After setting out the boxcar that they brought down on the left, they then backed down into Oneida Warehouse to grab boxcars out, before backing, grabbing this car, and then shoving it into the building. The track that this boxcar sits on was always a spur, and once upon a time it curved to the left to cross Campion Road and serve American Emblem Co. Both AECo and that track are long gone.
Reversing back down the NYO&W line, that is an NYO&W mile post off to the left, denoting it as 272 miles from New York City. Although the NYO&W didn't actually reach New York City directly, nor over it's own tracks. South of Cornwall they used trackage rights over the West Shore to get into Weehawken, NJ. There was a lot of the same financiers and such involved in both the New York, West Shore & Buffalo and the NYO&W's predecessor, the New York & Oswego Midland, and so there was some cooperation there, even when the New York Central took over the West Shore. There was also a lot of overlap between the two railroads, with them crossing paths multiple places. There were a couple diamonds here in Utica between the two, but after 1971 both the Erie-Lackawanna (who had taken over the bits and pieces of the NYO&W in Utica) and Penn Central (who had ended up with the West Shore through New York Central) yanked up the diamonds and duplicate trackage and streamlined things a little by sharing trackage in spots, although it's still a ragtag mess of tracks.
At this point they were heading back to grab the covered hoppers and go down to Sangerfield, but I had to break off my chase so that I didn't miss my friends' wedding.
This terrific drone video by Railroading Rambler traces the NYO&W Utica Branch from Union Station up to the end of the tracks near Ontario Ave. It shows how badly obliterated a lot of the NYO&W tracks are just out of the station, but it's also interesting that the line from just where it comes off the street-running at Schuyler Street through the site of the old Canal Street Yard to where it passes to where it passes under Route 12 is commonly referred to as DL&W tracks, but it's really the NYO&W line. The DL&W crossed the NYO&W on a diamond near Oswego Street and ran to the left of the NYO&W, but when the NYO&W was abandoned, the DL&W bought up the NYO&W line and moved their operations over to that. They also used the NYO&W line above there and off into the weeds to across French Road to access the New Hartford Industrial Switch.
Doug Ellison is supposedly going to be releasing a book about the Utica line through the years (NYO&W, DL&W, West Shore, E-L, PC, Conrail, NYS&W), which I am eagerly awaiting and will gladly buy a copy of. This is his photo of an ex-Reading GP35 leading a freight down Schuyler Street on it's way to Sangerfield, just five days before Conrail handed off operations to the New York, Susquehanna & Western.
The DL&W turntable in Utica is used for the last time on April 15th, 1982. Fireman Jim Dundon handles the Conrail GP9 #7308 as engineer Bob Dowling looks on. On April 17th, NYS&W would take over operations, and the turntable would never feel the weight of a locomotive again. Doug Ellison said that later in the NYS&W era, when Walter Rich bought his Chinese SY Mikado, he had Ellison look at reviving the turntable. The electric motors were all missing, which wasn't too big an issue since it could be towed around by a truck or backhoe, but also all the wheels at the ends of the turntable were completely missing, which was the real dealbreaker.
This photo is at Mohawk Container, which is now Oneida Warehousing, but is facing the opposite direction of my photos, with the #7308 running around the train. Again, taken on the last day of Conrail operations of the Utica Branch by Doug Ellison.
A pair of Conrail "Dewitt Geep" RS-3ms (RS-3 with a 1200hp EMD V12) lead a freight south along Schuyler Street, passing a spur used to service McQuade & Bannigan, a construction supplier. McQuade & Bannigan is still there, but that spur is long gone.
Doug Ellison took this photo from the crossing guard tower (it was still in use until '87, remember) of an ex-Penn Central GP38 swinging off of the ex-DL&W "Blue Line". If you look north along Schuyler Street, the remaining track heads to the right to go to Utica Yard (out of frame here), but there are still rails left of a spur going to the left. The road that the blue van is driving on is Oriskany Boulevard, which was built over the top of the Erie Canal after the Erie Canal was abandoned and replaced with the New York Barge Canal, which ran parallel but about a mile north. When the canal was relocated, it severed service to a bunch of businesses along the south side of the canal/Erie Boulevard, so the DL&W built the Blue Line, named for following the blue line of the canal on the map, which ran along Oriskany Boulevard into Yorkville. This was taken up sometime in the early '90s after losing it's last customers, but there are couple feet of rails just past the guard tower.
