While not strictly a "preservation topic", I'd like to learn more about the scrapyard run by Luria Bros., Modena, Pennsylvania. I know this particular branch of Luria Company cut up Reading, CNJ, Long Island, and Pennsy locomotives. An older railfan has told me there were enormous fence gaps alongside the tree line, and one could easily walk through the place.
I have a number plate taken from a locomotive which was scrapped at that location.
Does anyone have further information regarding that scrapping location? What's there today?

Good Afternoon!

Put this into your Google Maps: 39.96222011690926, -75.79299431202033

It was in the grass field south of Mortonville Road, north of the creek, and east of the ex Reading Wilmington & Northern line.

Was a BIG environmental clean up site: https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/CurSi ... colid=6569

I believe you can add NH and Southern engines to the list. Let me poke around for more info.

Joshua

Thanks, Josh! Yes, New Haven for certain.

A bunch of us went out to Modena in the early 1980's with the intent to locate "stuff" that might be leftover from scraping ...nothing of any value found but lots of oil soaked ground and asbestos chunks. tracks were pulled up.







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Precisely my thinking, that some bits of steam, things one might recognize, were dropped and buried. Alas, as a Superfund site, I believe the top three feet of soil was scraped off and taken to a burial pit. If anything remained, it too was carried away to a "secure, undisclosed, location".

In 1980 or 81, I saw a group of Amtrak E8/E9's leaving Reading on the Coatesville Turn. I Photographed what I could of them in the small yard at South Modena.

I have a photo of one of the NYS&W Streamliners awaiting its end there. Fred Heilich

Back in the late 60's early 70's there was a strong rumor that one of the owners there had saved lots of steam jewelry ( bells, whistles, number plates, class lights etc.) and was storing them in a large barn on his farm not far from the junkyard.

I could never determine if it was just bs or true.

Ross Rowland

Off topic, but Union Pacific operated a good sized roundhouse in Provo, UT that was also used by the Utah Railway. The foamer urban legend was that when the roundhouse was torn down, all of the steam parts it housed were dumped into the pits and buried. FWIW.

My Pop, NYCRR fireman/engineer (1941-1989) watched from the cab on a nearby track as the NYCRR took all the "steam tools/parts" (flue rollers, flue cutters, brushes, wrenches, packing, etc) from one of the Buffalo NY roundhouses and threw them into the turntable pit (the turntable bridge was already cut up and scrapped). Then they bulldozed the brick roundhouse walls into the pit to cover it all up.

Steam loco tools, appliances, etc had zero value back then and the NYCRR was trying to get every bit of taxable real estate off the tax rolls to survive. Getting that roundhouse demolished was worth way more savings in tax expenses than a bunch of obsolete tools/parts.

New York State taxed the railroads for every "improvement" on their property. They got taxed for 10 acres of land with tracks on it and taxed for the 3 signal masts on that ten acres of land, and for every turnout on the tracks on that ten acres of land and taxed double if there was a double track line on that 10 acres of land....

The NYCRR could survive that when times where good (1920's) but by the later 1950's they where trying to survive by cutting every expense possible.

In April, 1961, Reading Co. ran an Iron Horse Ramble to Wilmington (Elsmere Jct. to be exact). A local guy had boarded in Birdsboro and as we passed South Modena (Luria's yard was full of tank cars) the guy remarked "I can't believe I'm going through Modena behind a steam engine." The engine was 2124; we came back behind a different steam engine, 2100. You couldn't turn a T-1 at RDG Wilmington.

Phil Mulligan

You can also add Virginian steam to that list.
I have photos of VGN steam ready for scrap there.
Ken Miller

Not just steam locomotives, but plenty of other stuff: New Haven electrics, NH Alco DL-109s, many passenger and head-end cars from different roads, and loads of freight cars. Modena is close to Coatesville; did the scrap from Luria Bros feed the Lukens Steel mill at Coatesville? Luria did have additional locations (Chicago, for one).

Howard P.

Luria Bros had a lot of locations and scrapped many steam locomotives. They have a former location near where I live in Indiana, and it has not been used for years because of pollution. It also feed a nearby steel mill.

The Luria site in Modena specialized in supplying scrap steel to the Lukens mill in Coatesville.

Lukens (now Cleveland-Cliffs) produces specialty steel and has preferred scrap to new steel as they can control the metallurgy better.

The railroad Coatesville-Birdsboro is abandoned, except to a quarry South of Birdsboro, where PRR H3 2-8-0 1187 (at RRMPA) may have operated in the 1930's before PRR bought it back for its historical collection.

Coatesville-Modena is Brandywine Valley RR
Modena-Elsmere Jct. is East Penn Rys
Elsmere Jct-Wilmington is CSX.

Lukens is also served by NS with trackage rights over Amtrak.

Phil Mulligan