Grassroots Railroad Sports?

Pennsy had some weird battery-electric rail tractors for working urban/dockside tracks in Baltimore and Jersey City. They had rubber tires and couplers on both end and could be used to move cars around in cities after they no longer wanted steam locomotives in them anymore. They did not have flanged wheels, which made them really useful because you could just unhook from one end of the car, drive around to the other end and head off in the other direction. Later on, PRR swapped the battery power out for gasoline engines, and they lasted surprisingly long.

You can see that this one has been converted to gasoline power, with the muffler on the roof and the radiator cut in the side of the body

Once those got too old, they were replaced by these big bruisers.

The Buckwalter Electric Tractors replaced the runtiest of PRR steam power, the A5s 0-4-0. 

Great-looking little machines, with the Belpaire boiler, short wheelbase and slope-deck tender. There's one preserved, but it's entombed at the Railroad Museum of PA, sadly to never see operation again.

In reply to NickD :

How did the weird battery-electric rail tractors steer?

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

Tiller steering, like a lot of your early automobiles 

I'm headed east to Vermont tomorrow for the Trains charter on the Vermont Rail System, featuring Green Mountain Railway RS-1 #405. The event is to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Vermont Rail's formation, and the #405 will be wearing it's original Rutland Railway lettering for the 2-day event, which will include rare mileage round trips from Rutland to Bellows Falls and Rutland to Burlington with photo runbys along the way. The Rutland shut down in 1962 over a strike by workers, and sat dormant for over a year, as labor and management tried to come to terms, and eventually the state of Vermont, desiring to save the only north-south route through the state, purchased the railroad and sought operators for various segments. Vermont Railway was formed to operate the Rutland-Burlington main line, as well as the branch down to Bennington, in 1964, while Green Mountain Railway was formed by Nelson Blount to take over the Rutland-Bellows Falls portion and give his Steamtown USA a home, the 26 westernmost miles of the Rutland's Ogdensburg Division between Ogdensburg and Norwood was taken over by NY state in a similar state-owned/privately-operated fashion, and the 132 mile east-west segment between Burlington and Norwood, NY was torn up in '64. The Rutland's Alco RS-1s and RS-3s were split up between VTR and GMRC and over the years were sold off or scrapped, but RS-1 #405, which had made the last official move of the Rutland Railroad, hung around at Green Mountain Railway and never left home rails. Eventually, VTR would acquire the Green Mountain, as well as the NY-owned segment at Norwood, making VTR the owner of the entire remaining Rutland Railroad system. The #405 is still lettered for Green Mountain, which reused the old Rutland livery but with different lettering, and has largely been relegated to hauling occasional excursions, as well as sometimes pinch-hitting in switching or freight service when VTR has power that's out of service.

I think that VTR/GMRC #405 is the oldest diesel to never leave home rails. It was built in 1951, and for 73 years has operated over the exact same rails. There are some diesels that have left and come back to home rails, but I don't think any other diesel can challenge the #405's records. Hell, it's not that far behind UP #844, a steam locomotive, in age and staying on home rails and never being retired. The #405 was built in '51 and the #844 is just six years older.

I also have to pass near Eagle Bridge, NY tomorrow, so I'm going to check and see if there are any signs of life at the elusive Batten Kill Railroad. They operate a mix of Alco products on what was the old D&H subsidiary Greenwich & Johnsonville and the remains of the D&H Washington Branch but they run on an "as-needed" basis and that bassis is extremely erratic. If nothing else, I might be able to snag some photos of parked motive power. Originally I had been thinking I got my hotel for Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night, and I was thinking that I could get two cracks at maybe seeing the Batten Kill in operation, on Friday headed east and on Monday headed home. Then I looked at my hotel reservation and realized I only reserved it for two nights, and this time of year in Vermont, you can't extend your hotel stay because they're completely booked up.

I recently discovered this guy's channel. His vids share a lot of knowledge about the business & operations side of railroading. I especially thought this one was pretty cool. 
 

Did I say that I was going to Battten Kill? I lied. I woke up and said "I can go to Batten Kill and roll the dice and likely lose, or I can go to Rutland and definitely catch some VTR freight." So, at 4:30am I hoped in my Spyder and drove to Rutland. I got there to catch train no. 263 (Rutland-Bellows Falls) sitting at the south side of the yard in Rutland, with GP38-2 #208 and SD70M-2 #431 on the head end. The GP38-2 was originally built for Penn Central, while the big SD70M-2 was acquired from Florida East Coast, along with a sister engine, and allowed them to retire a lot of their older power.

