Grassroots Railroad Sports?

Arriving at Sangerfield, as far south as they run on the Utica Branch, although the line is intact all the way down to Chenango Forks. They set out the tank car for Carovail and then ran Long Hood Forward back to Utica. I tried to chase them back, but they got ahead of me without me realizing it and I never caught back up.

Just a safety reminder in the wake of an accident that killed two Union Pacific crew members, injured three, and caused millions in equipment and property damage this week in Pecos, Texas.

If you are stuck on a grade crossing, or see someone stuck on a crossing CALL THE NUMBER ON THE BLUE SIGN AT THE CROSSING. Get out of the vehicle immediately. Find the blue sign on the crossing and call the emergency number. DO NOT CALL 911 FIRST! AGAIN call the number on the blue sign FIRST. In this situation every second counts and 911 can't help you fast enough.  

They look like this, and have the phone number, crossing number and railroad name. It will immediately put you in touch with a railroad dispatcher who will immediately halt any moves coming that way. The truck was stuck on the crossing for nearly an hour before it was hit, and nobody called the number to let UP know. The low-boy truck with an oversize load shouldn't have been there to begin with, a proper route planning would have had them avoid that crossing and a pilot vehicle that was actually doing it's job would have warned them off before they got hung up on the crossing (there was a pilot vehicle, and even police Ford Econoboxs, but they clearly didn't alert them), and then they called 911, but neither they, nor 911, nor even their police Ford Econoboxs, called Union Pacific to alert them. And now two people are dead because of it.

Honestly, just staggering amounts of incompetence with that situation. According to locals, that crossing is a notorious trouble spot, with warning signs. Any pre-planning inspection should have caught it. The pilot vehicle should have caught it. The truck driver, upon approaching, should have seen it and stopped. The police Ford Econobox should have known to call the railroad. And the fact that it was stuck there for nearly an hour and no one made that call is just absurd. Gross negligence all the way around.

So this summer CalTrain went fully electric with new Stadler KISS trainsets, retiring their old F40PHs and cool stainless-steel doubledecker gallery cars. The move was done through a California state grant, which as part of a "decarbonization effort" required that the prime mover be disabled per terms of the grant. They could only be put back in service if upgraded to Tier 4 emissions compliance. For a while, they were even offered on CalTrain's merch store website. 

Recently it was announced that the 645 prime movers won't be disabled, because they have made an agreement to send 19 of the locomotives and 90 gallery commuter cars to Lima, Peru, for some $6 million, a deal which involved CalTrain, the US State Department, Department of Commerce, and Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Lima expressed its interest in buying the equipment, which led to the agreement and the Air Quality Management District has provided a waiver allowing the locomotives to continue in operation rather than being scrapped, a standard requirement for funding toward new equipment.

Now, I'll try not to get political, but California politicians just really do not live in the real world, do they? A senator is now bringing forth a lawsuit to try and block all similar future sales. His argument is that selling the equipment to Peru and allowing it to run as-is is not eliminating pollution, but just moving pollution elsewhere. But what he's ignoring, is that while F40PHs may not be perfectly green, they are greener alternatives to the current car-heavy commutes in Lima. A US State Department study said the process would remove 20,000 metric tons of pollution from the air, take 4,000 cars off the road, and generate 150,000 to 250,000 passenger trips on weekdays. It's cleaner than cars, and the stuff already exists, so there isn't the pollution from manufacturing new equipment. 

The new Stadler KISS trainsets that CalTrain is using. They're not as ugly as the junk coming out of Siemens, but I still like F40PHs with stainless-steel gallery cars.

How/why did this thread suddenly become a sticky in the Off-Topic section?

In reply to NickD :

Idk but I'm glad it did. This is the first one I always look for. 

In reply to NickD :

Must have been the public service announcement about the crossing, just so everyone reads it.???????

In reply to NickD :

I loved the story on the NYO&W. I work right on that train line. You saw my company when you took pics of the train in people's front yards in Clayville. I see that train go by 2x per day from my office. I also follow that line from Clayville to the crossing of Route 5/8 everyday. It's pretty cool to watch. 

A little unexpected catch In Kitchener yesterday as I had only stopped at the station to get out of the cold and ended up catching CN 568 with BNSF 2090 on the head end waiting for a late running Via train 84 to clear before they headed west to Stratford Ontario.

In reply to NY Nick :

Pratt & Whitney, I'm guessing?

I really wanted to get a photo at Richfield Junction, where the Richfield Springs branch split off at Cassville to head east to Richfield Springs, but I couldn't figure out where to park, and it would have been a hike to get there. At the speeds they were moving, they probably would have passed by before I could get back in there.

 The Richfield Springs branch was yanked up in 1995, other than the junction with an (out of service) wye and about 3900 feet of track that continues dead south to just north of Babcock Hill Road. That was left in place for an operation that was loading stone there, and once that ended, it's been occasionally used for car storage.

