The Reading Halls Station Bridge, Pennsdale, Pensylvania

Welcome back to another edition of History in Your Own Backyard. I'm Sottoli. Today I'm in central Pennsylvania at one of the rarest bridges in the country, and Malcolm Barlow here, the owner of the bridge, is going to tell us a little bit about it. This cast iron bridge is probably the second or third oldest cast iron railroad bridge in America. It was built in 1847 by the Birdsboro Steel Company in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. And it was built for the Catowice Railroad. And over the years, the bridge has been restored many times, but always done very authentically. The bridge was moved here by the Catowice Railroad in 1895 when the locomotives became too heavy for cast iron bridges. And so it's been part of the property here on our farm since 1895. And in the meantime, though, the railroad always took care of the maintenance. And first it was the Catowice, then it was the Redding, and then it was the Pennsylvania, then Conrail, then Norfolk and Southern, and today it's Lycoming Valley Railroad. And we had it restored the final time about ten years ago. And forever, when it needed maintenance, we would call up the railroad and they would come and fix it. Well, we found out that we really owned the bridge, not the railroads. Over the years, the bridge has been repaired whenever it needed it by the railroads. But a few years ago, we did it one more time, and we called up the railroad. This time it was Lycoming Valley. But they had hired a young woman lawyer who was very ambitious and very efficient. And she read the original contract when the Catowice Railroad gave the property to the Brocks in 1895. And it said, we give the bridge to you and you maintain it. Well, over all those years, the railroads have maintained it for us. But this last time, the Lycoming Valley Railroad said, your bridge. But we luckily had a very good lawyer who read the document and said, have they ever changed the bridge? And they said, yes. I told them I raised it three times. And they asked us, did you ever sign off on it? And I said, no. They said, well, you know, it says here the bridge should be 18.5 feet above the track, and you say it's now 23.5. And I said, that's correct. They said, well, their bridge, unless they want to lower it to 18.5, which of course they couldn't do. Well, we actually did an agreement with the railroad and we split the cost. But it cost $100,000 to redo the foundation, repoint the foundation, do the planking, and do some very artistic welding. Because cast iron is very tough to weld. But we got a fabulous welder. So the bridge is really in a very well-restored condition. And used every day on our driveway, going in and out. Although trucks over 20 tons have to go around the bridge. Of course. We don't want them cracking through it, too. So we're very pleased. Over the years, we've had canal societies come about every 10 years to look at the bridge. And it's on their route. And we're very proud of it and like to maintain it. And this is a live rail line, then, right? This is a live railroad, yep. Okay. This is Lycoming Valley Railroad. And it's a feeder line into Norfolk and Southern. And it goes from, I think, Lock Haven down to Northumberland, which is about 50 miles. And where was this originally located again? I'm not sure where it was original. I don't know the original location. All right. Probably could be researched. The oldest bridge of this style built by Byrdsboro is in the Stroudsburg Pennsylvania Railroad Museum. And the second oldest or the third oldest, we're not sure whether we're second or third. That's still in use by a private property, too. I'm not sure where that is. But this one is more prominent because it's near a major highway and people are more aware of it. And this is the second or third oldest in the country for a cast iron bridge, correct? For a cast iron bridge, yeah. Okay. Because, of course, in 1847, there weren't many railroads out west. Right. So it's—and interestingly, the bridge covers a railroad, which was put through along the canal. There's a canal that runs through our farm, which was built in 1823. And the way the railroads that overcame that business was to build their railroads right alongside the canal. On the towpath. Wipe them out. Yeah. It's amazing. Wherever you see canals, you usually see a railroad. Yes, you do. And the canal companies have been an extremely prosperous business. And they just were bankrupt overnight, the railroads, back in the 1840s. Due to the speed of the trains and the efficiency, right? Sure. Right. Yeah. So this farm—it's Muncie Farms in Muncie, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1769. Okay. And it's been in constant use since 1769. And it's been owned by one family since 1803. Really? My family bought it in 1803 and it's passed down through the family over the generations. Now, actually, I'm not blood family because I'm adopted into the family. Okay. This was a brother and two sisters. We actually were evacuated during World War II from England in 1940. And the family who lived here, the Brock's, said they would take in one large English family. And we just happened to be that family. Huh! And so we never met Mr. Brock. He died the week we arrived very suddenly. But Mrs. Brock took us in and eventually adopted us. And how old were you at the time? I was five years old. And a sister 10, a brother, and sister 12. And we never had to work on the farm. We had chores, minor chores, but we always helped out in the harvest. And when I was a boy here, we had two teams of horses, one very large tractor with clogged wheels. And we actually had a new farm all with rubber tires. And that was a big deal around here. And then my brother and I took over the farm in 1954. And we had an