I mentioned Walter Rich's NYS&W #142, the Chinese SY Mikado that he bought in the '90s, and was pleased to see today that apparently the NYS&W Technical & Historical Society had her steamed up for the past two days, doing a test on the boiler. The #142 has been getting overhauled for the past seven years and they're hoping to have it running in the near future. In 1989, it had been imported by Valley Railroad in Connecticut, and they had it running for a couple seasons. In 1991, Walter Rich decided that he needed one too, for running excursions on the NYS&W. He purchased one from China, it was loaded aboard a ship, and then the ship sank in the Bay of Bengal. Valley Railway was willing to sell him theirs, so it became NYS&W #142 and was moved west to CNY. He ran a bunch of excursions with it, including a select few out of Utica, but it mostly hung out down on the southern end on the originally NYS&W mainline and ran trips down in the NY/NJ area. It was sold off to the NYS&WT&HS in 2004, and has run down on the Belvidere & Delaware Railroad ever since, but was taken out of service in 2017.
The old "Belvidere Line" runs behind the property I am working at, 1.1 miles south of the southern most stop of the tourist line in Riegelsville. Two weeks ago they did ROW clearance . It took two days with all the tree fall we've had the past year. I am curious about the rules regarding maintainance and abandonment. Is SMS required to do it on some schedule to prevent the FRA telling them they have abandoned? Also look up J.B.Kline's song "Belvedere Line".
TurnerX19 said:The old "Belvidere Line" runs behind the property I am working at, 1.1 miles south of the southern most stop of the tourist line in Riegelsville. Two weeks ago they did ROW clearance . It took two days with all the tree fall we've had the past year. I am curious about the rules regarding maintainance and abandonment. Is SMS required to do it on some schedule to prevent the FRA telling them they have abandoned? Also look up J.B.Kline's song "Belvedere Line".
I know that the Belvidere & Delaware River has wanted to extend excursions south of Riegelsville to Milford but needs to do some track work to bring it up to stable condition, so maybe this is the start of that. Also, according to Wikipedia, they run speeder trips over the line out of Milford for the "Milford Alive" event. A quick check shows that that event is coming up on September 21st, so they could just be getting ready for that. While the tracks aren't in the condition to regularly run trains over, you can run a speeder over some pretty wretched tracks.
There actually isn't any rules on keeping a rail line repaired or cleaned up or else it is considered abandoned. Basically, as long as someone owns it and there hasn't been paperwork filed with the FRA for the line to be abandoned, it is considered active, if out of service. That's actually caused a lot of issues historically; there's plenty of tales of rails line with trees growing up between the ties and weeds completely covering the tracks, haven't seen a train in 20 years. A realtor tells people that "those tracks are abandoned", they buy the house, and then a month or two later whatever railroad owns it puts it back in service and is running trains through their backyard. Basically, if the rails are still there, the possibility exists that it could be reactivated.
I can think of a bunch of situations of rails that are (or were) returning to the earth and technically still aren't (or weren't) abandoned:
New York Central Adirondack Division: After shutting it down in '65, the Adirondack Division from Snow Junction to Lake Placid sat completely unused until 1979, when it was reopened for two years as the Adirondack Railway, and then it shut down again until 1992. In John Taibi's book on the Adirondack Division, there is a chapter by Pete Gores covering how, between 1981 and 1992, he and some buddies would run speeders up and down the line and tried to keep it cleaned up as much as it could, but there were numerous washouts, sometimes 20-30 feet long and 6 foot deep, with the rails just dangling in the air. They would put some wood blocking under it and just kept hoping that someone reopened it before it got too far gone.
Maine Central Mountain Division: Guilford shut down the Mountain Division in '83, and the states actually bought the line in hopes of finding a future operator and keeping the line open. The line is still intact, but from Portland, ME to North Conway, NH and from Fabyan, NH to St. Johnsbury, VT hasn't seen a regular train in over 40 year. Conway Scenic keeps the segment from North Conway to Fabyan active, and they keep saying that they'd love to restore service south to Portland. But Maine has been making rumblings of yanking up the southern end to make into (what else?) a trail, and it sounds like they're getting closer to make that a reality recently.