 When the Utica, Chenango & Susquehanna Valley, as the DL&W was originally known, was chartered, it's goal was to bring cheap anthracite from Pennsylvania to Utica. There wasn't really a consensus on how exactly to do that, particularly which coal company to partner with. You had the Lackawanna Coal & Iron Co. of Scranton and the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co. as the two big players, and they were both in the railroad business; the Lackawanna with the Lackawanna & Western Railroad (later the DL&W) and the D&H Canal Co. with the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad (later the D&H). 

The plan became to begin construction south out of Utica to Cassville, since residents in the Chenango Valley could use the railroad, especially with the Chenango Canal having imploded, and then during the construction begin conversation with the two coal companies about which one to bond themselves to and lease the railroad to. If they went with the Lackawanna Coal Company, they would continue south to Binghamton. If they went with the D&H, they'd build southeast and meet them at Oneonta. They went with the Lackawanna and so went south, but built the Richfield Springs Branch to reach the resorts as Richfield Springs, but if they had paired with the D&H, they would have continued on southeast to Oneonta, and the Rondout & Oswego, which became the west end of the Ulster & Delaware, would have been a link in the chain as well. The Richfield Springs Branch also interchanged with the Unadilla Valley Railway at Bridgewater, and the UV interchanged with the NYO&W at New Berlin. The story goes that while there was some professional friction between the NYO&W and DL&W guys (a lot of NYO&W Utica Branch guys were hired on by the DL&W after '57), employees of both disliked the Unadilla Valley crews. The DL&W guys were very professional and by the books, and the O&W guys wern't unsafe but they were a little more seat-of-the-pants. But the UV crews were known to cut corners and skirt safety rules. For example, despite an almost-barren timetable, the UV still somehow managed to have a cornfield meet between their doodlebug and a freight train, which so impressed the ICC that they ordered the UV to cease all passenger operations.

Lucius Beebe's Mixed Train Daily recounts a tale of when the opera first came to New Berlin. Big deal in those days. In preparation, all the men and women of New Berlin took the train up to Utica to buy new dresses and hats and jackets and get their hair done. Everyone was at the opera house and seated and the curtains were supposed to rise at 7:30. Nothing. Then 8:00, then 8:30, then 9:00, then 9:30, and finally at 9:45 the troupe comes rushing into the opera hll. Turned out that someone at the NYO&W had convinced the opera troupe to travel by their rails, to which the locals all responded "If they'd taken the Lackawanna and the Unadilla, they'd have been here on time." From then on, the town of New Berlin swore not to do anymore business with the NYO&W, and they traveled and sent as much traffic over the Unadilla and the DL&W as they possibly could.

In a similar manner as New Berlin, the town of Norwich was served by both the NYO&W and the DL&W, and it was always said that "The NYO&W had Norwich's heart, but the DL&W go it's business." The NYO&W had a huge presence in downtown Norwich, with a yard and engine facilities, while the DL&W just passed through. But the DL&W, despite it's smaller presence, got more traffic from Norwich. And when the NYO&W went under in '57, the DL&W even took what traffic the NYO&W had once had.

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Norwich was also the site of a particularly obscure part of the NYO&W, well, rather the New York & Oswego Midland, system that I only learned about recently in Doug Ellison's (terrific) book on the DL&W Utica Branch. The New York & Oswego Midland was built with the idea to funnel ship traffic from the port at Oswego to New York City ports, gambling on the construction of the Niagara Ship Canal being built in the near future and making Oswego a more vital port than Buffalo.

As the NY&OM went into service, it became clear that the Niagara Ship Canal wasn't going to be built anytime soon and that ships weren't going to be headed to Oswego, the NY&OM began looking for a western outlet. At Norwich, they split off a line that headed west, with hopes of reaching Buffalo. Initially this was referred to as the Western Extension or the Auburn Branch, with the Buffalo not being bandied around publicly. At the time the line was frequently referred to as the Deruyter Branch as probably not too many people thought it would go to Auburn, and in fact never did. The map shows the full-length of the line from where it splits off at Norwich and heads north east highlighted in dark green.

This line meandered out of Norwich and up a 2%+ grade over Crumb Hill near Otselic Center east of Deruyter. It then went through Cortland, and used trackage rights over the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira Railroad (later part of the Lehigh Valley) from Cortland to Freeville. From there, it turned north towards Genoa, NY before finally running out of steam at Scipio Center, 15 miles south of Auburn. A very roundabout route, as per usual for the Midland, and they made sure to hit every mountain, hill, gorge and curve they could find while missing most major cities. Dewitt Littlejohn was a bit of a shyster, and he used the Town Bonding Act to finance his railroads, at the result of having to hit every middle-of-nowhere town between terminuses, while missing every major city. He also thought that following rivers or valleys or going around hills was a folly that added extra mileage, and he proudly proclaimed that the railroad would "be built at right angles to the mountains", which would result in shorter point-to-point distances. He failed to consider that it also meant lots of grades, tunnels and bridges.

