another source of funding (possibly the reauthorized ISTEA) is developed. -Andy Kirk
An unfavorable ruling from the arbitrator in the Bethlehem Steel Coke Works hearing, gives the "go-ahead" to shut down the coke furnaces. The process of shutting down was started yesterday with an anticipated completion date of March 31, 1998. No buyer had submitted a bid before the Bethlehem Steel deadline and no extensions were given to a straggler who did become interested when the deadline had passed. This brings to the end a long chapter in coke producing history. - Kevin Burkholder
COKE'S EARLY DAYS A GAMBLE
The news that Bethlehem Steel Corp. is likely to close its coke works marks the end of an era that spans most of the 20th century.
In 1908-- 90 years ago -- Charles M. Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel, visited Germany. His trip combinedd a passion for German music with a burning interest in the new technology of coke-making being perfected by the scientists and industrial technicians of Kaiser Wilhelm's empire.
Schwab was no stranger to coke. The byproduct of soft or bituminous coal, it had become the favorite blast furnace fuel of the Pittsburgh steel maker Andrew Carnegie and spawned a generation of millionaires.
Crazed Pittsburgh playboy Harry K. Thaw, who shot society architect Stanford White over show girl Evelyn Nesbit in 1906, got a good chunk of his income from investments in coke works.
But American coke production tended to be wasteful. The German firm Didier-March had discovered how to capture the gases and other byproducts of coke and make them useful. This had a particular attraction for Schwab who was looking for new products to make his company more profitable.
Bethlehem Steel traditionally had used anthracite or hard coal. It was more plentiful in the East than bituminous and since 1840 had been a major industrial fuel. The Lehigh Valley Railroad, the driving force behind the creation of Bethlehem Iron, predecessor of Bethlehem Steel, owned extensive anthracite coal mine properties.
Although it had mixed some coke with anthracite since the 1870s, few in Bethlehem Steel's leadership had been willing to go all the way with it.
Schwab, a gambler by nature, was willing to take the risk.
He contracted with Didier-March to build a coke works in Bethlehem. It would be owned by the German company and have a daily coke production capacity of 2,000 tons. Germany's Deutsche Bank was brought in to help with the financing. By 1910, the facility was incorporated; it was fully operational by 1912.
No one in Bethlehem could have known in 1912 that two years later Europe would be engulfed in World War I. At first this made little difference at Bethlehem Steel's Didier-March Coke Works. But as the steel company became a major source of arms for the Allies, the situation changed. In 1915 Schwab rejected an offer by Germany to buy Bethlehem Steel.
By early 1917 it was becoming clear that America was about to join the Allies. If that happened, all property belonging to Germans would come under the control of the government's alien property custodian -- a former congressman from Northampton County and later U.S. attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer.
Fearing it would get nothing for its property if it were taken over by the government in March 1917, a month before the United States entered the war, Didier-March sold the coke works to Bethlehem Steel for $8 million.
The coke works was enlarged several times over the years, especially during World War II.
It served not only to fuel Bethlehem Steel's blast furnaces but also its byproducts helped make everything from fertilizer to moth balls. Charles Schwab's gamble had paid off. -from the Allentown Morning Call, Carl Perelman
The following list was
compiled by Conrail Technical Society to trace who is leasing Conrail power:
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Please check this location daily, as new information will be posted, as it becomes available. If you have news to report or information regarding railroads in the Eastern United States, please send e-mail to Kevin Burkholder at KBurkholder@psghs.edu |