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Some photos of the #2124 with the very first Iron Horse Ramble on October 25th, 1959

NickD said:

Some photos of the #2124 with the very first Iron Horse Ramble on October 25th, 1959

 

 

A pretty neat comparison of the #2102 at the same location (Molino) 65 years later.

Heading north over the Schuylkill River on the Peacock's Lock Viaduct.

Crossing the Hometown High Bridge. I've seen some photos taken there recently, which is interesting, because from what I'd heard, the access to the bridge had been sold to a new private owner who was very aggressively keeping any trespassers out. The previous owner was pretty cool about people going in to get photos, but everyone said the new owner was very strict about people accessing the bridge.

I'm really hoping that R&N gets the #425 up and running again next year. I didn't go down to any of the R&N fall trips this year, partially because of my schedule, but also because I feel like I've seen the #2102 make the Reading-Jim Thorpe run enough (and I rode the Nesquehoning-Tunkhannock trip this year). But I miss that little blue Pacific, and I got my camera after it made it's last run.

CSX has rolled out their 19th heritage unit, in honor of the Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio, better known as just "the Clinchfield". 

CSX has always been oddly proud of their Clinchfield heritage. While there was no chronological order to the release of the heritage units, I have heard that the Clinchfield unit was held until late-October/early-November so that it would be freshly painted for the Santa Train in December. Supposedly CSX hopes to have the Clinchfield line reopened by then, which will be quite a feat, considering it is basically unrecognizable from all the damage from Hurrican Helene.

It has been confirmed that the 20th, and final, CSX heritage unit will be #1981. An internal source has leaked that it will be a Pan Am Railways heritage unit, instead of a Guilford Rail System heritage unit, which is kind of odd, since it was Guilford that was formed in 1981. Timothy Mellon didn't buy the rights to Pan Am and rebrand the railroad until 1998. If I had to guess, maybe there isn't a lot of people out there that want to remember the "Big G" and it's charcoal and orange paint scheme. I know around D&H folks, mentioning Guilford or Mellon is a guaranteed way to hike someone's blood pressure. It's also interesting, and a little disappointing, that CSX isn't making a Maine Central or Boston & Maine or New Haven heritage unit.

Who knows, maybe there'll be a sudden nostalgia for Guilford someday. People are nostalgic for Conrail, and when Conrail first came about, it was viewed like the Anti-Christ by employees and fans of the railroads that were being rolled up into it. You hear people talk about Conrail on Conveyance Day and they were all mad about how it was "killing their railroads". The Erie-Lackawanna and Lehigh Valley guys were especially hard hit, since the entire western end of the Erie from Marion, OH to Chicago and the Lehigh Valley mainline from Buffalo to Van Etten went dark on Day 1. Conrail had no interest in those lines and they were never conveyed to them. Lots of other lines were idled and yanked up shortly afterwards, and motive power was shuffled around and rebalanced, stuff started being repainted. Conrail was pretty reviled when it was new.

I just finished Doug Ellison's (excellent) book on the old DL&W Utica Branch, and it gave a glimpse into this at a smaller level. Immediately after Conrail's formation, a lot of the E-L guys were laid off or had to bid elsewhere, because they were also competing against the ex-NYC/PC guys over at the east end of Utica Yard. All the old faithful and well-maintained ex-DL&W GP7s vanished, sent off elsewhere, and they had to make do with beat-up Penn Central Geeps and U-boats, or the pretty strongly disliked "Dewitt Geep" RS-3ms. Conrail immediately idled the line beween Norwich and Sangerfield, and was strongly considering abandoning it until NYS&W stepped up. And even though PC and E-L operations were all under the same company now, there was still an odd fractious mentality within. For example, Penn Central had abandoned their West Shore line through South Utica in 1964, and so to access the West Shore New York Mills Industrial Track, they had to use the DL&W/E-L Utica Branch to get over there. Even in Conrail, the ex-E-L guys were not allowed to handle the New York Mills Industrial Track, that job was still dispatched out of the old New York Central Tower 30 at the east end of Utica Yard and handled by ex-NYC/PC crews.

