Steamtown, the railfan's delight

Back in the 1950's  F. Nelson Blount, a New England railfan with money, started a collection of steam engines.  That decade the railroads were scrapping steamers and replacing them with diesels, so there were plenty of used steamers available for scrap metal prices.  Nelson collected a lot of 'em and parked them in Vermont at Bellows Falls.  I saw them in Vermont nearly fifty years ago.  Sometime after Nelson's death the collection of rusty iron got moved to Scranton PA, and the National Park Service stepped up and is now running it.  The park ranger conducting the engine shop tour explained about how 2009 Porkulus money went to fixing leaks in their roundhouse roof. 
   I decided to vary my flight plan down to DC and take in Scranton.  As long as I had the car loaded and going, why not go a little bit round about and take in Steamtown?  The road to Scranton is I84 which starts in Hartford, Conn, and goes west, crossing the Hudson north of NYC at Newburg and getting to Scranton some 73 miles later.  The Connecticut portion of I84 winds thru the Berkshire mountains, and is narrower and curvier than most interstates.  Once across the PA border, the road gets wider and straighter and pretty much like all the rest of the interstates.  The 40 miles from the PA border need to be repaved.  Getting closer to Scranton, it has been repaved and is very decent. 
   They say the US economy is still in recession.  The amount of semi trailer truck traffic on I84 is astounding, recession or no recession.  Awful lot of 57 foot trailers loaded with stuff, barreling along, going somewhere.  Brand new shiny tractors, Mack, Peterbuilt, Kenworth, White, all worth probably $70K apiece or better.  There may not be any jobs in this economy, but it's still producing a lot of stuff.
    Steamtown is the old Lackawanna rail yard.  They have a few steamers all repainted and looking ready to run, and a lot more looking terribly rusty, paint mostly gone.  They have maybe ten in the shop in various phases of rebuild.  They don't have any steamers still running, the excursion train was pulled by an Electro-Motive GP-7, painted for the Nickel Plate Road.  I walked down to Steamtown from the motel around 9:30, and stayed on my feet til I got back to the motel at 3PM.  Feet are still sore.
  All in all, a fun day.