Since we got some snow here in NY, here's a "vintage" photo of one of the New York, Susquehanna & Western's venerable GP18s running up the middle of Schuyler Street. Taken in 2000, the GP18s were pushing 40 years old at the time, having been bought new by the Suzie-Q in 1962, and at the time of their purchase were some of the first new motive power on the NYS&W in 20 years. I wish the GP18s were still around, since they were pretty neat-looking, with the classic EMD rounded cab roofline and the rakishly angled low hoods. The NYS&W got rid of them around 2007 when a bunch of Conrail Shared Assets Operation power became available for lease. According to NYS&W employees, they would have rather have kept the GP18s, since they were good reliable go-anywhere power, while a lot of the GP40s and SD40s leased from NS and CSX were worn-out junk that NS and CSX wouldn't fix. The GP18s live on, on the East Penn Railroad in a dreadful yellow and blue livery.
Definitely cool to see a loco rolling down the middle of the street. One of the things I remember about New Bern, NC was Hancock Street. I believe NS locos are more commonly seen there.
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
I live near the NYS&W Utica Branch, a leftover of the Utica, Chenango & Susquehanna Valley which in turn became the DL&W Utica Branch, where they still run down Schuyler Street. Interestingly, this was originally built as 6' broad gauge (all the rage with anthracite roads in the 1800s), then regauged to standard gauge, briefly abandoned when the DL&W took control of the nearby Utica, Clinton & Binghamton (which was owned by the D&H but leased to the New York & Oswego Midland but then lost when the Midland went bankrupt) and instead used the UC&B's own street-running on Fay Street, and then reactivated once the New York, Ontario & Western emerged from the reorganization of the Midland and took back over the UC&B.
During the late Erie-Lackawanna era, the E-L ran 200+ car NE-74/NE-97s over the Utica Branch, including the half mile up Schuyler Street. Those trains had originally come from Chicago on the E-L's ex-Erie mainline and were run into Maybrook Yard, where they were handed off to the New York, New Haven & Hartford and went to New Haven, CT for their end destination. That continued even after the New Haven was absorbed by Penn Central, but then when the Poughkeepsie Bridge "mysteriously" burned it severed the eastward connection out of Maybrook. E-L's solution was to hop off the Erie at Binghamton and then go up the old DL&W Utica Branch into the ex-New York Central yard at Utica, who then took them to Selkirk and beyond with run-through power.
I imagine that had to have been something to see, watching a 200+ car train come snaking along Schuyler Street. Probably pretty frustating if you were a local waiting to cross the street too. It also took a hell of an engineer to handle a train over the sawtooth profile of the Utica Branch, especially with Paris Hill in the way. That was the worst grade on the entire DL&W system and was a helper district in the steam era. Doug Ellison recounted a tale told to him by an E-L engineer, where they were bringing a big NE-74 up the Utica Branch and he had a fairly new brakeman on the train. They would typically stop before descending Paris Hill and the brakeman would go and set retainers (Air valve that can be set for direct release or a hold type function where air brakes are held even when brakes are being re-charged) on a number of cars before heading down the hill. The brakeman got out of the cab, was gone for a while, since you had to walk back and manually set them on each car. Finally the brakeman came back, gets in the cab and they start going down the hill and the engineer notices they're flying down the hill, and the brakes aren't enough. He looked over at the brakeman and asked if he set the retainers, and the brakeman admitted that he was new on the job and didn't really know what they were, to which the engineer's reply was "Well, Jesus Christ, this is a fine time to tell me that." He puts on the dynamic brakes and has them in Notch 8 and they just aren't shaving off any speed, and they managed to avoid a derailment or an accident, but they came flying through Schuyler Street and into the E-L side of Utica Yard and barely got it stopped in the New York Central side. He cursed out the brakeman, got out and warned the Penn Central crew that they might want to look at the power before they took off, because the dynamic brakes on the train wouldn't stop worth a damn. The PC guy looks back and there was some PC power farther back in the lash-up, which had gone west on a previous NE-97, and he goes "Well, that's an old NYC unit. That doesn't have dynamic brakes." To apply dynamic brakes, you throw a switch in the cab and then control the intensity of the dynamic brakes using the throttle, aand the engineer had the throttle in Run 8 (WOT) to try and slow the train. Well that PC unit wasn't equipped, so it was shoving the train forward at full throttle. The E-L engineer then cursed out Penn Central junk motive power, and stormed off.
My own photo of NYS&W GP40 #3040 on the Schuyler Street street-running.
As-delivered, the NYS&W GP18s wore this unusual paint scheme, with the half-height, inverted-color chevrons, although you can see how it morphed into the scheme they have today. The iconic black and yellow paint scheme wasn't even designed by the Susquehanna though. It was instead selected from a catalog of EMD-designed liveries that EMD offered to railroads that didn't want to design their own livery (The DL&W's gray, yellow and red was similarly chose, as was the NYO&W's gray, yellow and orange, and likely many others that you wouldn't realize.) When Walter Rich's Delaware-Otsego Corp. took over the moribund Susquehanna in 1980, they decided to repaint the motive power for the resumption of service, but the mechanical forces decided that masking off those weird front stripes was too much effort, and instead they altered it to create the modern Susquehanna look.
An interesting shot of EMD's GP20 demonstrators testing on the Susquehanna at Charlottesburg, NJ in November of 1961. EMD marketed the GP18 and the GP20 concurrently, and the major difference was that the GP18 was rated at 1800hp from a supercharged 567D1 V16, while the GP20 was rated at 2000hp from a turbocharged 567D2 V16. The NYS&W needed new power, since the Alco RS-1s and S-2s that they had dieselized with in 1945 (making them one of the first railroads to dieselize, if not the very first) were getting old and unreliable. NYS&W was in pretty poor financial health and had to get federal money to purchase new motive power, and they tested the GP20, but ultimately went with three GP18s. I've heard that the reasoning was that the railroad didn't feel like the extra 200hp was enough to offset the higher purchase price and additional maintenance. Some people have wondered why the Susquehanna didn't look into RS-11s, since they operated an entirely Alco diesel roster, but the belief was that Alco couldn't meet the conditions of the loan. Decades later, the NYS&W would end up with some used GP20s, and the crews absolutely loathed them, so clearly the GP18s were the right choice.
Smashing a train into a spent fuel nuclear rods transport container at 100mph. The action starts at about 6:00 and it's interesting watching the locomotive make two curves at 100 mph not to mention it smashing into the container.