interesting experience. We were going to make a killing. And we decided to raise feeder cattle. And we'd bring them in from Nebraska. We'd buy them at 800 pounds. And they'd arrive here at 600 pounds. They'd lose that much of their shipping. And then we also would sell the cattle at a low price after having bought them at a high price. And that never worked out. So then we switched to dairy. And we had a dairy farm here, 60 milkers. And rather than losing money hand over fist, we'd lose it every day, quite a little bit every day, working our head off. So we went out in the dairy business one day when the barn caught on fire. And it was such a large barn that you could take a hay wagon and tractor into the barn, turn around without stopping. And it was just amazing. And the fire occurred in the roof of the barn. And what we think what happened was it was probably 1860. And there were skylights in the roof. And it happened at noon. And we just put hay in the barn. It was a lot of dust because the roof just exploded. Oh, did it? All the electrical facilities were in the basement of the barn in the milking area. So it was not an electrical fire. And it happened at high noon. I happened to be in New York that day, but was visiting a client in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. So that's about 50 miles from here. So I decided, well, I'm this close to the farm. I'll go over and see what's happening. Well, I got about five miles away, and I saw this huge column of smoke. And I thought, boy, there's a fire somewhere. Well, it was our barn burning down. So we switched then to hogs. And we raised about 2,000 hogs a year, which in this part of the country was a big hog farm. They don't do that in Pennsylvania. And we like to say we went whole hog. Well, eventually we found we were feeding expensive corn to cheap hogs. And that didn't work. So then we went to strictly mechanizing the farm, and we never looked back. We've done very well since. We raised corn forever until there was GMO soybean seeds, which allowed us to have a shorter growing season. So now the farm is 50-50. It's corn and soybeans. And we have about 400 acres of tillable land on the farm. And you just switch back every other year? The farm originally, when the family bought it, was 7,600 acres. It was the entire valley. But as the generations went along, it was divided up. And we own still the main house, and this is the homestead. And so we're very proud of it. And I might say that we had the 250th anniversary of the house in 2019. And we decided to open it up to the community just for people to see who might be interested. And we thought there might be 500 people would come. 3,000 people showed up. We had house tours. It took six hours to put 3,000 people through the house. And it was quite a day. The local historical society from Muncie organized it. And we had an actual canal boat in the canal. Did you? There was no water in the canal. It's on rubber tires. And we had horse and carriage rides. We had antique cars from 1913 to 1930. And then we had 40 people dressed in period costumes. And they were doing either weaving or surveying. And they would give lectures on various parts of life. But I think the highlight, we actually had Indians in this area. The Muncie Indians were part of the Delaware Nation. So we had Delaware Indians come up from Maryland who set up their teepees, put on their war paint and their regular garb. And they spent a night here and explained to everybody what it was like. And their war paint was quite dramatic. It scared the children half to death. So we had quite an event. It was very successful. Sounds like it. We're very proud of the farm. It's kind of ironic that behind me through the cornfield, which you can't see because the camera's not pointing that way, is a location for Fort Muncie. And there was a fort here with 130 soldiers. And in 1778, the British and Indians came through the area and chased all the settlers out and burned every building in the county except for one. And that is Muncie Farms. And we always thought because it was a stone house that it wasn't burned. And it was pretty unique. It was a two-story stone house in that period. Everybody else was living in log cabins. But it turns out many years later that the man who owned the house, Samuel Wallace, was actually a British spy. And so they didn't burn his house. No kidding! He kept it a secret until 1946. He died in 1798. It wasn't until 1946 that he was discovered as a spy. And that was because when England and America, Roosevelt had the Venlise Program to get the destroyers in 1940 before America got into the war, part of the agreement was the British archives on the American Revolution would be open. And so this fellow, Carl Van Doren, a fairly famous historian, went over and researched the archives and wrote a book called The Secret History of the American Revolution. And it exposed many prominent American families who were actually on both sides. And you can understand it because if you had property, it was hard to believe that George Washington could beat King George III, who was the most powerful man in the world. But King George at the same time was dealing with India. So I think he thought 100 million Indians maybe had more value than just a couple million difficult people here. So that's part of the history of the farm. Interesting. Well, thanks for your time today. I appreciate it. Probably giving you too much. No, no. No, you did great. And thanks for taking care of the old bridge. All right. Well, I hope I don't have to do it again. You can see the pointing is really nice. It is. They did a good job, thanks to the fellow you met, Ray. Thanks for watching another edition of History in Your Own Backyard. And remember, travel slowly and stop often. I'll see you next time. Bye.