Roystone on the former Pennsylvania Railroad line

History & local legend

An 1890s railroad tale told by crews at Kane’s West Side yards places a strange encounter near Roystone. A train had separated there, leaving a brakeman beside its last car while the crew worked to get it moving again. A stranger in railroad clothes appeared beside him and asked about a man named Tom Vogle.

The stranger held a watch toward the brakeman’s lantern. It was two o’clock, he said—the same hour a helper engine had thrown him from a train and killed him four years earlier. He gave his name as Howard Neusbaum, then vanished.

The following Friday, the witness’s train separated again, this time at Ludlow. Fourteen cars and a tender piled up, although nobody was injured. The earlier encounter frightened the brakeman and his coworkers, who interpreted Neusbaum’s visit as a warning of the wreck.