One interesting proposal that I stumbled across, regarding NYS&W motive power, was how in 1965 Alco drafted a proposal for NYS&W to trade in all of their RS-1s and S-2s, both operational and out of service, on six Alco T-6s that were to be equipped with Hi-Ad road trucks and M.U. capability. The T-6 was an unusual beast that was based on the S-6. It generated 1000hp from a turbocharged inline-6 251, compared to the S-6's 900hp, and was setup for faster transition, higher top speed, and had the beefier GE 752 traction motors, compared to the GE 731s on the S-6. It was equipped with regular Alco switcher trucks as standard, although Alco offered the Hi-Ad two-axle truck, also offered on the C430 and the C415, on the T-6. The only railroad to select that option was Monongahela Connecting Railroad (who also bought the sole Hi-Ad-equipped C415) although NYS&W was considering it for their six. The T-6 also was unique in appearance, with a hood that looked like the long hood off of an RS-11, with the notched ends for the number board. Where the S stood for Switcher, the T stood for Transfer and the idea was that it was to be used for moving long cuts of cars between yards or handling short-haul local freight service.
But by 1965 the NYS&W was in an inevitable death spiral that would lead to the cessation of service in 1979, and so they couldn't scrape together the funding that they needed to make the deal. It also was a bit of moot point, since traffic levels were so low that they could mostly be handled by the three GP18s and a couple of RS-1s and S-2s. Still, it would have been neat to see T-6s in the Susquehanna "yellowjacket" paint.
An interesting footnote on the NYS&W was that supposedly Penn Central looked at buying it aaround 1969. PC put an offer put on the table that was rejected by NYS&W management at the time, Irving Maidman, as not being lucrative enough. Maidman bought the railroad more as a real estate investment than anything else and, I'm guessing, saw the value of the real estate holdings as much higher than that of the railroad itself.
Att that time, NYS&W either owned the track or had trackage rights from the bridge over the entrance to Croxton Yard south to Marion Junction on the Erie. So with that section and the regular NYS&W line north of the Croxton bridge, it could have been used as a bridge between the ex-PRR Passaic & Harsimus Lines at Marion Junction and the ex-New York Central West Shore Line at Ridgefield Park. That was all Penn Central wanted, and they likely would have abandoned or sold off the rest of the NYSW. They couldn't connect in North Bergen, where the West Shore came out of the tunnel under the Palisades because the Erie Northern RR was between NYS&W and the West Shore there, but a few miles north at Granton, just south of Ridgefield Park, the Erie Northern went under the West Shore and split away, so the West Shore was then adjacent to the NYSW and in principle could connect to it, which is the case today where NYS&W and the West Shore connect today, although the West Shore is now CSX.
For railfans, this was a good thing, because the NYS&W as it exists today likely would not have existed. Penn Central would have taken what they wanted and gutted the rest, since the NYS&W at that time was two weed-strewn ribbons of rust that didn't even leave the state of NJ.
The NYS&W of today is practically a different railroad from the original pre-1979 incarnation, and both of them are very different from the NYS&W of the mid-1980s to 1999.
The NYS&W was formed in 1881 from the merger of five different railroads and it's main purpose was to bring anthracite coal from Pennsylvania to the metropolitan New Jersey area. The builders were reluctant to try and crack the Pocono Mountains of PA, so it instead picked up it's coal from the DL&W, and to reach the Hudson River waterfront ports, the NYS&W would transfer their coal traffic to the Pennsylvania Railroad at Marion Junction via the Hudson Connecting Railway. It eventually ended it's partnership with the DL&W and the PRR when it leased the Wilkes-Barre & Eastern to reach the coal fields at Wilkes-Boro, and it then extended it's mainline from Little Ferry, NJ east to a port facility at Edgewater. This resulted in a pretty profitable railroad by 1893.
That profit attracted the attention of J.P Morgan and by 1898 the Erie Railroad had taken majority control of the NYS&W and made it a subsidiary. In 1911, the Susquehanna's Jersey City passenger terminus was moved from the PRR's Exchange Place Station to the Erie's Pavonia Terminal, and their freight terminus was moved from the PRR's Marion Yard to the Erie's Croxton Yard. In 1923, the Susquehanna's total gross income peaked at $5.5 million. During the 1920s, the Erie began operating under the control of the Van Swering Brothers (alongside the C&O, NKP, Pere Marquette, and W&LE) and they installed a new president for the Erie, john Bernet. During Bernet's time at the Erie, he initiated a major modernization program for the Susquehanna and invested in rebuilding and upgrading the NYS&W's trackage and bridges and modernizing their equipment.
Unfortunately, during the Great Depression, the Erie began to suffer from a number of financial woes, and the Susquehanna was neglected as a result. The general demand for anthracite coal was declining, and while other anthracite-hauling railroads were able to change their freight priorities, the NYS&W struggled to follow suit. By 1937, their equipment was mostly secondhand ex-Erie "Russian Decapod" 2-10-0s and 4-6-0s and old Stillwell coaches and the Susquehanna became a largely irrelevant railroad. They filed for bankruptcy and reorganization in June of '37, and in 1939 the trustees terminated the company's lease of the Wilkes-Barre & Eastern, effectively ending their anthracite coal operations, and the WB&E was quickly shut down and ripped up in it's entirety, after they filed for their own bankruptcy. Following the abandonment of the WB&E, the NYS&W did not see any benefits in continuing their Pennsylvania operations, so by 1941, they cut back the western end of their mainline to from Stroudsburg, PA to Hainesburg, NJ.
The trustees moved to dieselize the NYS&W's locomotive roster to reduce their operating costs. In June of 1940, they began to purchase some streamlined self-propelled rail cars from American Car & Foundray to cover their commuter services, and in 1941, the NYS&W began to order some Alco RS-1s and S-2s in an Alco-designed silver and maroon livery to replace their their steam locomotives. By June of 1945, the NYS&W was fully dieselized, declaring themselves the first in the United States, although four of the Russian Decapods would hang around on the roster until 1947 before being scrapped. The Susquehanna also settled a $7 million freight balance debt they owed the Erie by paying them $250,000 and purchasing their freight terminal in Edgewater. By November 1951, the Susquehanna's entire passenger car fleet was replaced with stainless steel cars, their entire streamlined rail car fleet was replaced with Budd RDCs, and many of their passenger stations were revamped. On June 3, 1953, the NYS&W emerged from bankruptcy and completed its reorganization process, having reduced their capitalization from $42 million to $16 million, and trustee Henry K. Norton became the NYS&W's newest president for his efforts.
