Lock Haven Hammermill Paper Mill Questions

[conrail98]

I am researching the Hammermill paper plant at Lock Haven. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a lot only about it other than the Agnes flood and strikes.

1. What was the purpose/make-up of the HPA-1 and HPA-2 between Hammermill's Lock Haven and Erie plants? I've heard logs one way and chips/pulp the other. Did they load logs at Lock Haven, along the route? And did they send back hoppers of chips and boxcars of pulp bales?

2. In Conrail's ZTS maps I obtained, they refer to the In/Out tracks on the north side of the Bald Eagle Branch as the "NL Mill" and the two into the building on the south side of the tracks as the "CL Mill". What does each of those mean and did it dictate the type of cars going into the "CL Mill".

3. If chips were sent back, were they unloaded inside a building, I assume, since it would've been too cold to do that, either through hatch release or dumper?

Any other information on that or the Bald Eagle Brach/Lock Haven area operations would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Phil

[R L Smith]

Perhaps contact the Clinton Central Model RR Club, located near Loch Haven. I suspect one or more members could have useful information.  www.ccmrr.org

[conrail98]

Perhaps contact the Clinton Central Model RR Club, located near Loch Haven. I suspect one or more members could have useful information.  www.ccmrr.org

Thanks, sent them an email,

Phil

[pjm20]

According to PC Post from January 1972:
"He's hauling an average of 30 empties plus 12 cars loaded with bales of pulp processed in the Erie plant. Traveling via Buffalo, then south into timber country, the train drops off empties at points where they can be moved to the forest collection points, and at the same time cars loaded with pulpwood are picked up. The carloads of pulp from Erie are delivered to Lock Haven, where Hammermill has a big paper mill. Returning from Lock Haven is UHP-1, with carloads of pulpwood, some of which has been ground up into chips at two locations equipped with such machinery. The train scoots north to Buffalo, then west to Erie. There the wood and chips are scooped out into big stockpiles that must be continuously replenished to keep the Hammermill pulp plant in constant operation."

There were 3 sets of this train, with pulpwood cars that MTL makes, tub gondolas for the chips similar to the Athearn Thrall gondola, and in the Conrail years there are boxcars present in photos. The usual power was 4x GP38-2s. If you find any other information from the Clinton club please let me know, Lock Haven is only 35 minutes away from where I grew up and it is on my modeling periphery.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

@randgust just recently posted about some of the details of the train. You can dig through his recent posts to find his great writeup.

[conrail98]

@randgust just recently posted about some of the details of the train. You can dig through his recent posts to find his great writeup.

Thanks Ed, I had seen his first post, not the 2nd. Based on his answers and figuring the PC operations give a base of how Conrail handled it, it looks like the pulp boxcars went to the mill in Lock Haven and the log/chip cars remained in the hard to be turned back to Erie on the outbound from the inbound,

Phil

[lock4244]

@conrail98

Image of a cutaway from an article on the Allegheny Railroad in September 1988 Trains. Accompanying image shows the CR train with it's four GP38's and a long train of 1) woodchip loads, 2) pulpwood log loads, 3) empty woodpulp gons, 4) boxcars per caption. Can only see the chips and logs in the pics, but the caption says there's gons and boxcars towards the rear.

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