Sayre's Lehigh Valley Railroad Passenger Station was built in 1881 in the heart of early Sayre on the Lehigh's 448-mile mainline between New York City and Buffalo. The station and the railroad yards that serviced it were very busy, with hourly passenger and freight train arrivals and departures, crew changes, and engine changes, and as many as 50 steam locomotives fired and awaiting assignment on the ready tracks of the Sayre Yards. At its height, the station included a ticket booth, separate waiting rooms for men and women, a baggage area, a restaurant, and second-floor offices with a fireproof safe. The footbridge in the background near the steam locomotives was built in 1896 to replace a grade crossing and provide heavy pedestrian traffic with safe passage from downtown Sayre to Sayre's East Side over the wide and active rail yards. Until its removal in 1987 after it had deteriorated to the point of being hazardous, it was a favorite place for rail fans to photograph trains and Lehigh facilities in Sayre. A tunnel under the Westbound Yards was also built to give hundreds of workers a safe crossing beneath the 14 sets of tracks between North Lehigh Avenue and their jobs in the Sayre Shops. In Sayre, the Lehigh Valley Railroad was nearly a self-contained community, with its own police department, three-company fire department, electric generation, water system supplied from the Susquehanna River and a reservoir on Sayre Hill, band and orchestra, athletic teams, and a building for meetings, dances, dinners, and a bowling alley. The Black Diamond Express, the Lehigh Valley Railroad's famed passenger train, passed through Sayre daily from its inception on May 18, 1896, until its last run on May 11, 1959, traveling between New York City and Buffalo and regarded in its heyday as the epitome of comfort and personal service in rail travel. Steam engines were classified by wheel arrangement, with leading wheels at the front, trailing wheels at the back, and driving wheels between them; Lehigh Valley Railroad engine number 5210 was classified as 4-8-4, and the system ended with the development of diesel engines. Work in the Sayre shops and train yards was dangerous, with frequent and sometimes deadly accidents in the shops, yards, and on trains, and the need for medical treatment for railroad workers led to the establishment of Robert Packer Hospital in 1885, partially funded by Lehigh employees in Sayre contributing a day's wages each year.