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