I headed down to the other end of the yard after hearing a horn, and caught a VTR crew switching the yard with a GATX/GMTX leaser and another GP38-2

Their other SD70M-2, #432, was sitting down by the little two-stall engine house, and there was another GATX/GMTX leaser in the engine house.

I had a cool angle for a shot of the train leaving Rutland, but while I was down seeing what was running at the other end of the yard, I heard a horn honking and knew that the train was leaving. Now, let me explain here, I had no clue what that train was, where it was going, and I didn't have any idea what spots to go to for photos. I changed my plan at 4:00am to go see what was running on VTR, so I hadn't done any research, so this was a lot of running and gunning. "Hey, it's headed that direction, the roads head in that direction, let's see if that gets me where I need to go." This was approaching North Shrewsbury, RD on it's way out of Rutland, VT. I do wish that the SD70M-2 was leading, since that big thing looks pretty good in the VTR red.

An old telegraph pole at Town Hill Road in Shrewsbury watches the train pass. Super confusing situation here, I saw on Google Maps that there was "Historical Clarendon Depot", and I drove to that and I'm not sure if Rutland relocated the line at some point, or the building was relocated, or if this belonged to another railroad. I drove to the station, got there and looked around and saw no tracks, and they were about 250 feet up the hillside with a crossing on a private driveway with a bunch of trees in the way. So I zipped down to this location, and that old telegraph pole was a neat bonus. It's amazing how many telegraph poles still exist in the northeast.

Edit: I found the details on what the story is with that depot. "The former East Clarendon Railroad Station stands in central eastern Clarendon, at the triangular junction of Route 103 and East Clarendon Road. The latter road roughly parallels the tracks of the Rutland Railroad, an active freight line. The station originally stood between the road and the tracks, about 400 feet (120 m) southeast of its present location, to which it was moved in 1953." 1953 was when the Rutland had the first of a series of strikes, and that one caused a permanent cessation of passenger service, so it would make sense that it was moved after that.

Crossing Route 103 on this awesome upside-down truss bridge. This actually is a pretty nice chase, because it parallels, and crosses over, Route 103 quite a few times.

So I get to this location in Mt. Holley and there's another guy there, and I have no clue where, or even what direction this train is headed, because like I said, I didn't do any research beforehand. So I try to, as nonchalantly as possible, figure it out and go "Any idea how far they're going?" and he goes "Oh, I heard they're going all the way, but they're making a stop at Ludlow." Well, that didn't help me any. Are they, and I, going "all the way" to Bennington or Burlington or Rutland Falls? No clue, at this point. He did give me a temporary panic attack by mentioning that the stop at Ludlow would be "to allow a passenger special to go by", which had me questioning if the charter was Friday and Saturday, and not Saturday and Sundaya like I thought. A quick check of my email confirmed the charter was Saturday and Sunday, and that the passenger special was the deadhead move to Rutland.

Slightly farther down the line, there was this gorgeous spot running parallel to Route 103, so I stopped and got this shot.

Drifting downgrade through the woods. This line was a pretty sawtooth grade profile and lots of curves, so it's easy to see why the Rutland was never the healthiest of railroads. Grades and curves may be fun to look at and ride, but they slow traffic down and cost lots of money.

Passing over a bridge in the Okemo Mountain Resort ski slop. Reminds me of the joke Don Ball Jr. made about the state of Vermont. He was in charge of Steamtown USA after Nelson Blount's death, when it was still at Bellows Falls, and was venting about Vermont's strict laws against billboards and advertisements, which was making it hard to draw in passerbys to Steamtown and resulted in Steamtown's position at Bellows Falls becoming untenable. He made the crack that "Vermont's idea of an economy is to buy a mountain and pray for snow."