The funny thing was that the while Conrail's takeover was dreaded at first and was viewed much more positively later on, Guilford was viewed much more positively originally, at least on the D&H side. I'm not familiar enough with B&M and MEC to know how they felt about Guilford taking them over. The D&H had decent physical plant and equipment and a fair amount of on-line customers with tons of bridge traffic, but had some serious long-term debt (about $79 mil) and lacked the cash reserves to maintain the line or make improvements. Norfolk & Western owned them, but wanted nothing to do with them and wouldn't toss them any bones, and as the Norfolk Southern merger approached, N&W wanted to be rid of the D&H before the merger went through.

N&W literally put the whole D&H up for sale for $500,000 (no, not a type, half a mil for the entire railroad, all the real estate and equipment) and Jervis Langdon Jr., who was director of the D&H led the charge for the sale to the fairly recently-formed Guilford, thinking that it was the only way out for the D&H, after the federal government had so badly screwed the D&H in the 1976-1981 era and N&W had largely neglected the D&H from 1968 on. The thought was that D&H already interchanged tons of traffic to the B&M at Mechanicville and had run-through agreements with them, so putting the D&H under the same roof would streamline all of that and they practically were already merged. Plus, Tim Mellon, of Mellon banking family, had the deep pockets to finance a lot of updates to the D&H system and Guilford promised that D&H carloads would go up by a 45,000 cars annually once it was integrated into the system, which also sounded great. A lot of people at D&H felt really positive about the merger during the lead-up, viewing Guilford as the (wealthy) knight in shining (gold) arrmor that was going to bankroll major upgrades and bring the D&H back to where it had once been.

When the sale went through, they had a big press event at Billerica and David Fink was up on a podium saying "All these other railroads, CSX and ATSF and BN, they're just initials, but here at Guilford, we're a family", and then immediately stepped down off the podium and literally right onto D&H Vice President for Administration and Strategic Planning Bill Collins' shoes. Collins said it was a pretty fitting start for how things kicked off, and he still has the shoes with the crushed-in tips as a reminder.

Jervis Langdon never came out and said anything negative, but those who knew him said they always got the feeling that Langdon felt that he had made a major mistake getting them in bed with Mellon and Fink and Guilford Rail System as a whole, and he left fairly early. Later on, Langdon told the NYSDOT that "When Guilford started, it had some fine people, but they have all left or been fired. Tim Mellon, who knows nothing about the business, has delegated authority to those who think they know but actually don't."

Bill Collins said that his office should have been equipped with a revolving door. Employees were constantly coming in and going "Hey, Bill, how do I get out of this place?" and a lot of the major talent quickly beat feet out the door. Guilford was reselling all the D&H locomotives to Maine Central or Springfield Terminal, selling off buildings and real estate left and right, and not really reinvesting anything into the D&H. Howard Hontz, who was assistant president of operations and had been with the D&H for 41 years and change, saw what was happening and didn't like what was happening to the D&H and turned in his resignation, which was met with argument from Dave Fink who told him that they wouldn't accept it because they were going to make Hontz the head of the entire north east. Hontz told them like hell they would and left. And in pretty short order, Guilford gutted the D&H of most of it's physical assets, ran off all the good employees, and disenfranchised a lot of customers.

Maine Central GP7 #573 with a couple D&H passenger cars stopping to pick up Charlie McKenna at the D&H station in Rouses Point. This was a Guilford inspection tour in October 12, 1982, when Guilford was going through the procedure of buying the D&H. McKenna was installed as D&H president by Tim Mellon and Dave Fink before Guilford officially bought the D&H, and the Providence & Worchester raised hell over Guilford exerting influence over a railroad they didn't technically own yet and protested the move, but it never went anywhere. Opinions on McKenna were pretty poor among the D&H guys. As one veteran put it "McKenna used the phase “What do you do for the railroad?” in place of “ How are you?”." Gordon Smith, who was an Operation Control Officer, said that at 9:00 pm sharp, he had to call Charlie and give him a run down of the entire railroad. On more than one occasion he’d hear him snoring before he was finished, so he'd say "That’s it, sir" quite loudly, Mckenna would wake up and say "Okay, good night" and hang up.

The #573 hung around for a long time because it was steam generator equipped, so while the D&H, MEC and B&M didn't have any passenger trains anymore, it was useful on inspection trains and OCSs. That same GP7 still exists, is back in MEC pine tree paint, and works for Conway Scenic Railroad, running on the old MEC Mountain Division and B&M Conway Branch.

Same trip at Westport, NY

Another Guilford inspection trip in, this one in January of 1984 after they had officially purchased the D&H. This was taken in Oneonta and it has Boston & Maine GP40-2 in the lead with two Maine Central steam generator GP7s, #569 and #573, trailing. Hard to see, but the GP7s were actually relettered for D&H temporarily, the only time that the D&H rostered first-gen EMD road switchers. Someone said that the #569 developed mechanical issues on this trip, an inauspicious start to Guilford ownership, and it was cut out, with a lot of the later photos only having the #317 and #573 on it.

And here at Binghamton, the #569 is gone.

Passing through Factoryville with the #317 and #573

At some point, this trip went into push-pull mode too, with the #317 run around to the rear.

Passing by Avoca, still in push-pull mode, and you can almost see the Delaware & Hudson lettering on the hood. Also, check out the Malaise-era Thunderbird to the right.

And tomorrow, it's off to NH for the 470 Railroad Club trip with B&M #1741 (there's a photo of it as Springfield Terminal farther up this page) on Saturday. I'm going to swing by Eagle Bridge on the way east to maybe see the Batten Kill, fingers crossed.

So, left early this morning and drove to the Batten Kill's interchange with the Berkshire & Eastern (ex-B&M/Guilford/Pan Am) at Eagle Bridge, NY. The old B&M passenger station still stands between the D&H/Greenwich & Johnsonville/Batten Kill tracks and the higher B&M/Guilford/PAR/B&E tracks, but it is empty, hasn't seen a train in a long time, and is starting to look pretty rough. The chimney has been removed, one corner of the awning is breaking off, and the train order pole is still there but the semaphore is long gone. There's also an old signal bridge present, but it also devoid of signals.

There was also some covered hoppers present at the Eagle Bridge interchange, which is supposed to be a good sign and mean there's a possible chance of seeing the BKRR running, although I had no clue if they were incoming cars awaiting pickup by BKRR or outgoing cars awaiting B&E pickup.

So, I headed up to the Cargill feed mill at East Greenwich, which is where the Batten Kill stores their equipment, since they can no longer reach the enginehouse at Greenwhich (more on that later). BKRR owns two of their own locomotives, a pair of RS-3s, but then Southern New England Railroad, which isn't really a railroad per se but more an equipment leaser, has a bunch of other locomotives on the property that Batten Kill uses or is storing and working on, and then Hal Raven has an RS-1 that belongs to his Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson that is also on the property and is used by BKRR. It's an all-Alco show here.

BKRR RS-3 #4116 belonged to the D&H, and was lettered for and operated by their subsidiary, Greenwich & Johnsonville. When the D&H wanted to abandon the G&J, as well as the remainder of the Washington Branch, in 1982 , a man by the name of Bill Taber stepped up and bought the lines, along with the #4116 and formed the Batten Kill Railroad. The #4116 is currently out of service, and is looking pretty scruffy (I think that paint was last applied by the D&H before selling the G&J). There's another RS-3, the #605, which is a pretty rare ex-L&HR unit (I think one of only two L&HR RS-3s left) and that has also been out of service for a while. The way it was parked inside the Cargill compound made the #605 too hard to get a photo of. 

SNEX #5015 is a pretty rare RS-36 (Alco only made 40) and it's an ex-D&H unit. It was repainted two years ago into this livery, which is historically correct to this unit. The D&H had issues with the lightning stripe livery being too time-consuming and expensive, and the #5015 received this unusual one-off livery as an attempt at a cheaper, easier paint job. At the time, an employee suggested applying D&H lettering in the D&RGW speed lettering, but the decision was made to apply huge block lettering, again as a cost- and time-saving measure. The result was so homely that when D&H president Bruce Sterzing reportedly saw it, he told the shop crews to hide the unit. It ran around in that livery for a while, but the paint scheme was never duplicated. Two years ago, SNEX applied this livery to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Batten Kill, but applied the Batten Kill speed lettering. The #5015 is not operational, but is an ongoing project with the SNEX and BKRR folks.

