Al Feuerstein & Train

The last of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Yardmasters, Al Feuerstein, classified freight cars and supervised operations of the Packerton Yard. He leans against a Norfolk Southern rail car on his first visit in many years to the remains of the Packerton Yards.

In July 1965, Packerton Yardmaster Al Feuerstein (right) greets Engineer and Lehighton resident, Clarence Scott, age 70, descending from his locomotive after making the final run of his 52-year career on the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

A 1972 list of the Yardmasters of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Al Feuerstein, number ten on the list by seniority, became a Yardmaster on Aug. 4, 1956. All the other Yardmasters have either died or were extras—not permanent Yardmasters.

 In 1951, the Lehigh Valley’ Railroad’s Packeton Yard employed between 200 and 300 workers, down from a post-WWI high of 2,200 but higher than prior to WWII and as high as it ever got in the future. The LVRR ceased operations on March 31, 1976.

Al Feuerstein

For over a century, Asa Packer’s Lehigh Valley Railroad provided coal transport and railroad jobs in Eastern Pennsylvania. On March 31, 1976, it ceased operations. A quarter century later, only one Yardmaster remains.

Snaking through brambles and jumping over puddles at the site of the former Packerton Yards of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, 81-year-old Al Feuerstein stepped onto the last remaining tracks and looked around, seeing a barren wasteland that had once been a jewel of the LVRR, employing hundreds of Lehigh Valley Railroad workers – a site that had been his pride and joy – and became choked up and on the verge of tears.

 “The railroad was good to me and I was good to the railroad,” said Feuerstein - the last Yardmaster of the Packerton Yards. “I enjoyed my work.”

 Feuerstein worked as a Yardmaster and a Trainmaster during his over 39 years with the LVRR. He learned the LVRR’s system serving as a Yardmaster and/or Trainmaster at the LVRR yards in Packerton, Catasauqua, Allentown, East Penn, Bethlehem, Coxton and Sayre.

 Now, over a quarter century since the LVRR ceased operations on March 31, 1976, time has taken its toll on the LVRR employees making Al Feuerstein the last of the LVRR Yardmasters.

Becoming a Railroad Man

Ask not whether you will be working on the railroad; ask which railroad you would be working on. That was the attitude in the Feuerstein household on Fourth Street in East Mauch Chunk when Alfred was born on Dec. 2, 1923.

 His father, Fredrick Feuerstein, worked for the Central Railroad of N.J. and his grandfather, Max, was a painter boss at the Lehigh Valley Railroad’s Packerton Shops. His mother Mayme Danner - descended from Paul Danner, a Civil War veteran that lived in Penn Forest. Al had two brothers, Elmer and Wilbur. At the age of four, he was struck by a car that left him with injuries to his right arm and leg.

 After graduating East Mauch Chunk High School in 1943 and wanting to be stationed with his brother, Wilbur, Al tried to enlist in the Navy. Failing the Navy physical because of his previous injuries, he enlisted in the Army. He trained at Fort Indiantown Gap and then was stationed at Camp Seibert, Alabama. After reevaluating his injuries, the Army gave him a discharge.

 Returning to East Mauch Chunk in 1943, Feuerstein was attending services at the United Church of Christ, on 4^th St. in East Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) when Frank Engle walked over to him and offered him a job to work for the Lehigh Valley Railroad as a clerk.

 “I accepted and that’s how I started my career on the railroad,” said Feuerstein.

Working on the Railroad

Feuerstein started clerking at the Packerton Yard in Lehighton and was assigned the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. work shift. The railroad workers didn’t have telephones and one of the duties of the clerk was to serve as “Call Boy” and give the workmen their morning’s assignments.

 Al was then dating his soon-to-be wife, Melba.  Melba lived in Lehighton. “I would call her up at two or three in the morning and she would go with me to call on the workers in the area,” said Feuerstein.

 “I’ll never forget the time when we went down Peach Alley. Dunwieller had a Great Dane. The dog was coming up and I said to Melba, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of that dog.’ I was scared.  I grabbed her by the hand and just walked right by,” he remembered.

 There was a Mr. Schnell, on First Street, who was so hard of hearing that Feuerstein kept a large stone to repeatedly rap on his door and rouse him.

 As a clerk, Feuerstein ran a Teletype machine at the scale office on the Packerton Yard’s north end. At the office also worked the Yardmaster, a telegrapher, a switchboard operator and a half dozen men that rode the coal cars to classify them on different outbound tracks.

 The highest elevation at the Packerton Yard was at its north end, called the Hump. After a switchtender threw a track to a desired siding, a rider would coast a coal car by gravity from the hump to the siding and brake it at the desired location.

 When Feuerstein started at Packerton the shops employed 200 to 300 workers—a far cry below the peak of 2,200 just before the Depression but on a second wind of growth spurred by WWII—a growth that would not last for long.

 The Yardmaster

Feuerstein clerked at the LVRR’s yards in Packerton, Catasauqua, East Penn Junction – East of Allentown, Allentown, Bethlehem – at Calypso Yard, Florence Yard and Easton. By 1956, Feuerstein had a detailed knowledge of LVRR yard operations and when an opening for Yardmaster at Packerton became available, he was selected.

 The Yardmaster was responsible for the operations of the yard. The Yardmaster’s principal duty was to classify the cars. Feuerstein received a train with a mixture of cars that needed to go to different destinations. He classified the cars by sending them to different sidings to make up a train for each destination.

 At 32, Feuerstein was uncomfortable giving directions to men that were twice his age. “I learned to be diplomatic,” he explained. “I’d say, ‘Do me a favor. Get it done. I don’t care how you do it’ and they did it the right way anyhow. If I told them how, they wouldn’t have liked that.”

 Feuerstein worked with freight trains at Packerton. Passenger trains would pass through. There were various maintenance and fabrication shops at Packerton. Each was individually operated and not under the charge of the Yardmaster. They didn’t have a locomotive, so when they needed to shift cars around, they contacted Feuerstein to provide a crew.

 When livestock came through the Packerton Yard, Feuerstein had to arrange for them to be cared for. “We took them to pens over where the Lehighton sewerage plant now is located, and took them out of the cars to feed and water them,” he said. “There was the 36-hour Act—every 36 hours, that had to be done. For pigs, we could feed and water them in the cars.”

 Feuerstein worked as a Yardmaster at Packerton, Catasauqua, Allentown, East Penn, Bethlehem, Florence (Bethlehem Steel) Yard, and Richard’s Yard near Easton. In 1966, he became Trainmaster at LVRR Sayre Terminal, where he was responsible for 500 miles of railroad. Ironically, his house in Sayre was at the corner of Elmer and Wilbur Avenues, the names of his two brothers.

 He returned to Packerton as Yardmaster in 1967 and purchased a home in Penn Forest Township. After the LVRR took over the CNJ, the Packerton Shops were closed and all their work was relocated to Allentown. Feuerstein continued as Yardmaster in Allentown.

 As he was finding the job had become too stressful, Feuerstein asked to return to being a clerk in Allentown. He wanted to work closer to home and bid a job at Pocono Mountain. Here, he was responsible for inspecting automobiles as they arrived on trains and trailers.

 In 1980, while moving the cars around on a lot, Feuerstein was again hit by a car, damaging a knee and giving him a good excuse to retire.

 Although he was retiring, Feuerstein was about to begin a second life—one of community service. In 1979, he was elected Supervisor of Penn Forest Township. He served for twelve years. He continues to be involved in the community as Chairman of the Carbon County Planning Commission, Chairman of the Board of Home Health Care in Lehighton Hospital, and an Advisor for the Office of Aging.

 Al married Melba in 1944 and they celebrated their sixtieth anniversary on Dec. 26, 2004.