We recently came across a neat little trove of documents in an old desk drawer, and we thought that some of you might appreciate our find.
Many of our longtime guests are familiar with the story of how The Station Inn got its start. Tom Davis, a retired educator living in Nutley, New Jersey, began a quest to find a perfect location for a trackside bed & breakfast. Eventually, as the story goes, he found the building at 827 Front Street in Cresson and completed purchase of the property on July 15, 1993.
Fast forward to 2022 when the Lang family purchased the Inn from the Davis family. We spent a lot of time with Tom’s brother Joe, who shared lots of great stories of Tom over the years. And Joe told us more than once about about how he and Tom celebrated the first weekend of The Station Inn, drinking too many beers and sleeping on the floors of the unfurnished building.
We’ve been gradually tidying up and organizing things around the place, when Michele found a few old papers in a desk drawer.
First, we found a pretty rare printed freight schedule that Conrail issued in May, 1993, not longer after World Famous Horseshoe Curve’s new visitors’ center and park reopened. (Read more about Horseshoe Curve!)
Conrail, like most railroads, rarely made freight train schedule information public. And, the word “schedule” should be used loosely as freight railroads regularly tweak and change these schedules, running extras or annulling trains as needed. Even still, I definitely remember many railfans treated this printed schedule as a Bible of sorts…
Next up we have a photocopied Amtrak passenger schedule for service between New York and Harrisburg, with 5 trains circled:
- 41 Westbound Broadway Limited
- 43 Westbound Pennsylvanian
- 40 Eastbound Broadway Limited
- 42 Eastbound Pennsylvanian
- 44 Sunday eastbound Pennsylvanian
I was astonished to find a few pages of notes in Tom Davis’ handwriting, and I began to realize that it was Tom’s “train log” from what must have been the first weekend after Tom moved into the Inn. It could even be from that weekend that he and Joe slept on the floor! I never knew Tom to be the serious note-taking type, not like I used to be, anyway. So this was especially interesting to see.
The first page was dated Friday July 23, with notes continuing into Sunday the 25th. Looks like Tom got his start around 10am coinciding with the eastbound Broadway Limited. I’m guessing that the notes of 8 or 9 & 11 means 8 or 9 baggage/mail and 11 coaches, as during this timeframe Amtrak was notable for handling a fair amount of freight. (The elimination of this traffic resulted in the demise of this train’s successor, the Three Rivers, in 2005).
On the 23rd Tom noted 13 movements although he went to the store mid-afternoon. A big gap in time is capped with an 11pm sighting of the westbound Broadway.
Saturday the 24th saw 15 trains noted, mostly the typical mix of “Trailvan” trains and merchandise traffic.
A quick side note – “TV” trains in 1993 were nearly all trailer-on-flat-car (TOFC). Double-stacked container trains wouldn’t make an appearance here until September, 1995 after the Pennsylvania-funded clearance project was completed.
Sunday July 25’s notes began again with the eastbound Broadway at 10:20am, including two PPLX Pennsylvania Power & Light coal trains, a stone train, and the east and westbound Amtrak Pennsylvanians which must have passed each other right around UN in Gallitzin.
At 4:40 pm Tom noted a special westbound equipment movement with construction equipment, a loader, steel beams, etc. This was likely Conrail’s OIIH-D once-weekly dimensional “high and wide” move.
I hope you had as much fun “reliving” a bit of Inn (and Conrail) history. If you’d like to see more, check out our blog post about what Conrail’s Cresson was like in the mid-1990s.
Finally, we’re biased: We agree that Tom Davis found a good thing here on the mountain. So if you’ve never visited, we hope you will. And if you’ve been here before, we’d love to have you back!
Welcoming Rail Enthusiasts and History Buffs since 1993
The Station Inn is a railroad-themed B&B located in Cresson, PA along the same busy Norfolk Southern railroad main line that traverses famous Horseshoe Curve a few miles away. Guests from far and wide stay at The Station Inn – built as the 1866 Callan House – to congregate and talk trains, explore the region’s railroad attractions, and explore local spots to watch freight trains conquer the mountain grades of the Alleghenies.