Two years later, in 1955, stockholders voted to have Norton demoted to chairman and replaced by former Chicago Great Western vice-president James M. Baths, due to Norton's "excessively-progressive foresight", which I'm not entirely sure what that means. The NYS&W immediately began another financial downward slide. It was operating in NJ which was notorious for taxing railroads to death, it was running commuter obligations at a loss, it was cursed with low mileage hauls since the railroad was entirely confined to NJ and they lost their major customer in the Ford plant at Edgewater in 1955. It lost an interchange partner when the New York, Ontario & Western was abandoned in 1957 and the NYS&W abandoned the Hanford Branch that they used to connect with the NYO&W. They lost another interchange partner in 1961, when the Lehigh & New England followed the NYO&W into the history books, and the NYS&W subsequently abandoned more of it's mainline from Hainesburg back to Sparta Junction. A third interchange partner, the CNJ, was also in poor financial health, although it didn't go out of business. The NYS&W sold-off its nearly new Budd passenger cars and replaced them with second-hand used equipment, and desperate to close its money-losing commuter service, the railroad's trustees offered its 200 remaining commuters $1,000 each to stop using the trains. Only five of them took the deal.
In October 1962, the NYS&W was purchased by a New York real-estate developer and millionaire, Irving Maidman. Maidman previously acquired the former Ford Edgewater plant for use as a rental warehouse, and since the NYS&W happened to have served the building, Maidman opted to purchase the majority of the railroad's shares to ensure their freight services in Edgewater remained active. Maidman also sought federal funding to buy the three GP18s, since most of the RS-1s and S-2s were out of service, and those that still ran were in extremely poor condition and becoming increasingly reliable. Photos of this era show RS-1s running with all the hood doors flapping in the breeze in an attempt to combat overheating issues.
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Maidman began to have the NYS&W prioritize on serving his warehouse business, but the railroad consequently began to neglect their other stockholders and the rest of their remaining freight customers. Maintenance on the NYS&W's trackage also became deferred, and in ensuing years, it resulted in derailments and slower deliveries, which in turn resulted in additional customers abandoning the railroad. Maidman also arranged for the NYS&W to sell some of their land properties to other businesses Maidman owned, and they began to lease some new land property in Edgewater for use as backup storage in a financial shell game.
In June 1966, the NYS&W finally obtained court permission to terminate all of their passenger services, despite commuters having petitioned to keep them open. The railroad's final commuter train operated on June 30 with only a day's notice, and the following day, uninformed commuters waited to board NYS&W trains that never arrived. By December 1968, the Susquehanna turned a profit for the first time since 1955, with an income of $17,755, but that same year, the railroad lost yet another interchange partner, when the Lehigh & Hudson River's Station Road bridge in Sparta was deemed unsafe, and they had to cut back their Sparta route to Oak Ridge. Also in that same year, Seatrain Lines breached their shipping contract with the NYS&W by moving their shipyard operations from Edgewater to Brookly for a separate partnership with the US government, and Maidman sued Seatrain for $4.8 million in compensatory damages. The NYS&W also sued the E-L for $1.6 million in unpaid usage of Susquehanna trackage, but they subsequently settled for a $186,315 claim, and the EL agreed to pay a $15,000 yearly fee. By the end of 1969, the NYS&W turned a profit of $297,644. In 1970, NYS&W executive William T. Frazier became the railroad's newest president, after the position had been changed three times within the previous five years.
In 1971, the NYS&W lost yet another interchange, this time with the bankrupt CNJ at Green Pond Junction, when a stretch of trackage at Smoke Rise was washed away by Tropical Storm Doria. Following the damage from Storm Doria, along with that from Hurricane Agnes the following year, the Susquehanna began operating at a financial loss again, and the condition of their remaining trackage worsened. The NYS&W also became embroiled in a number of scandals around this time. Irving Maidman also began to lose money from his other businesses, and he began intentionally defaulting on property taxes owed to the state of New Jersey and Citibank, believing they were overcharging him. In mid-1975, William Frazier became hospitalized for cancer treatment, and then in August, Maidman ransacked Fraizer's desk and discovered that since 1971, Frazier, along with chief engineer Joseph J. Novellino, both defrauded the railroad with fake bills for personal gain and funding for Novellino's private business. The board of directors quickly voted to have Frazier resign, and Maidman became the Susquehanna's president but in September, Maidman, along with his son and attorney Robert, convinced the NYS&W's board of directors to purchase $2 million in general mortgage bonds from W.E Hutton & Co. while secretly arranging the transaction to bail Maidman out of a major debt he owed Hutton.
By January 1976, the NYS&W defaulted on $252,498 of business and property taxes owed to the state of New Jersey, and they were forced to file for bankruptcy again By that time, the NYS&W was down to a 43-mile line from Croton and Edgewater through Paterson to Butler. The SEC began to investigate the NYS&W's operations, and they quickly discovered that the railroad's purchase of their $2 million bond on Maidman's behalf was stock fraud. The bankruptcy court quickly confiscated control of the Susquehanna from Maidman and appointed Walter G. Scott as the railroad's new trustee. Maidman's other businesses, including the Edgewater warehouse, were also confiscated by other creditors, and by June 1977, Maidman's final remaining source of income was his new limited position on the NYS&W as a real-estate consultant. Maidman, who often quarreled with Scott, had hopes of regaining control of the railroad before selling it on his own after it emerged from bankruptcy but would pass away in 1979.
During that time, the NYS&W continued to slip further into insolvency, only 7 of their 27 locomotives were operational, their trackage was deteriorated to the point they held a 10mph speed restriction over the entire system.The FRA even banned the NYS&W from shipping hazardous materials on their trackage as a safety precaution. On November 21, 1979, their creditors decided to petition the ICC to shut down and liquidate the railroad by February 1, 1980. The NYS&W's remaining customers appealed the petition, since they envisioned the shut down would result in 6,000 jobs being lost across NJ. A public hearing subsequently postponed the railroad's closure throughout 1980. On August 15, the ICC authorized the closure, and the NYS&W railroad's final revenue train operated on August 29.
Duke said:
Those would be the Baldwin RF-16s that the Monongahela bought from GE after the New York Central traded them in in 1967. Monongahela got, I think, 7 A-units and 3 B-units, and they ran them into the ground in fairly short order. The two here, #1205 and #1216, were the last two left in operational condition by 1973, when Monongahela sold them for scrap.
The D&H traded a bunch of junk cars and scrap rails for the two, valued at $5000 total for the two. The stories kind of diverge: some people say that D&H president Bruce Sterzing had some railfan leanings and purchased them because of their rare and unique status, but Sterzing asserted that he bought them simply because they were available for dirt cheap.
They were worn-out, oddball junk, in realistic terms. They lacked dynamic brakes, the bizarre Baldwin air throttles meant that they could not be M.U.ed with anything else on the roster. The Baldwin prime movers and Westinghouse electrical gear were also completely different from the GE and Alco prime movers and GE electrical gear. One had a cracked block that required frequent welding, and by the end of their life on the D&H they were derated to 1600hp for the pair.
