Remembering the old railroad that went out Stony Valley is easier said than done. I'm sure there are other people, still alive, who remember more than I do, but this is the way it was to me when I was a boy.

We moved from uptown Dauphin to the house on the corner of Erie St. and the Stony Creek Road in 1938, so Stony Creek was my playground.

The station was a large building that served both the Pennsylvania and the S&S Railroads. As kids, we "went by" the station, but I don't remembering playing there. I guess it was sort of "off limits." I do remember that the South East Platform of the station was the location of the most fascinating chewing gum machine that I had ever seen; six or eight little columns of little pieces of yesteryears chewing gums and assorted packages of chiclets for 1 cent, and I never had a penny. This machine got a number of innocent Dauphin boys in front of the Justice of the Peace when it decided to relieve itself of its contents without the required penny.

I remember the Station Master, Mr. Douden, a gentleman of great stature, over six feet tall, who always spoke to us boys, and was a master at ice skating. When Stony Creek had ice on it, Mr. Douden was skating with us. Mr. Douden lived out Stony Creek along the railroad and walked to work every day.

P. O. Lyter was the ice and coal merchant in Dauphin and his coal yard was located between the state road (Old Route 22) and the railroad. Coal cars sided here to supply P. O. with coal.

On the east side of Erie Street, the tool shed belonging to the S&S still stands and looks to be in pretty good shape yet. This building had tracks running into the shed where the dinky car was housed at night.

The station was destroyed when the new Route 22 caused the relocation of the Pennsylvania Railroad. At this time the S&S tracks were removed.

During the summer it was almost a daily trip "out the tracks" to one of our swimming holes in Stony Creek.

The first hole was back the "cut," which is what we called the rail bed that had been a side track to service the ice dam that was removed sometime before 1929, maybe the same time the ice dam siding at Snyders' had been removed. The first hole was probably 2-3 feet deep with a nice sandy bottom, but it was for little kids.

On out the railroad about another 0.2 of a mile was our favorite swimming place, "Two Ropes," because of the ropes hanging from a log put in the limbs of two trees growing parallel to the creek bank. The ropes were gone when I started swimming but the name stuck. The one tree was a slippery elm, which died an early death because its bark was stripped by the swimmers for a tasty chew on our way back to Dauphin after hours of play in Stony Creek. "Two Ropes" was the ideal swimming hole, 4-6' deep with a sandy bottom and a bank about 3' higher than the creek, which made it ideal for diving in to the cool refreshing water of Stony Creek.