D&RGW Tennessee Pass: This line hasn't seen any traffic since 1997, shortly after UP took it over and idled it in favor of Moffatt Tunnel. There's at least one collapsed tunnel and a number of washouts and boulders on the tracks. UP actually had an interested buyer about 5 years ago, who was going to put it back in service, but the NIMBYs who had bought houses along the line and were told that it was abandoned threw a fit and I can't remember if the sale fell through, or if it's just currently tied up in legal troubles.
Southern Railway Saluda Grade: Saluda Grade was legendary for being the steepest standard-gauge mainline on a major railroad in the US, with an average grade of 4.24% and a peak of 4.9%. Norfolk Southern took it out of service in '01, because it just wasn't economically viable to run over and they had better routings. In April 2003, Norfolk Southern severed the line from the rest of its system by placing mounds of dirt over the tracks and disconnecting the rails at mile posts 26 and 45, and they removed the signals and crossing guard arms, but they did keep spraying herbicides and clearing fallen trees for about 20 years. Finally last year, they announced that reactivation just wasn't going to happen, and they did file for full abandonment and it will be converted to a trail.
East Broad Top: This is a huge one. After the original common carrier iteration of East Broad Top shut down in 1956, it was bought by a scrap dealer, who decided to keep the entire railroad intact. It ran as a tourist operation on a couple miles going north from Orbisonia to Shirleysburg, but he held onto the entire 30 or so miles west to Robertsdale, as well as the remaining 7 miles of the line north from Shirleysburg to Mount Union. Those tracks have not seen a regular train since 1956, other than a single motor car run to Pogue in '61 or '62. It's wild, you drive down there and there are brand new grade crossings with rails vanishing into the forest in either direction. But, this situation is actually being reversed, as they are finally working on restoring the line from Orbisonia to Saltillo, and eventually Pogue and Roberstdale.
Conrail/NS Danville Secondary: This was part of the old NYC Kankakee Belt Route, It acquired the name "Danville Secondary" while the line was under ownership of Conrail. This particular line ran from Gary, IN, south to Danville, IL; however, the line south of Schneider, where the line crossed Norfolk Southern (ex-Penn Central/NYC), down to Danville was "abandoned" in 1994. Technically, the line is still active, just considered Out of Service. The diamonds have been yanked out and there is a spot in Morocco, IN where it had an underpass under a highway and the underpass was completely filled in at some point by the county. It continues to return to the earth, but NS has never made any move to officially abandon it.
Why do railroads hold onto out of service tracks for decades without abandoning them?
Well, part of it is that they don't want to paint themselves into a corner. Once a line is officially abandoned, chances are it's gone forever. The right of way typically reverts ownership to the adjoining property owners, so you're unlikely to get that land back, and the rails will be lifted for a trail pretty much immediately. So if a line loses it's customers, they often hold onto it for a while just in case some new customers move back in and want rail service. Hold onto it, do some minimal upkeep, pay the taxes and then when it becomes apparent that nothing is going to ever materialize, unload it.
Similar reasons include holding onto it for car storage, or to use for a traffic overflow in the event that they reach capacity on another similarly-routed line (this pops up with some of the mega mergers where railroads ended up with multiple identical lines).
Sometimes you end up with situations where a railroad calls it quits on a line, but state or local governments buy it, since they don't want to lose service, and then try to find an operator. I mentioned this with the MEC Mountain Division; for 40 years there's been hope that someone could make a business case to revive the rest of the line, although nothing has ever materialized. Maine also did something similar, to mixed success, with the Rockland Branch, and Vermont also did this, very successfully, with the old Rutland.
Another reason, although not as common, is leverage. That's the whole reason for the Danville Secondary's continued existence. The line was idled in favor of trackage rights over the Illinois Central in the same area, and anytime CN, who took over IC, tries to threaten NS over those trackage rights (restricting train movements, raising rates, etc) then NS threatens to rebuild the Danville Secondary and instead move all their traffic over there.
And also, sometimes it's just to block out another railroad. When a railroad files to abandon a line, other possible operators can potentially bid on taking over that line. So, if you're UP and you abandon a line, some regional or short line could take it over, who could potentially get bought out by BNSF and now you have your major competitor running in your backyard. Holding onto it and just embargoing the line keeps that from happening.