At Ludlow, there's a cool old abandoned Rutland depot, which likely has been empty since that same 1953 cessation of Rutland Railroad passenger service I mentioned earlier. At this point I figured out that we were on the Green Mountain Railway (the old Rutland line from Bellows Falls to Rutland). Green Mountain was formed by Nelson Blount to own and operate freight services on the line, and then he could run steam excursions over the line. The story there was that Blount wanted to have a steam museum and had the stuff stored on the B&M at North Walpole while he tried to find a home. He really wanted the B&M Cheshire Branch, and the B&M said they were willing to sell it but were dragging their heels, so the first year he ran a couple trips on the east end of the Concord and Claremont. The Concord and Claremont moved to abandon that line the next year, the B&M was still jerking him around on buying the Cheshire Branch, and the state of NH had pulled back their promised support after a reelection resulted in a complete change of administration. The Rutland was being dissolved and Vermont wanted operators to take over the line, and Blount thought the Bellows Falls-Rutland segment was great for excursions, but VT was insisting he had to handle freight as well. From what I've read, Blount was completely uninterested in freight service, but some of his top folks advised him that it would bring in extra revenue and he wouldn't have to lay off operating crews during Steamtown's off-season. Blount accepted the deal and Green Mountain Railway Co. was formed to own the diesels and handle freight. It gets really weird because early on Blount used the Steamtown, Monadnock & Northern name on his steam locomotives, but then some got assigned to Green Mountain and others kept their road numbers and some just used the Steamtown name (no "Monadnock & Northern" at the end).

After Blount's death, some sort of schism happened between Steamtown USA and GMRC, which also made it hard for Steamtown to stay at Bellows Falls, and when Steamtown left, GMRC stayed behind. VTR, who got the Rutland-Burlington mainline and Bennington branch, bought up GMRC in the '90s and they still use the GMRC name to refer to the Rutland-Bellows Falls line, and there is some power, RS-1 #405 among them, that still use GMRC reporting marks. Also, really weird is that VTR uses letter abbreviations for their trains (RDBD is Rutland-Burlington) while GMSR trains use train numbers (263 is southbound, 264 is northbound).

I got there, and met the guy from earlier, as well as some other folks and the #405 arrived with it's deadhead move from Bellows Falls up to Rutland to be ready for tomorrow. The Rutland lettering and logo had already been applied by Kevin Burkholder, who is a name that appears if you do any reading on VTR. He's their company photographer and is pretty knowledgeable on the line, and seems a pretty friendly guy. He had done the research and gotten the logos and lettering right to make GMRC #405 back into Rutland #405. Obviously there is some mismatching, because the locomotive paint has faded, but according to him, the cab emblems, even on new locomotives, had a slightly different background coloring, which is interesting. Also kind of ironic that the #405 is named "Nelson F. Blount". Gotta wonder how the guy who owned Steamtown would feel about having a diesel named after him.

Pretty neat to see it parked in front of the depot with the coaches, and the depot still has an intact, albeit nonfunctional, semaphore. Gives a neat look at what Rutland passenger trains would have looked like, although there was a pretty short overlap between the RS-1's arrival (1951) and the end of passenger service (1953).

A meet at Ludlow.

Mountain View Ave in Ludlow. Hard to see but the upper girder has the year 1897 cut into it.

At Chester, VT. we have this gorgeous brick depot that dates back to 1871. It's actually still owned by VTR/GMRC and is used for the GMRC excursions that VTR operates with the #405.

There was also this awesome hardware store next to the depot, and this is pretty much what this region of Vermont looks like. Seriously, it seems like there are no structures built after WWI in this area.

And then there was this store.

Particularly interesting is that it had a mural on the side, with CPR G5 4-6-2 #1293. The #1293 was one of the three G5 Pacifics that Steamtown operated while at Bellows Falls, with #1246 and #1278 as the other two. The #1293 ended up going to the Ohio Central and ran there for a while and these days it's sitting inside Age of Steam Roundhouse. The engine painted is kind of an odd mashup though, since it has an Elesco horizontal bundle-type feedwater heater. The G5s were built with the less-common Elesco vertical coil-type feedwater heater, and Steamtown did have a G5 with a horizontal feedwater heater but it wasn't the #1293. The #1278 was the G5 with a horizontal feedwater heater, and the story there was that the #1278's original feedwater heater sprung a leak, and Blount had stacks of steam locomotive parts laying around and had the shop crew install a horizontal feedwater heater just to visually mix things up a little.

There was also this old boxcar that is set on a cutoff spur, with a ramp up to the one end and a door cut into that end. Amazingly, it still sits on trucks, but I have to wonder when the last time it moved was. Also, no clue what the heritage of this car is.

Train 263 approached the Chester Depot and then tied down and stopped for a while. The brakeman hopped off and walked over to the market, presumably to grab some lunch. I grabbed a couple photos and hit the roads. I do wish that the semaphore still had the paddles on them, but it's cool to still see them there at all, and the station is very nice.