Steve Gilbert and Mike Spock.
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on June 20, 2021.
Writing and Photos by Wes Cipolla
MINERSVILLE - When he looks out at the rusted and destroyed locomotives outside the Port Clinton Railroad Station, Nick Spock sees “pre-planned obsolescence.” The locomotives were never meant to last forever - they were destined to be replaced by the bigger, better, newer models. It was Saturday and Spock, 59, was standing in passenger car 304 of the Reading, Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad with his friend Steve Gilbert of Robesonia. Outside the window, a crew was servicing Locomotive 113, the mammoth black engine that powered Car 304 and several others. 113 was built for the Central Railroad of New Jersey in 1923. It was purchased by Reading Anthracite in the 1950s and stored in Locust Summit. There, it lay abandoned until 1991, when a group of local railroad enthusiasts began the grueling work of restoring 113 to its former glory.
Jake Pothering inside Locomotive 113.
“It’s a great feeling, because it’s all preserved,” said Spock, from Shamokin, as the beastly locomotive screamed and hissed. “It’s a way to preserve what once was, and keep it around for people in the future.”
“It’s just the fun of watching old equipment operating rather than staying stationary, dormant, cold,” Gilbert said.
Spock and Gilbert were two of many passengers on the Railway Restoration Project 113’s afternoon pig roast and train excursion from Minersville to Port Clinton and back. The excursion was a fundraiser for Chris Bost, a member of “the old 113 crew.” Bost, of Leesport, worked on the 113 for 30 years until January, when he was diagnosed with a nerve disease called chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP).
“He did everything,” Spock said. “He’d run steam locomotives on the New Hope and Ivy Run Railroad. They don’t just give you the keys to that stuff unless you are seriously qualified.”
Both Spock and Gilbert are volunteers at Hamburg’s Reading Railroad Heritage Museum and personal friends of Bost.
“He’s a good friend,” Spock said. Spock and Bost have known each other for 25 years. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why a lot of people are here. He has a nice, dry sense of humor. Very quiet and laid-back, and then he’ll come out with the zinger that has everyone laughing.”
When Spock gives his name, he makes Leonard Nimoy’s famous “live long and prosper” gesture from “Star Trek.” The shirt he was wearing was a reminder of how small we are in the universe - a map of the Milky Way Galaxy and an arrow pointed at the edge: “you are here.” To sit next to him on a train trip is to sit next to a treasure trove of local industrial history and railroad culture. He eats his breakfast on Pullman car china. Such china was once manufactured in New Castle, he said, but the factory closed and was left to rot, china and all.
“You could drive out now and fill your car with whatever you wanted,” he said.
On our journey Spock pointed out old railroad stations and bridges that used to have tracks on them “back in the day.” That is what Spock calls the era when the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad was so powerful that it could alter the flow of the Schuylkill River for the sake of maximum efficiency. He bragged about how the Reading Railroad was the first railroad in the country to warn crossers to “stop, look and listen.” He recalled 1918, the year that the anthracite industry was at its peak due to World War I-induced coal shortages in Europe.
“They were busy killing each other so they couldn’t mine coal,” he said. “Every year after 1918 was downward.”
Spock’s historical knowledge goes back far, to a time when even the railroad secretaries were men. He told of James L. Holton, the renowned historian of the Reading Railroad, whose father did not want him to work there because it was a “dying industry.” He talked about “old age stuff” with Gilbert and reminisced about his own life, “once upon a time,” when he was a young journalist reporting on a murder next to the zinc foundry in Palmerton. Neighbors had an argument and one of them “settled it with a shotgun.”
“I remember a hot summer day,” Spock said. “It wasn’t ketchup that was on the streets.”
Spock is a living dictionary of railroad slang. Engineers like Bost are “hoggers,” passenger cars like the one we were riding in are “varnish” and the conductor is… well, that one isn’t appropriate to say out loud. Spock’s G-rated term for conductors is “kings of the train.” He told a story about an old Reading Railroad conductor who conducted the famous “King Coal” passenger train. Even as it became harder and harder for him to walk up and down the train, he refused to retire. His children gave him two choices - retire, or they would tell his doctor to make a call to the railroad. He retired.
Conductor Briar Stern doesn’t feel like a king.
“I’m just glad to be able to donate my time to do everything towards Chris,” he said. “This is what built the country,” Stern said, “and it’s something we need to respect and keep alive.”
Briar Stern watches the servicing of Locomotive 113.
Stern was in Port Carbon, watching the grease-stained 113 crew work on the locomotive. Chris Bost was also watching, sitting in his wheelchair in the locomotive shop. When he saw the arms of the passengers come out of the windows, clamoring for a view of the 113, he was overwhelmed. They had all come out to support him.
“I’ve always wanted to work on the railroad since I was five years old,” Bost said. “I get a lot of satisfaction seeing something restored and brought back to life.”
CIPD cannot be cured, but it can be treated. At the current rate of treatment, Bost will likely be back on his feet in one or two years.
“Hopefully then I can go back to work,” Bost said. “I’m not ready to retire yet.”
Chris Bost watches the servicing of Locomotive 113 from the Port Clinton Locomotive Shop.
Restoring a locomotive like 113 takes a lot of manpower and a lot of donations. It’s not easy finding parts for such an old model - most are custom-made.
“I see some paint it can use,” Gilbert said as he looked out the window. “It’s a very large switcher on very small driver wheels. I ran that thing several times years ago. It’s a very tight little cab. You squeeze in there with those small wheels and you bounce in there, it’s kind of a rough ride. I admire the guys who did that 12 hours a day.”
When 113 was ready for the second leg of its journey, Car 304 was on a 100-year-old turntable, which Spock was proud to say still worked.
“These people I know as well as my immediate family,” he said. “We hang out together, we restore together. We attend people’s weddings, sadly we’ve been attending people’s funerals.”
On the way back to Minersville, 113 rode over the muddy West Branch of the Schuylkill River, through ferny forests and the overpass scrawled with obscene graffiti, past strip malls and above-ground swimming pools and statues of deer and highways and railfans - men and women, young and old, who gathered on the side of the tracks to photograph the train passing by. Some were holding up their dogs so they could get a closer look. Spock calls them (the humans, not the dogs) “foamers,” because they’re “foaming at the mouth” to see the trains.
“Depending on how you use it,” he said, “it’s either with affection or with contempt.”
It started to rain, fat and heavy drops that replaced the soot cascading down the partition between cars. Those standing on the outdoor gondola cars (which Spock pronounces “gon-dough-la”) were drenched. Outside the train it smelled like the ocean. The cars were getting hungry, eager for the promise of pork back in Minersville.
“I’m ready to eat some P-I-G pig!” Gilbert said.
His fellow passengers agreed.