The Reading actually got other operations into some hot water over filing abandonment for lines in the '60s. Since they had no long hauls and were primarily focused in some of the most overbuilt regions in the US, they started trying to dump as much unprofitable trackage as they could. They filed for, and received, permission to abandon both the Pickering Valley and the Schuylkill & Lehigh Branches in the early '60s. That they got permission to begin with was pretty much a miracle, since the ICC oversaw abandonment proceedings at the time. All customers on the line had an opportunity to oppose abandonment, even if that customer only generated a handful carloads a year, and if they spoke up they could delay abandonment for years, or perhaps indefinitely.
So, the Reading abandoned both these lines, but did not remove the rails. Around the same time, two separate groups were looking to buy rail lines to operate steam excursion on. In 1962, the Reading sold the Pickering Valley Branch to Malcolm Ottinger to create the Valley Forge Scenic Railroad, while in 1963 they sold the S&L Branch to a group of volunteers for the creation of the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern Railroad. You can probably see where this is going.
The original plan for the line the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern was to operate 11.5 miles of track from Kempton to Germansville. However this did not happen because since the Reading Co. had abandoned the L&S Branch, they didn't own the land anymore, it had reverted to the property owners along the right of way. An uncooperative land owner forced the new railroad to stop where the owner's land started, which is why the railroad stops just north of Wanamaker along Route 143. The new railroad purchased three miles of track for $65,000 and after the rest of the line was abandoned, the tracks south of Kempton were next on the list to be scrapped. The WK&S had no money to purchase the line, however, the scrapper donated 1.2 miles of track south of Kempton.
The Valley Forge Scenic discovered this issue much later. When they started running trains in '62, they were using an ex-GM&N 4-6-2, and there were those along the line that were not pleased about a steam locomotive operating in the area again and raining cinders in their backyards. The VFSR had a contentious relationship with their neighbors as a result, and someone eventually did some digging and found that the Reading had abandoned the line and they basically got the VFSR evicted, since they now owned the land and refused to sell the right of way back to VFSR.
On the subject of East Broad Top and reviving abandoned lines, they hit two big milestones on the March To Saltillo this week, with the reconstruction of the paved-over PA Route 475 and Cromwell Township's McCoy Road railroad crossings.
Some other big news out of EBT is that the #16 appears to be almost ready to go. It's sat out almost this entire season after it went down for basic annual maintenance in January and then it was discovered that it had cracking in the drive wheel centers. This isn't an unknown condition on the EBT narrow-gauge Mikados; Kelly Anderson, retired CMO for Strasburg, said that when the other smaller engines were running and they would send the drive wheels to Strasburg to have the wheels turned, they never pressed the tires off because the drive wheel centers were just a spider web of cracks and the tires were all that was holding them together. I believe they already had some wheels on hand because they knew they were going to have to replace drivers on the #14 or #15, whichever is restored next, but they didn't have a full set and they decided to do all 8 while they had the #16 out of service. Last week they posted a photo of the #16 on the turntable, sans tender, being moved by the M-6 and it looks like she still needs the running gear reinstalled but she's getting close to being together again. I'm guessing that they're hoping to have the #16 for the fall season, particularly the Fall Reunion at the beginning of October.
I see some of the pics posted with the giant trains running down what look like typical residential streets (obviously near some industry). I am not sure that happens anymore, but most people would think how that might affect the property value, and I think if Nick was given the option, he would likely pay extra for that! 
An old house my sister used to own (in San Leandro CA) was backed up to some freight line (I suspect Nick can identify it). I house sat there once and the trains tended to go by about 1:00 am (about 100 ft from the rear of the house), boy did that scare the hell out of me the first time that happened!! Give it a few day, I didn't even notice.
In reply to aircooled :
Unfortunately that area in Utica is a rough neighborhood. Well, all of Utica is a rough neighborhood, but that spot is really bad. That industry is F.X. Matt Brewery who makes Utica Club (first beer sold after Prohibition, and of the "Schultz and Dooley" ad campaign fame) and Saranac beverages. Any time I go to try and photograph UT-1, I'm always nervous about standing on a street corner of a bad neighborhood with an expensive camera; who's going to hassle me first, the locals or the police? In the winter or fall, I can tuck my camera under my jacket, but then that also looks suspicious, like I'm smuggling a gun or something.
I have a coworker who lived on Schuyler Street and he said once in a while the train would take the sideview mirror off a car that tried to squeeze by, or was parked too far out from a curb. Jay Winn also tells a story about riding the big Erie-Lackawanna BU-11 freight (Binghamton-Utica) north from the division point at Chenango Forks and he said they stopped and switched all the industries along the way, so they got back into Utica at about 2am. They were creeping along Schuyler Street and someone was parked too far out from the curb, so the engineer just grabbed the horn and held it for 5-10 minutes. Winn said he could see lights clicking on all along the street, until someone finally come running out and moved the car so they could get by.
Less positive news regarding East Broad Top, is the sale of EBT 0-6-0 #3. But this is due to the East Broad Top Preservation Association (EBTPA) and not the East Broad Top Railroad (EBT), the Friends of the East Broad Top (FEBT), or the East Broad Top Foundation (EBTF). Huh? There's a bit of history to unpack here.
EBT had a dual-gauge yard at the northernmost end of the line in Mount Union, where the EBT interchanged with the Pennsy. They had facilities to transload coal from their narrow gauge cars into standard gauge hoppers, there was infrastructure to move other merchandise between cars, and there was the old timber transfer that was repurposed to put narrow gauge trucks under standard gauge cars to move them down the EBT line. This yard was worked by a pair of 0-6-0s, #3 and #6, which had both standard gauge and narrow gauge couplers, and they were stored and serviced in an engine house at Mount Union. When the line shut down in 1956, the two standard gauge 0-6-0s were parked in the Mount Union engine house and left there, with no intent to restore them after Nick Kovalchick bought the EBT and made it a tourist line. The Mount Union yard had a lot of the structures, like the timber transfer, removed over the years and it was basically abandoned, since the tourist-era EBT never ran that far north. In 1975, Kovalchick sold the #6 to the Whitewater Valley Railroad out in Indiana, since his focus was on the narrow-gauge stuff and the line between Shirleysburg and Mount Union was falling into direpair. Whitewater Valley planned to restore the #6 to operation but that never happened, I believe partially because it has a lap-seam boiler that would require complete replacement, and it sits outside in Connersville returning to the earth. The #3 remained at Mount Union, inside the enginehouse, pretty much out of sight except for the occasional visit by a historical group.
In 1983, the Friends of the East Broad Top were formed, which was a volunteer group that helped the Kovalchick family maintain and operate the East Broad Top and try to slow the decay down as much as possible. FEBT still exists today, and is still providing a lot of work on the current restoration efforts. Around 2009, a guy named Larry Salone took over operating the EBT from the Kovalchick family under an operating lease and formed the East Broad Top Preservation Association (EBTPA) with the plans being to raise the money to eventually buy out the whole thing from them. The line shut down in 2011, citing the need for money to perform work on the infrastructure and locomotives, and the EBTPA's lease was ended. After the end of its operating lease, EBTPA had raised enough money to purchase some portions of the EBT, and on June 3, 2013, it was announced that they purchased the first part of the East Broad Top Railroad. In two separate transactions, the Association purchased the old PRR/Conrail spur from the Norfolk Southern mainline to the northern end of the EBT yard , and the EBT Mount Union yard from the Conrail spur tie-in to the US 522 crossing. EBTPA subsequently purchased the line from Mount Union to Aughwick. Note that none of these were the operating portions of the line, this was all stuff that had been dormant for nearly 60 years. After these initial purchases, the EBTPA was unable to fund further purchases of portions of the EBT.
Salone and his EBTPA (oddly, his association seemed to include no one else other than him) always seemed to be at odds with the Kovalchick family and the FEBT, with it being rare that either were ever quoted in the same article. Salone was also reported to be antagonistic towards FEBT members. Salone talked about reviving the standard-gauge portion of the line and using it to interchange freight into Mount Union and was trying to fund rebuilding of the line, and formed the Mount Union Connecting Railroad, although I don't think it ever did any business and no work was ever done on the tracks.Now, in 2020, a group of wealthy backers formed the East Broad Top Foundation (EBTF) and purchased everything south of Aughwick from the Kovalchick family, with intent to restore it to operation. The EBTF owns and operates the railroad, and the FEBT provides volunteer labor and assistance.