They were still pretty rugged machines, but the D&H never assigned them to many long distance hauls, due to the reliability and lack of dynamic braking. So they mostly handled the LV-D&H transfer hauls from Sayre to Binghamton, or helper service on Belden Hill, or the "Slatepicker" local from Whitehall to Rutland.
Kind of an odd footnote to the D&H RF-16 story was B&M F3B #4227, show in it's early retirement days in the Delaware & Hudson yard in Hudson, Pennsylvania on December 3, 1977. The #1205 and #1216 were used fairly frequently for railfan excursions, but unlike the PA-4us, they lacked steam generators (I know there were zero RF-16s built with steam generators and I'm pretty certain that it was not an option that was offered.) It was going to get two boilers for train heat and Alco trucks to look more like a Baldwin B-unit, although the general profile of an F3 didn't really match the RF-16. The project didn't get much farther than gutting the unit at Colonie before the idea was abandoned, partially because Sterzing was forced out by the USRA and the RF-16s were sold off to Castolite Corp., which was a whole other adventure. The Sharks actually slightly contributed to Sterzing's ousting, since the USRA pointed at the Sharks and excursions run with them and said "You're asking for more loans, but you're doing stuff like that?"
The #4227 was then moved to Hudson Yard and instead had diamond plate flooring, mounting blocks and conduits installed for a large generator to provide power for lighting at derailments as part of the Hudson wreck train. The project was canceled as well, and a some time later the #4227 was moved south of Oak St., flipped on her side and scrapped.
So I mentioned the NYS&W shutting down in 1979 as just a 43-mile shortline entirely constrained to NJ. How did it come back to life and become the railroad that operates nearly 400 miles of track between NJ, NY and PA?
The answer goes back to 1966, with the founding of Delaware-Otsego Corporation by a bunch of railfans, businessmen, and a lawyer named Walter Rich. D-O Corp.'s original purpose was to operate tourist trains over a 2.6-mile section of the NYC's abandoned Ulster & Delaware Branch out of Oneonta, NY using an ex-USATC 0-6-0. In 1971, that section of the U&D was ripped up in favor of Interstate 88's construction, so D-O purchased the 16-mile Cooperstown branch from the D&H and began operating it as the Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley Railroad. This would start a relation between Walter Rich and D&H management that would come into play later on. I remember reading where a D&H employee joked that the D&H's Jordan Spreader spent more time in use over on the C&CV than on the D&H.
From here, this started a flurry of shortline purchases and leases by Delaware-Otsego Corp. First up was the 1972 takeover of the Erie-Lackawanna's ex-Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Richfield Springs branch, which split off of the DL&W Utica Branch at Cassville, NY. This 21.7 mile railroad was operated under the Central New York Railroad using an Alco RS-3. Remember this one for later.
In 1974, following declining traffic from disappearing local industries, the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville shut down their operations after 107 years of operation. That same year, the FJ&G was purchased by the D-O Corp., and the railroad quickly turned profits under their ownership.
On the even of Conrail's formation in 1975, Wayne County, PA purchased the ex-Erie Hawley Branch, now known as the Erie-Lackawanna Honesdale Branch, from Erie-Lackawanna due to concerns that Conrail would tear up the branch line. The county sought contractors to operate it and Delaware-Otsego tossed their hat in the ring, along with RailService Associates and TransAction Associates. Early negotiations for subsidy came with the requirement that former union employees be made an offer for work at their current salary and benefit levels. Discussions with Conrail over rate divisions did not end favorably and in March 1976, with less than a month to go before the start up of Conrail, RSA revoked their proposal and an inquiry was made with Delaware-Otsego to see if they were still interested in operating the line. D-O Corp. added the Honesdale Branch to their portfolio as the Lackawaxen & Stourbridge Railroad using one of the FJ&G Alco S-2s and an ex-Reading RS-3. Eventually a rare EMD BL-2 was even added to the roster.
By 1979, D-O's short line renovations caught the attention of New Jersey state and county officials, who were exploring ways of having the NYS&W continue operations under new ownership. They asked D-O to submit a proposal to purchase the NYS&W, and in turn, D-O sent a team of inspectors to evaluate the railroad's trackage. At least two other interested parties submitted a bid on the NYS&W, but the bankruptcy court accepted D-O's $5 million offer in June of 1980. On September 1st, D-O took over the NYS&W's operations under lease before purchasing all of their assets, two years later. D-O quickly rebranded the railroad as the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway, with Walter Rich becoming their newest president and CEO, and he opted to retain the Susquehanna name out of his fondness of the New York, Ontario & Western.
D-O also established their own real-estate unit to begin arranging for the NYS&W to lease and sell line-side land property that was deemed unessential for railroad purposes. Within the next two years, the NYS&W retained their status quo in serving industrial customers, having retained most of their pre-DO executives and employees. D-O and the NJDOT also jointly funded a $1.35 million reconditioning of the NYS&W's trackage. By that time, seven of the NYS&W's twenty-seven locomotives were still operable: three GP18s, three RS-1s, and one S-2. The rest had been parked outside at Little Ferry, NJ by the original NYS&W Railroad as they had been taken out of service by mechanical failure, and the locomotives had so severely deteriorated by their improper outdoor storage that they were determined to be unable to be returned to service and they were all subsequently scrapped.
By 1981, the Staggers Act was passed, which made it easier for railroads to abandon defunct or unprofitable branch lines. Among them, Conrail was looking at ditching the entire Erie-Lackawanna Syracuse & Utica Division, a Y-shaped system that ran north from Binghamton to Chenango Forks, where it split and went northwest to Syracuse and northeast to Utica. Conrail had idled pretty much the entire Syracuse half, and the Utica portion was out of service from Norwich south to Chenango Forks. Conrail served both Utica and Syracuse in a much more direct manner over the old NYC mainline, versus the roundabout routings on the E-L/DL&W. Conrail was also looking at abandoning their former L&HR Warwick, NY-Franklin, NJ route, and their former Erie Greenwood Lake Branch in New Jersey. Walter Rich became concerned that abandonment of the Utica Branch would severe his Central New York Railroad's connection to the outer world and leave it landlocked (remember, it split off the Utica Branch at Cassvile), and he was also interested in growing his railroad business, so he contacted the routes' customers for freight potential, and negotiated with Conrail to purchase the routes.
On April 16, 1982, the ICC approved D-O's $4.2 million purchase of the routes from Conrail, and they commenced operations under D-O ownership on the following day. The two DL&W branches out of Binghamton and the Central New York Railroad quickly became labeled as the NYS&W's Northern Division, and the former L&HR route, the Greenwood Lake Branch, and the NYS&W's remaining original trackage in New Jersey became labeled as their Southern Division. The naming convention bears a passing resemblance to the old NYO&W naming system, which I'm sure, considering Walter Rich's love of the NYO&W, was not a coincidence.
