2102 chase from Reading to Jim Thorpe, and railfanning around Jim Thorpe.
In the hot summer of July 2014, Frank Bartus (FABartus) and I traveled to this region and stayed in Jim Thorpe. He had some other business in the area and asked me to join him on the trip rather than drive alone. We're about 400 miles north of this area and the ride is less than fun due to the traffic in Hartford, CT and Scranton, PA. The Lehigh Gorge area is where the famous anthracite coal was discovered and took the sleepy hill towns and turned them into coal towns. The industry is pretty much dead now after people switched from heating their homes with coal to burning oil and natural gas. There were many rail lines in the area but many are gone now. Today, the RBM&N runs the freight in the area after Conrail gave up the lines it inherited from the Lehigh Valley, Reading, and Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ).