This is the Mifflin Tower at Mifflin, PA, a legacy of the PRR as photographed in May 1981. Looks like a PRR pneumatic air supply tank to the left. Sorry about the poor scan quality. It's likely that Mifflin is gone today, but I'm not certain.
I was just looking at my notes. In researching where this tower is/was, I came up with a place named Mifflinburg. Is this possibly correct? My notes show I do have a PRR order copied here.
This confused me for a long time, but they're actually two different places both once served by the PRR. Mifflinburg, PA was on a secondary through line and is now at the end of a branch. The tower location at Mifflin, PA is 40 Miles south of Mifflinburg and is on the mainline east of Lewistown. I wonder how many freight cars were misrouted between these stations over the years?
It seems that I need to recover the rest of my collection, from storage. Scan and post my order, to see where it was actually (originated) copied. If the weather will improve.....
I'd say that a Mifflinburg order would be the rarer of the two, but either would be mighty cool and fun to see.
The tower was repainted the following month and looked like this: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VbUAAOSwLI1aYVif/s-l1600.jpg It was torn down about five years later.
I was just wondering, why were train orders (aka flimsies) written on a light, tissue-like paper? I'm guessing that the thin paper transferred better using carbon paper?
Exactly. There were uncountable times when they needed many, many copies. So-called "onion skin" paper and later the more tissue-like paper allowed more to be done in that one copying.
Thanks Boxcab. I'd forgotten about the high number of multiple copies sometimes. When I was a kid, I'd find discarded TOs along the ROW. They'd be weatherbeaten,, but still legible. As I look back, the paper stock seemed to be more durable than might be expected.