A few CVRR pictures and some other related pictures....

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The old CVRR bridge over the river to Harrisburg....

[Rufus T. Firefly]

In Mechanicsburg, Pa

[Rufus T. Firefly]

[rogruth]

What is the background building? Both would look good on a (large) layout.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

What is the background building? Both would look good on a (large) layout.

No idea.

Here's a card that gives a different view that I had posted a while back...

[webenda]

What is the background building? Both would look good on a (large) layout.

I could not find the answer to your question Roger. The hill the background building was built on is still there, as is the stationmaster's house but everything else has changed.

From http://www.west2k.com/pastations/cumberland.shtml

This station was on the "low line" of the CVRR. It was on Railroad Avenue south of Walnut street (GPS: 40.166388,-77.402134). The brick stationmaster's house that sat next to the station is still standing and you can see the outline of where the station was torn down from the west outer wall of the house. This part of Newville used to be called "Newtown." The original station built here was just a bit to the west of the location described above.

Satellite image of GPS coordinates:

Where depot once was

Newville Depot Locaton.jpg (290.14 KiB) Viewed 2437 times

Brick Stationmaster's House

Brick stationmaster's house

Brick StationMasters House.jpg (136.33 KiB) Viewed 2436 times

[webenda]

There was a freight station between Pennsylvania Avenue and Cumberland Avenue (when those streets went through to the tracks). It was on the north side of the tracks at GPS: 40.165664, -77.404401. That might be the building in Rufus' postcard. Both railroad structures were along what is now called, "Railroad Ave."

Source: http://www.west2k.com/pastations/cumberland.shtml

[Rufus T. Firefly]

This station was on the "low line" of the CVRR.

That's about as far as I got on the station itself - that building in the background is rather good sized - maybe a factory of some sort....never been to Newville - when I'm 641 I'm generally heading off in the other direction or just coming over the Timmons to Roxbury

[rogruth]

I first thought a factory with the near-by smokestack but can't figure the round section.
Also most of the windows have curtains in them.??

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I first thought a factory with the near-by smokestack but can't figure the round section.
Also most of the windows have curtains in them.??

Yes. Almost like a dormitory of some sort? No college there as far as I know - orphanage/school, maybe?

[webenda]

orphanage/school, maybe?

Might have been a sweatshop that used orphans.

Newville Mystery Building.jpg (88.82 KiB) Viewed 2396 times

Newville knitting mill postcard.jpg (308.49 KiB) Viewed 2396 times

newville_knitting_mill_shs.jpg (319.86 KiB) Viewed 2396 times

The Big Spring creek flows around Newville and connects with the Conodoguinet creek. Mills grew along the waterways with the earliest, known as the Laughlin Mill, built in 1762. The Laughlin Mill still stands, geographically in Newville but politically part of West Pennsboro Township. Newville became the commercial center for western Cumberland County and flourished in the nineteenth century. The Cumberland Valley Railroad came through in 1838 and helped to establish passenger and freight service. The latter allowed agricultural and manufactured products to move to more distant markets. The town saw the rise of a barrel factory, a brickworks, shoemakers, a distillery, a knitting mill, and eventually a ribbon mill and a dress factory. With the growth of manufacturing, numerous local businesses emerged: department stores, drug stores, hardware and jewelry shops, barbers, bankers, etc. Today, the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant is the town's principal industry.

Newville Knitting Mills Creation Date: 6 April 1888

References:
http://gardnerlibrary.org/encylopedia/newville
http://newvillehistoricalsociety.weebly ... ville.html
https://www.companiespa.com/company/504 ... ting-mills

Listed in "Textile World's Directory of the Mill Trade in the United States, 1897 ..."

[rogruth]

Thanks, Wayne.

[webenda]

orphanage/school, maybe?

Might have been a sweatshop that used orphans.

In the early 1900’s there was such a thing as an Orphan Train across America.

I was reading about Alice Marion Ham whose story interested me because she as I knew little about her origins. She only knew that police found her and her brother, Robert, who was only a toddler at the time, abandoned on a New York City street in 1926. The two children were subsequently bundled by orphanage workers onto a train that carried them from the city to a new life in the rural Midwest.

“There was so much hurt and pain of being separated from your family,” said 77-year-old Alice Bullis Ayler of Oklahoma City. “The main thing they told us was not to talk about it. There was such a stigma on orphans.” Ms. Ayler remembers riding in a Pullman car from New York to Kansas, where she was made to operate a windmill at age 10.

From http://masonicvillages.org/gods-orphans/ written by Rev. Preston Van Deursen, Director of Pastoral Care at the Masonic Village at Elizabethtown.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

The previous information and viewpoints make me wonder why such large (relative, of course) numbers of orphans were so prevalent (I mean, an "orphan train"!!!) to that approximate circa in American life. One certainly doesn't (relative, of course) hear so much about orphans nowadays. IMHO .

[webenda]

One certainly doesn't (relative, of course) hear so much about orphans nowadays. IMHO .

Child labor is what made America great! (Said with factious tone.)

The main thing they told us was not to talk about it.

Of course such embarrassments are not talked about in polite society.