Of course, the two divisions were completely separated from eaach other, so D-O arranged a haulage agreement with Conrail over the old Erie Southern Tier mainline, where once a week, NYS&W trains would operate over Conrail between Binghamton and Passaic Junction using NYS&W equipment but Conrail crews. If Conrail chose to terminate their haulage rights contract, a trackag]e rights agreement would then be exercised, involving the restoration and usage of the NYS&W's route between Butler and Sparta Junction, which had been completely shut down since 1972.
To cover the Northern Division operations, one GP18 was transferred over, and D-O purchased a number of used Alcos: one RS-3 from the recently-closed and liquidated Adirondack Ralways, two C420s from a holding firm owned by Tony Hannold, and five rare C430s from Conrail. In July of 1983, the first NYS&W haulage train operated over Conrail, as per the haulage agreement and that same year, D-O established a new subsidiary, Susquehanna Properties, Inc., to expand the NYS&W's land-leasing program, and customers who had solely relied on truck-shipping began to purchase Susquehanna property and constructed line-side facilities for rail services.
They also put a portion of their Little Ferry Yard up for lease and redevelopment, since most of their yardwork had been moved to Passaic Junction. And in 1985, Conrail filed for the abandonment of the remainder of their former L&HR route between Franklin and Belvidere. D-O and Sussex County jointly purchased a portion of the route between Franklin and Lime Crest, to serve its remaining customers and to preserve the NYS&W-L&HR interchange at Sparta Junction.
MAV-242 steam loco with streamlined casing. 1939 Budapest.
The 1980s were when things got really wild for the NYS&W. SeaLand was interested in running double-stack trains from Chicago to New York City ports, and Conrail thought that since they had a line to Chicago and aa stranglehold on NYC ports among Class I railroads (they got them all from NYC, PRR, CNJ and LV) that they would just waltz right into the SeaLand contract. SeaLand specifically wanted an intermodal facility strictly for their traffic though, and Conrail basically told them "You'll use our Oak Island yard with everyone else and that's all there is to it."
Enter Walter Rich and Delaware-Otsego Corp. The NYS&W had port access with their Little Ferry yard, and since they had moved all their car-sorting operations up to Passaic Junction, Little Ferry was pretty much vacant and waiting for a customer. So he strolled in and offered to overhaul the Little Ferry yard into a SeaLand facility. Of course, the Susquehanna only went as far west as Passaic Junction on their own rails and as far west as Binghamton through Conrail haulage rights, not anywhere near Chicago. So they needed a partner or two. The Delaware & Hudson had trackage rights on Conrail from Binghamton to Buffalo, through the federal government's ill-conceived attempt to make the D&H a Conrail competitor. And CSX was willing to help break Conrail's deadlock on the northeast, they offered to handle the trains between Buffalo and Chicago and build exclusive SeaLand facilities in Chicago. The more friendly position taken by the NYS&W/D&H/CSX triumvirate undercut Conrail and they won the contract, plus, to add insult to injury, Conrail still had to host these trains on their rails from Buffalo to Passaic Junction, even though they didn't win the contract. I've heard that due to the relatively short haul lengths on their leg, these weren't terribly profitable for the D&H or the NYS&W but they let the D&H stick it to Conrail and they gave Walter Rich and the Susquehanna credentials that they could play in big league railroading.
On August 5, 1985, the NYS&W operated their first SeaLand intermodal train. It was quickly followed by many other trains bound between Little Ferry and the western US, and for shipping east of Little Ferry, the containers were shipped via truck to nearby shipyards. The intermodal operations quickly boosted the NYS&W's income by 125%, and the following year, the railway turned a profit of $3.2 million. D-O decided to purchase some additional diesels to accommodate their expanding intermodal operations, since the C430s had never particularly great when new, and years of indifferent treatment from Penn Central and Conrail had chipped away at their reliability further. One source claims they originally planned to purchase four Alco C636s from Conrail, but after some coaxing from CSX for compatible motive power, DO instead purchased a fleet of EMDs. Of course, being Walter Rich's railroad, they couldn't purchase normal EMD power, they instead bought a fleet of SD45s and F45s from GATX, which previously leased them to Burlington Northern. While they would eventually receive NYS&W yellow and black, most of them were rushed right into service with BN green and black paint, and even the BN lettering, still intact. The big 20-cylinder monsters allowed the NYS&W to subsequently begin to retire a lot of their Alco diesel roster. The RS-1s, S-2s and RS-3s all were retired or scrapped around then, as were the C420s, but the C430s would hang around for a little while, mostly at Walter Rich's insistence. Doug Ellison, who was involved with both the Susquehanna and Rome Locomotive Works, a short-lived Rome, NY-based locomotive rebuilder, talked about the disconnect between Walter Rich and the NYS&W CMO Dave Powell. Walter Rich wanted to put them back in service on a low budget, Dave Powell accommodated to a point, but kept the majority of the money focused towards the SD45 fleet. As Doug put it, "There is only so much you can do with just too few dollars. Our call outs were not warranty service calls due to that workscope, but full charge service calls with expenses. It was crazy." Issues with the C430s included but were not limited to; overheating issues, R1 and R2 fan control contactors not picking up, water leaks in general, cracked heads, low compression cylinders, issues with the air start, low voltage control grounds, high voltage grounds, high voltage contactor failures, lube oil leaks, control air issues and random shutdowns.
Despite losing out on the SeaLand contract, the NYS&W still used Conrail trackage and crews, as per their haulage agreement, and D&H was also using Conrail trackage rights, and so Conrail became increasingly agitated by having to haul competing intermodal trains. On April 1, 1986, Conrail terminated their haulage contract with the NYS&W, although operations continued under the contract until October 1, and they negotiated for a new contract with higher rates, hoping that D-O would accept the new rates before quietly abandoning their intermodal operations.
In doing so though, Conrail allowed the NYS&W the opportunity to restore their Butler-Sparta mainline and to exercise their proposed trackage rights agreement. D-O quickly initiated a rehabilitation and upgrade on the route, which had been washed out and covered in weeds for 14 year, along with their former L&HR trackage, to accommodate their mainline intermodal traffic. The rehabilitation process lasted for six months and cost $8 million to complete, and the railway utilized a grant from NJDOT and a low-interest loan from the FRA to fund the overhaul. In October, the upgrades were completed, and the NYS&W began to use D-O crews to operate haulage trains under their new trackage rights agreement over Conrail's Southern Tier Line between Binghamton and Campbell Hall, and over Conrail's L&HR line to the new NYS&W-Conrail interchange at Warwick. So while Conrail at least didn't hve to provide crews to operate the NYS&W segment anymore, the move didn't get the NYS&W and D&H off of Conrail's rails like they had hoped. There was definitely a measure of crocodile tear's to Conrail's complaints about having NYS&W and D&H running on the Southern Tier line, since the ex-Erie mainline was practically a ghost town other than the D&H and NYS&W trackage anyways. It wasn't like they were tying up the old NYC mainline or anything.