Salone and the EBTPA still owned his bit of the line though (which is why the EBTF decided to restore the line west to Pogue, Saltillo and Robertsdale) and that included the enginehouse and the #6. Last year, the #3 was spotted moved out of the engine house, and sadly whoever moved it decided to cut the rods with a torch, since the bearings were likely set up from sitting for nearly 70 years. The #3 was also reported to be in terrible condition, since the engine house roof leaked like a sieve and was never fixed, which led to the #3 basically sitting inside a greenhouse. Kelly Anderson talked about getting access to the engine house before Salone bought it and said that the #3 was the rustiest engine he had ever seen, and just touching the rivet heads on the boiler would cause them to pop off. Then there started being rumors that EBTPA had sold the #3 and it would be headed down south.
Well, it surfaced again a couple weeks ago, now wearing an absolutely hideous paint job, reminiscent of some of the dreadful 1970s "old time" paint jobs that some tourist lines applied. News revealed that the locomotive was purchased by Bob Tiffin, who founded Tiffin Motorhomes of Red Bay, a custom builder of luxury recreational vehicles. Situated along a former Illinois Central line, the city of Red Bay and a local museum see the engine, along with a caboose and a water tank, as a centerpiece in a railroad park to honor the IC’s heritage in that town. It has since begun it's move to Alabama.
Now the #3 likely would have never run again, at least not without extreme reconstruction, but there are a couple issues here. One, selling off a major piece of the railroad runs counter to the name of Salone's little organization. It is the East Broad Top Preservation Association, and sending a locomotive all the way to Alabama seems to run counter to preservation, as does cutting the rods and painting it in a historically-inaccurate paint scheme. Also, you have a lost opportunity for if the FEBT ever regained the whole line. Say Salone decides to play ball with them, or he sells out to the FEBT, or he passes away and his estate sells it back to them, yeah, they'll get back the rail line and the yard, but the #3 is now gone and won't be part of that purchase. Third, the #3 isn't really preserved. I don't believe any stabilization was any done, it was simply pulled out of the roundhouse and shot with some paint, it's still a very rusty locomotive underneath that's now going to sit outside. How long before it starts to really fall apart? It's had it's rods cut, it's in an incorrect paint scheme, it's not anywhere near home territory. How stable is the relations with Tiffin and Red Bay? There's a lot of horror stories of privately-owned or city-owned locomotives getting scrapped as soon as someone loses interest or they start to look scruffy. I think if Salone had sold it to Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, where it'd be roughly in home territory, fairly safe, and restored to proper appearance, there'd be less controversy.
Some great local news, for me, is that Arcade & Attica announced that 2-8-0 #18 successfully passed FRA certification, is fully-assembled and made a couple test runs, and it will be officially returning to service on August 24th, with runs at 11am and 2pm.
NickD said:There's a lot of horror stories of privately-owned or city-owned locomotives getting scrapped as soon as someone loses interest or they start to look scruffy.
One of the stories exemplifying this that I will always remember is GM&O #880B. One of the GM&O's F3As, it held on past the Illinois Central Gulf merger, still in GM&O red and maroon and handling "The Plug", GM&O's weekday Joliet-Chicago commuter run, with two or three old clerestory-roof coaches, also in GM&O paint. It was a pretty frequently-photographed engine.
After the old GM&O run came to an end, ICG really had no use for the old F3s and began retiring them and either cannibalizing the parts from them for other projects or rebuilding a bunch of them into "FP10s" for Mass. Bay Transit Authority. The #880B was one of the former and after it's retirement in 1978, it ended up with it's prime mover, generator, traction motors and other major parts all removed from it (although reportedly the steam generator was still onboard). A woman by the name of L.P. Fowler, who worked for ICG at the time, wanted to save one of the old GM&O F3As and bought the #880B from them for $3000. She had it moved to Farber, Missouri, where there was an old Chicago & Alton/GM&O depot, although the line through Farber was already removed. There was an N&W "CF" wooden caboose already on display on a piece of panel track there, possibly the last N&W CF caboose in existence, so she and some volunteers relaid a section of panel track, had the #880B trucked in and paired up with the caboose. They repainted the caboose into Chicago & Alton lettering, to make it's presence in Farber, MO make a little more sense, and she also kitted out the old depot with train order forks and hoops, old dispatcher scissor phone, patch panels, telegraph keys and sounders, motorcar signal indicators, and all sorts of other dispatcher paraphernalia. She also had acquired a complete train order pole, all restored, and a target signal and placed them on the grounds as well.
