The two hottest trains on the Lehigh Valley were the intermodal Apollo and manifest Mercury, both running between Oak Island and Buffalo with no yard work along the way. If they were on time, both eastbound and westbound versions of these trains ran through eastern Pennsylvania nocturnally. On the last Saturday before the Lehigh Valley vanished into history, I negotiated with my parents for the use of one of the family cars to spend the day photographing the LV. Somehow, I learned that both the eastbound Apollo-2 and the eastbound Mercury-2 were running late. Not yet knowing the locations along the original LV main, I made an unsuccessful attempt at the Apollo at Treichler, which was the proper LV name of the location of the across the river from Treichlars on the CNJ. I then moved to Laurys Station to shoot the 87-car Mercury-2. My vivid memory of this experience is how those piggyback trailers were rocking as the train barreled toward me, and how I was going to explain to my father why the car, which was parked between me and the tracks, had been totaled when the derailment occurred. I have no doubt that the cast-iron crossbucks were clipped by a previous piggyback. If you look under the pilot of the lead unit, you can see a low rail joint that typified the state of the Lehigh Valley’s physical plant.