Throughout the D-O system, there were all sorts of other developments going on. Odd pieces of equipment continued to be acquired, including an ex-NYO&W NW2 that was purchased from Conrail, and eventually restored to NYO&W appearance, specifically because of it's NYO&W heritage. A pretty worn-out pair of EMD E9Ams arrived and D-O also purchased all the full-length domes from the defunct Auto Train Corp. and used those in excursion service and office car specials. The Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville was shut down in 1984, after losing it's last remaining customer, and was completely ripped up in 1988. The Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley had been operating freight trains for local freight customers but lost the last of those in December 1987, and the trackage was subsequently embargoed. In 1988, service on the Central New York Railroad was shut down from continually declining freight traffic, although the line wasn't formally abandoned and torn up until 1995. The Delaware-Otsego Corp. did take over a few new operations though, taking over the Staten Island Railway from C&O in 1985, using NW2 #116 and an ex-C&O SW9 #120 for service, and also acquiring the independent Rahway Valley Railway the following year after the RV their affordability to obtain liability insurance and operating that with the RV's two GE 70-Tonners. Mostly though, the D-O Corp. name and the name of the various small railroads began to vanish and everything was run under the NYS&W banner.
In 1988, Norfolk Southern decided to also enter the intermodal game, and they partnered with Hanjin. Since they didn't want to hand off to Conrail, they also spoke with D&H and NYS&W about handling the trains from Buffalo to North Bergen, NJ. The D&H and NYS&W were both game, and now the NYS&W was working with two major intermodal shippers and three Class I railroads. To help out with these new trains, NYS&W bought new motive power, and again went for some pretty odd stuff, financing four new GE B40-8s. The 4000hp 4-axle GEs were the first new motive power purchased by the NYS&W since the GP18s back in 1962, but they weren't well-liked by crews, mostly because the high horsepower per axle made them very slippery on the fairly rugged territory that the Susquehanna ran on.
In June of that same year, the Delaware and Hudson was filed for bankruptcy by their parent company, Guilford Rail System, and they disbanded the D&H, following two labor strikes. There had been a long relationship between the NYS&W and the D&H, dating back to the sale of the Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley Branch in 1971. Walter Rich, who was a lawyer after all, had often provided legal advice to the D&H and had coached D&H president Bruce Sterzing to wrangle with the federal government. So when, Daave Fink called and told the D&H they were bankupting the D&H, the first person the D&H called was Walter Rich. He told them the name of a friendly bankruptcy judge who was pretty railroad-savvy, named a few guys who could act as trustees, and said, "Tell them you can only make payroll for 3 days and that Walter Rich and the D-O are willing to act as designated operators." They called the judge that he named aand said that Walter Rich wanted to be designated operator and the judge laughed and said "I bet he does!" D-O was named as designated operator, and since they were now taking over the D&H, which extended to Canada on it's own rails, and had trackage rights to Buffalo, Philadelphia, Oak Island, and Potomac Yard. Since they needed additional motive power and CSX wanted to see NYS&W and D&H operate without any service meltdowns, CSX purchased another 20 B40-8s and leased them to NYS&W. CSX and NS were also willing to underwrite any losses accumulated by the NYS&W during their operation of the D&H.
Walter Rich really wanted to acquire the D&H, and made sure that during their designated service stewardship of the D&H he mandated that NYS&W power be on the head of any D&H trains to make people automatically associate the D&H with the NYS&W. He supposedly had already spoken with GE about purchase of another batch of B40-8s, to be painted in D&H paint, if he was able to purchase the D&. Unfortunately, D-O Corp. simply lacked the finanical horsepower. In 1991, the bankruptcy court began accepting bids to purchase the D&H, and D-O made an offer, alongside Guilford Rail System (who was the one who had bankrupted the D&H earlier, ironically) and Canadian Pacific. CP won the bid for the D&H and succeeded the D&H in the NYS&W's intermodal partnership.
NYS&W also lost out on what was Conrail's Utica-Lyons Falls line in 1991, which was previously the Utica & Black River, then part of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg and then was the New York Central St. Lawrence Division. Conrail was looking at selling the line and supposedly the NYS&W was interested in it, right up until a derailment from a picked switch on the Conrail mainline tore out the crossover just east of the NYS&W Utica yard. Conrail repaired the mainline, but decided not to reinstall the switch, which would have required NYS&W to make a westward move against traffic on track 2 several miles to Whitesboro, and then running east the same distance and against traffic direction again back to Utica. The logistics of this were too much for the NYS&W to stomach and they passed on the sale of the line, which instead went to Genesee Valley Transportation for the formation of theirr Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern.
Also at the same time, three other D-O holdings were shut down or sold off. On June 30, 1989, D-O ended operations on the Lackawaxen & Stourbridge Railroad, and the Stourbridge Railroad assumed operations through contract to Robey Railroad. The Staten Island Railway operated their final freight train on April 21, 1992, when the D-O shut down the operation due to loss of customers, and the Arthur Kill Vertical Lift Bridge was locked in the open position after the SIRY's abandonment. In 1992, D-O also shut down the Rahway Valley, after traffic on the line declined to the point that only one customer remained and the whole line was sold to NJ three years later, although the Rahway Valley has not been revived in the almost thirty years since, accumulating weeds and washouts.
1991 also marked one of the NYS&W's weirdest purchases. In 1989, seeing the success of the UP and NS steam programs, Walter Rich began exploring ways for NYS&W to host their own steam excursions. There were no remaining NYS&W steam locomotive, since the railroad had fully dieselized in 1945. NYS&W officials initially planned to restore a pair of former Morris County Central locomotives, ex-Southern/Virginia Blue Ridge 2-8-0 #385/#5 and ex-USATC/VBR 0-6-0 #4039/#6. But after seeing the success of a pair of modified Chinese SY-class Mikados on the Valley Railroad and the Knox & Kane Railroad, they determined that was the better direction to go. The new locomotive was numbered SY-1698M by the Tangshan Locomotive & Rolling Stock Works, but at the suggestion of the NYS&W Technical and Historical Society, the NYS&W planned to renumber it as #141, following the number of the NYS&W's last new-build steam locomotive: No. 140, purchased in 1908. SY-1698M ran successfully at the factory on December 27th, 1990, but shipping was delayed for several months by the Gulf War. On May 16, 1991, the new locomotive was loaded on a Norwegian vessel and departed four days later, but on June 6, a major storm damaged the ship in the Bay of Bengal and the ship, with locomotive aboard sank the following day. Reportedly a model steam locomotive was placed in the fish tank at the NYS&W office in Rochelle Park after the news was broken of the #141's sinking. While there were thoughts of ordering another, the Valley Railroad was planning to sell their SY, due to it being surplus power, and NYS&W purchased SY-1647M and moved it onto their property and renumbered it to #142. On arrival, the #142 became the newest piece of motive power on the railroad, having been built in 1989. The #142 romped around the system with a number of excursions, and at least once it handled the UT-1 Utica Branch local and a couple times it traveled up the MA&N to Remsen.