Well, her job ended up requiring her to move out of the state, and the #880B started to get a little scruffy and the town of Farber decided just to scrap it, and according to her, they never even notified her that something needed to be done or gave her a chance to rectify it. They simply called her halfway through the scrapping to let her know they were cutting it up. In more recent years, she said that they also disposed of the caboose, no clue if they also scrapped that or someone rescued that one, and all the stuff she donated to the depot was all thrown out, and the train order pole has had all the glass smashed out of it.
I do like the new look on Arcade & Attica #18. They went from the graphite smokebox to gloss black-painted, which I believe is how it originally appeared. The tender is now level, and the lettering is applied straight and on-center. They also ditched the weird platform that went across the front of the smokebox, and they have a new pilot with footboards on the sides of a shorter, narrower boiler-tube pilot They don't have any numbering on the cab, which is kind of odd. Also, mixed emotions on them ditching the orange paint on the running boards and handrails.
An older photo for comparison.
Unfortunately, the regular passenger excursions with the #18 only go as far north as Curriers, which means, I won't be able to replicate this shot at Ghost Pond in North Java (that's Jay-vuh, not Jah-vuh). Passenger trains have the power run around at Curriers and head south, while freight continues north to Java and North Java to service Residorf Bros. feed mill. I am hoping that maybe the guys that did the charter with the GE center-cabs, which is how I got this photo, will do something similar with the #18.
Am I gonna go to the first runs on the 24th?
Probably.
It's only a 3 hour drive out, and the first run is at 11am, so even if I leave at 7am, I'll get there with time to spare. I imagine there'll be a decent amount of railfans from New York area, but the A&A is a relatively obscure operation, so I don't think it'll be anything too crazy. Not like, say, the first run of Reading #2102 to Tunkhannock, or any of the #611 mainline runs where people are driving 10-12 hours and swarming the trackside.
Also, so far this year, the only steam action I've seen/had was the #2102 trip to Tunkhannock, and I think the only other stuff will be Essex Valley in December
Norfolk Southern has announced that they will be ending TripleCrown service, which was their RoadRailer operation. The last runs of Norfolk Southern Triple Crown RoadRailer trains 255 and 256 are scheduled to depart their respective terminals outside of Detroit and Kansas City on the weekend of August 24th and 25th, and will be the last runs of a RoadRailer service in the US.
RoadRailers were conceived by C&O in '55, and entered service in 1959 as "road-vans". They were a semi-truck trailer with integrated drop-down railroad axles that could be hooked together to form a train. The advantage over Trailer-On-Flatcar (also called "piggyback" or "pig" for short) trains or container trains was that they were lightweight and had better aerodynamics so they required little power to pull, they rode very smoothly, and they required no dedicated infrastructure. There was no specialized cars that had to be moved around empty, or ramps to load trailers onto spine cars, or cranes to lift off containers. C&O even demonstrated where they broke down a train on a section of street-running and just had trucks grab cars out of the middle, reducing switching.
Despite inventing them, C&O didn't use them for even ten years, discontinuing road-van service in '68. They cited issues with the fact that they couldn't be intermixed with other freight cars, like you could with TOFC cars, and so they had to be used in solid unit trains. They had also been tagging them onto the back end of passenger trains to handle mail and express freight, but as passenger trains were discontinued and railroads lost the mail contract, that traffic diminished as well.
The idea was revived in the '70s and used by a fair amount of railroads, including Amtrak towing mail and express cars. Conrail, SP, and Norfolk Southern all ran them, while UP and, ironically, CSX only briefly dabbled in them (CSX even used to run Detroit-Atlanta RoadRailers with their corporate FP7s for power). Newer designs dropped the integrated axles and switched to little dollies that they hooked onto, which made them a little more complicated but added weight capacity. Over the years, railroads dropped the service, but NS held onto it, since they owned TripleCrown.
Well, citing the uniqueness of them, the fact that the trailers have outlived their service life, and the unit train restriction, NS has decided to retire them, and consign the RoadRailer concept back to the dustbin of history, in favor of more regular container trains.
One of those CSX F-unit led RoadRailers that I mentioned. This service ran for all of a year before it was discontinued, and CSX would assign the executive F-units to it, since RoadRailers didn't take a ton of power, the F-units were still geared for 95mph, and other than when OCSs were being run, the F-units were mostly surplus power gathering dust.
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