The #361 is a recent SNEX acquisition, saved from the Ontario Midland when OMID parent company Livonia, Avon & Lakeville began their Alco purge this year. It's an ex-Norfolk & Western RS-11, and was acquired by OMID when they started up in 1982. It ran until 2022 when it was taken out of service, and I'm not sure if that was just because they were getting rid of the Alcos, or if because it has some sort of mechanical issues.

Hal Raven's Alco RS-1, Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson #3501, was also present, hooked up  to some covered hopper cars. This old 539T-powered warrior was originally built for the Department of Energy to use at the DuPont nuclear facility, and was in use up until last year at Madison Huntsville Airport Authority's transload facility before Hal acquired it and moved it to the BKRR. It's earned the nickname "Buttercup" for the bright yellow paint, and it's one of the primary locomotives being used on the BKRR currently.

Sitting side by side were RS-36s SNEX #408 and SNEX #5012. The #5012 may wear D&H paint but she's actually not originally a D&H unit. It was originally bought by the Norfolk, Franklin & Danville, which became an N&W subsidiary in 1962, and then was later sold to the now-defunct Delaware Coast Line Railroad. SNEX eventually purchased it and moved it to the BKRR and it's their primary locomotive currently. Great looking engine in that D&H paint, even if it isn't a true D&H unit. 

The #408 is also an RS-36, and also has N&W history, except it was bought directly by the N&W themselves. Of course, since it was bought by the N&W, it was ordered with a high hood. It's also another Ontario Midland refugee, and was purchased by the OMID in 1982 when they started up and ran until 2022 before SNEX saved it. Not sure what the plan is for it, but the silver-painted trucks are new. 

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There was no one around (It was around 9:30), so I decided to drive around the system a little and check back, since the BKRR crews are noted to usually go on duty relatively late in the morning. I headed to Greenwhich, where the BKRR offices are based out of the old Greenwich & Johnsonville station.

There's also this dilapidated feed mill next to it, with a two-stall enginehouse out behind it. As you can see, the tracks are vanishing into the weeds and that's because this end of the line is no longer connected to the system. From what I've heard, the city needed to raise the bridge headed out of Greenwich due to clearance issues, and the contractor screwed up and bridge sits about 3 feet higher than the roadbed, because they neglected to raise the approach to it. It’s hard to get a locomotive to make a three foot vertical jump, and then the paper mill on the west side of the bridge went out of business anyways.  If you walk east along the rail bed, there is still two hoppers full of ballast waiting to be unloaded for the approaches that have never been fixed. While it means the BKRR power can't come back to the enginehouse at Greenwhich, there are no customers west of the East Greenwhich Cargill mill anyways, so really it just means that it's less track that doesn't generate revenue that they have to keep in service, even if it means their equipment sits outside.

Apparently the locals have figured out that lines is out of service, and have started to encroach on the ROW.

The bridge that is the issue with the BKRR being cut off from their enginehouse. You can see the new piers that were built for the bridge to raise it.

I swung through Cambridge, where the D&H/G&J passenger station and freight house still exist. The passenger station is currently a microbrewery, Argyle Brewing, and the old freight house is owned by Hubbard Hall Center For The Arts & Education. Also, note the weeds on the tracks. This is on the active East Greenwich-Eagle Bridge segment of the line, not the embargoed line west of East Greenwich or north of Greenwich Junction. Yeah.

I went back to East Greenwich, and when I got there, I saw that the #3501 was moved, I could hear the #5021 running and the hopper car that had been behind it was gone, and the #408 was moved out of the siding. The BKRR hi-rail truck was there, and there were several other trucks around and I thought "Hey, maybe they're running today. And maybe this is the first run of the #408." And then they unhooked the #5012, backed it up and shut it down. I walked up and asked what was going on and was told "We're gonna put new batteries in the #408 after lunch." Then they saw my camera and said "Sorry, there won't be a road train until Monday." Oh well, guess I'm 0-2 with the Batten Kill. Seems like Monday is the day to try.