In 1992, the NYS&W constructed various freight transload facilities for their industrial customers in New Jersey, to diversify their freight operations, but from 1992 to 1994, the NYS&W operated their intermodal trains at a $4.1 million loss, since the intermodal-shipping industry was affected by the recession. The NYS&W reversed their losses by renewing their intermodal contracts with NS and CSX to increase their intermodal traffic, and the NYS&W and NS began to jointly haul container and piggyback trains for CSX Intermodal. In 1995, the NYS&W turned a profit of $1.6 million, but in 1996, the NYS&W experienced a $1 million loss, following that year's blizzard and a further decline in intermodal traffic.
In May of 1995, D-O also obtained another subsidiary, the Illinois-based Toldeo, Peoria & Western, with the idea of it smoothing out the NYS&W's intermodal interchanges with western U.S. railroads by providing a bypass around Chicago. That was a weird operation, with ex-ATSF GP20us and an ex-B&LE F7A that was in an NYC-inspired lightning stripe livery, and then D-O began repainting everything in the NYS&W "yellowjacket" livery with TP&W lettering. By 1998, the TP&W reported a revenue profit of $13.4 million and hauled over 59,000 freight carloads and intermodal units, by by 1999, DO sold the TP&W to RailAmerica for $24 million.
Things for D-O really took a downturn around 1999. As early as 1996, NS and CSX both began trying to buyout Conrail, but were repeatedly decline by the STB, due to the fact that if one or the other bought it, it would really shut out whoever didn't get Conrail.
Starting in 1996, Norfolk Southern entered talks with Conrail to merge together, and D-O and CSX both feared the merger would affect their freight operations. D-O actually made an offer to outright purchase Conrail's Southern Tier Line, along with their Meadville Line between Hornell and Youngstown, but it was swiftly rejected. D-O and CSX then secretly financed a regional development authority's purchase of the Meadville Line, to prevent Conrail from ripping it up. The NS-Conrail merger fell through, but in October of 1996, CSX unexpectedly announced their plans to merge with Conrail. Following some protests by NS, it was announced in April of 1997 that the STB would authorize Conrail to be split between NS and CSX, with certain key locations being jointly owned by NS and CSX under the Conrail Shared Assets Operations title. Since NS and CSX would now both receive direct routes into the New York City area, the NYS&W would lose all of their intermodal operations, which by that time, provided 70% of the railway's annual income.
The main option was to carry out their proposed "Northeast Network" alliance with the Canadian National, where the NYS&W would have provided a New York City connection for CN, and the two railways would have jointly purchased Conrail's Montreal Line, while the NYS&W would have either purchased Conrail's Southern Tier Line or extended their trackage rights to a Conrail-CN interchange at Buffalo. D-O's stockholders meanwhile were looking into selling their D-O shares to secure the corporation's future, and they contacted fourteen parties for a buyout, but only NS and CSX expressed interest. In June 1997, Walter Rich, along with DO Vice-President C. David Soule, negotiated with CSX chairman and CEO John Snow and NS executive David Goode to arrange a transaction between their three companies.
On August 17th 1997, a new privately-held holding company, D-O Acquisition LLC, completed their $55 million purchase of Delaware-Otsego Corp The purchase brought the NYS&W under control of D-O Acquisition LLC, with Walter Rich obtaining 80% of D-O's shares, while Norfolk Southern and CSX each received 10%, along with the right of first refusal to purchase the Susquehanna, if Rich chose to sell it. This kept NYS&W from getting sold out from under Walter Rich by stockholders and CN from competing in NY port traffic, and in return, CSX and NS would continue to allow the trackage rights over the Southern Tier. It was a bit of a Faustian deal, ensuring that the NYS&W would survive, but essentially preventing anny opportunity for growth. The transaction was completed on October 3, and the NYS&W's Northeast Network alliance plan with CN was quickly dropped. In 1999, the Conrail split between NS and CSX was finalized, and they began to operate intermodal trains out of New Jersey, on their own, and that same year, all of the NYS&W's intermodal contracts expired, and their final intermodal train operated on February 3, 2001. The NYS&W had fairly recently purchased some big EMD SD70Ms, and with the loss of the big intermodal traffic, those weren't needed anymore. NYS&W found that they could generate more revenue leasing the SD70Ms, and so those were immediately leased out to the Indiana & Ohio Railway at just four years old.
The original B40-8s also vanished a few years later (the 20 CSX-funded B40-8s had gone back to CSX after CP won the D&H), and the NYS&W mostly settled into using a lot of beat-up leasers, borrowed NS and CSX power and the ex-ATSF/TP&W GP20s, as well as the old SD45s and F45s. Alcos briefly returned to the roster in 2005, with the lease of the ex-Cartier Mining M636s and C636s from 2004 to 2007, but that was short-lived. Also, by the end of 2003, the Susquehanna, which had been reducing its passenger operations as liability insurance costs rose, sold complete ownership of the #142 to the NYS&W Technical & Historical Society and it was moved to the Belvidere & Delaware Railway to operate there. Walter Rich would unexpectedly pass away in 2007, at the age of 61, and with his passing, the NYS&W also ended all passenger excursions and sold off all their passenger equipment.
The NYS&W today is what someone once uncharitably, albeit truthfully, described as "the modern day NYO&W." It's a system that connect New York Citys with no place particularly special, or that isn't already well served by another railroad. The big northern terminuses, Binghamton, Syracuse and Utica are all cities are in post-industrial collapse. Binghamton has a poverty rate exceeding 20%, is routinely rated one of the worst cities to live in the state, one of the most dangerous places to live and even the fifth most depressing city in the US, and it's served in a better manner by bigger Class Is. Syracuse and Utica have lost most of their industrial manufacturing, Utica was rated by Forbes as the third worst city in the US for business and careers, and Syracuse is better handled by CSX over the NYC mainline. On top of that, the NYS&W is largely single-tracked, has a few passing sidings, lacks a large classifying yard on the east end, and while it leases the Southern Tier Line between Port Jervis, that's 25mph unsignalled territory these days without any local businesses along the way. And even if there were, the lease prevents them from pursuing customers on the route, it's just to be used to connect the Northern Division and the Southern Division. There's also NJT traffic on the eastern end that NYS&W has to dodge, which would be a hindrance if major traffic were to develop. And after Walter Rich's passing, CSX and NS got some sort of equal stake in the Susquehanna, although the exact percentages are unknown. Some say it's simply 10% CSX - 10% NS -10% Walter Rich's estate 80%, while other say it's 40%-40%-20%. The public doesn't really know, but the general consensus is that CSX and NS can exert enough influence to keep NYS&W from ever becoming a hindrance or competitor to it. Also, any chance of NYS&W handling any overhead traffic for CSX got tanked back in '05 when CSX was doing a bunch of work at Selkirk and again in '07 when CSX had a big derailment on the Water Level Route in Oneida and NYS&W had to handle the detour traffic. It was taking 2-3 days to move a train over the NYS&W when CSX could move it the same distance in less than one day, and CSX was not terribly impressed. Add to that, NYS&W is almost chronically power short and constantly borrowing power from NS, CSX, lease companies, and currently even from Delaware-Lackawanna.
As it sits, the southern end of the system, the original NYS&W, is supposedly fairly busy and the Syracuse branch does okay (Suit-Kote in Cortland is supposedly the big traffic generator) but the Utica Branch is, for all intents and purposes, abandoned below Sangerfield. Norwich, once a major city for both the DL&W Utica Branch and the NYO&W, hasn't seen any regular traffic and customers since pre-2009. Even if you were to own a business on the Syracuse line and your end product went to a customer on the Utica line, it would not take the NYS&W down to Chenango Forks and then back up to Utica, it would instead be shipped up the NYS&W to Dewitt Yard, and then handled by CSX to Utica, and then delivered from Utica yard to the customer by NYS&W. Part of that is that CSX gives them a cut rate on handling traffic between Utica and Syracuse, but the other thing is that the DL&W Syracuse & Utica Division is a roundabout route; made from the purchase of the Syracuse, Binghamton & New York and the Utica, Chenango & Susquehanna Valley, it's a V-shaped bit of track that results in 162 miles of track to go from Utica to Syracuse, while CSX's ex-NYC mainline is just 55 miles. There's a whole song and dance where every couple years, a storm washes out the line south of Sangerfield, New York State tosses the Susquehanna money to repair the line, it gets rebuilt, the Susquehanna runs a train or two over the full length to mollify the state, and then they don't use it again until the next time.
Now, despite the NYO&W comparison, I don't think the NYS&W is on the verge of collapse or anything. I just don't think we'll ever see it back at 1980s level, since that was born of very specific circumstances (Conrail having a stranglehold on NY ports, and a shipping company that was okay with slower service for more personal handling). It is true that the NYS&W seems to be very content to just coast on with what they have, since I've heard that there are possible customers that they could work with on the Utica side but the railroad won't actively pursue. I'd love to see them handle Utica-Binghamton traffic, or at least sell the line to someone who would (FGLK or MA&N, perhaps)
I do think it's really funny that the big road power that the Susquehanna acquired a couple years ago were four EMD SD70M-2s, which continues the Susquehanna trend of owning white elephant motive power (Russian Decapods, Alco C430s, B40-8s). The SD70M-2 was an EMD offering that was a DC traction version of the 4300hp SD70ACe. Norfolk Southern, Florida East Coast, and Canadian National were the only railroads to purchase these new, and NS sold four of them to the Suzie-Q four years ago. They kicked around in NS black and white, with the circled S logo applied to the nose and Susquehanna lettering on the hoods until repainting them in May of '23.
The SD70M-2s were noted to be pretty problematic when new, and the unisolated cabs also developed a reputation for being extremely loud, earning them the nicknames "Thunder Cabs". The crews complained so much that the SD70M-2s were restricted to trailing position whenever possible, they were that bad. I've also seen Susquehanna crews complaining that, while not as bad as the B40-8s, the SD70M-2s are very slippery and don't pull anywhere near as good as the GATX leaser SD60s that they replaced.
While NYS&W doesn't seem to be getting rid of these any time soon, I have heard that if they ever do decided to replace them, well, good luck finding someone that wants them. I had heard that Vermont Railway wanted rid of their two ex-FEC SD70M-2s from a railfan while on the VTR, and then had it confirmed while talking to a VTR engineer at Conway. VTR has an issue where they're too big and heavy for their line, and they have to keep them split up (Remember, the VTR mainline is the old Rutland main, and the biggest diesels the Rutland had were Alco RS-3s), they're expensive to run and they're not terribly great perforrmers. But they tried putting their two up for sale and found that, surprise, pretty much no one wants six-axle 4300hp DC-traction locomotives either. So they're stuck with their two, and I believe he said that one of them is out of service now with some rather major failure.
Last weekend, CSX ran the 82nd running of the Santa Train that was started by Clinchfield and runs over the old Clinchfield main. And fittingly, CSX assigned #1902, the Clinchfield heritage unit, to lead the train, along with the three B&O-painted F40s and the entire CSX office car fleet.
CSX has finished their run of heritage units, for now, with CSX #1981, the Pan Am Railways heritage unit. I wondered why they went with Pan Am instead of Guilford, since that was the original name, but then someone pointed out that protecting the Pan Am trademark, and honestly that's what these heritage units are, trademark protection, was probably more valuable. After all, that includes the trade marks for Pan Am Airways as well.
CSX also still has the ex-Pan Am Railways OCS FP9s. These ex-VIA FP9s had been in service on Conway Scenic Railroad in a green, red and yellow livery, and Conway Scenic traded them to Pan Am in exchange for GP38 #252 and GP35 #216. The FP9s weren't ideal for the Crawford Notch run because of their high speed gearing and lack of dynamic brakes.and Conway had been going through brake shoes rather quickly on the Notch Train equipment, which the two "new" Geeps would alleviate. Pan Am then painted the FP9s up in a simple, but still attractive blue livery, and paired them up with an office train that they put together, which included a dome car. A lot of people viewed this move as a symptom of Guilford/Pan Am's dysfunctional management: 10mph track everywhere, old 40-series EMDs and GE Dash-8s that were falling apart, poor service, their own wreck trains because derailments were that common, and yet they could spend money on a bankrupt airline and buy shiny F-units and dome cars. Still, there was a lot of people who were sad that the FP9s would no longer be around when CSX took over. I'm not sure what the status is on the passenger cars, but I know the FP9s were moved down to Waycross, GA, and are still there and still for sale.
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