On January 1, 1873, a newspaper correspondent boasted that the Midland "is now running regular passenger and freight trains from the City of Utica to the village of Scipio Center, a distance of 135 miles." From there, stagecoach service was provided into Auburn, some 15 miles to the north. On August 19, 1873, the Midland advertised two trains a day on the Auburn branch; one express and one mixed. Running time for the express train between Norwich and Scipio was four hours; the mixed, six hours and twenty minutes. Trains were met at Sicpio by John Snyder's stage for service to Auburn. Littlejohn and the directors seemingly realized that the line to Auburn was not a real viable outlet west and had conceived an "Air Line" west from the Hancock, NY area via Deposit that magically reached west in a more direct line. There were several rough maps and some surveys recorded but I don't know to what extent or what might have been filed.

In the end it was all an unattainable dream, Littlejohn "left for other interests", Midland management, apparently thinking an express train on the Auburn branch was superfluous, removed it in November and service was cut to one train a week from Cortland to Scipio going west Wednesday and returning Thursday. The New York & Oswego Midland went bankrupt and a receiver was appointed in 1873. An agreement was worked out with the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira Railroad to operate the Freeville-to-Scipio segment, and on October 6, 1874, after nearly a year of erratic service, the Cortland Standard reported that the UI&E "has made arrangements to run the Midland from Cortland to DeRuyter, giving the public two trains daily each way." 

Finally, Receiver Abram S. Hewitt found it necessary to suspend operations on the entire Midland system, as of midnight, Saturday, Feb. 27, 1875, "in consequence of the levies being made by tax collectors upon the property of its shippers, as well as the unwarranted seizure of so large of an amount of its rolling stock and the consequent cessation of shipments and travel..." Nothing moved on the Auburn Branch until April 6th. As stated earlier, the Auburn branch was now being operated by the UI&E. About a month later, the UI&-E made an offer to purchase the branch. The president of the road proposed, however, to take up rails from DeRuyter to the trestle at Otsellc and use the rails to connect with the Syracuse & Chenango Valley Railroad at Georgetown. He, ‘naturally, wanted to abandon the trestles. The scheme met with general disfavor and never materialized, although the UI&E continued to operate the Auburn branch until May 1st, 1876. From Norwich to DeRuyter was dismantled in 1882. The 19.5 miles from DeRuyter to Cortland was preserved through leases until it was purchased outright by the Elmira, Cortland & Northern Railroad, which was the immediate antecedent of the Lehigh Valley. The so-called "western extension" between Freeville and Scipio Summit was operated under lease by the UI&E between 1873 and 1876 when it was sold to the newly-organized Ithaca, Auburn & Western. This line was extended to Auburn in 1889, but only lasted three years, and was abandoned in 1891. The NY&OM was reorganized as the NYO&W in 1880, and they abandoned the western expansion and instead very wisely tapped the anthracite fields in the Lackawanna Valley / Scranton area. A better move at the time and circumstance than trying to reach Buffalo. 

O. Winston Link’s recording of a Norfolk & Western Class J #603 powering “The Pelican” at Rural Retreat, Virginia on "Christmas Eve, 1957". Although this recording is presented all the time online and elsewhere as"Christmas Eve 1957," and the photo is from Christmas Eve, the recording Link and his assistant made that Christmas Eve night was deemed technically flawed. Link then asked the church organist to repeat the performance three nights later on December 27th, 1957. Link released an edited version of this clip on one of his LP recordings.

This is the corrected "liner notes": "Train 42 'The Pelican' headed by N&W 4-8-4 Class J 603, arrives at Rural Retreat, VA eastbound from New Orleans to Washington shortly before 10pm Dec. 27th, 1957, and thunders off into the night. The Norfolk & Western Railway's own Class J was perhaps the finest of all express steam engines, and 603 is heard here in its last days of main line service with a consist of 17 cars. The photograph shows the train being waved through by Agent J.L. Akers. The photograph and sound recording were by O. Winston Link and his assistant Corky Zider who operated a Tapesonic recorder and non-directional microphone; chimes were played specially for the recording at the nearby Grace Lutheran Church by Mrs. Kathryn Dodson. Seven nights later, steam motive power would come to an end on the N&W main line through Rural Retreat and Bristol."

Just finished this book.  Very interesting read.  There was more coverage of Nick's area than Florida, mainly because so many early developments in the technology occurred up there and then drifted south slowly.  I thought it interesting that the ICC controlling tariffs and the government not considering rail lines as infrastructure while thinking the opposite about highways affected a lot of rail history in the 20th century.  Also, the stubborn love of steam over diesel by the old-timers didn't help progress.  It pointed out that for the history of railroads passenger service has never been as profitable as freight.  Like i said, an interesting read...  YMMV

In reply to Purple Frog :

Yep, passenger service was always a money-losing proposition. That was offset with the mail contracts, which were quite lucrative, and when they lost the mail contracts in '65, then it all went down the drain. Commuter operations were also a huge financial drain because short haul distances limited how much you could charge, and there was no mail service with commuter operations, and then Amtrak only took over long-distance intercity operations, so even once railroads ditched long-haul passenger, they were still bleeding money from commuter obligations. NYS&W offered $1000 to any of the 200 passengers that still used their commuter services in 1961 (only five bit) and SP, fed up with the cost of hauling a comparatively small number of well-heeled commuters each day, offered to buy 1,000 eight-passenger carpool vans for everyone taking the train. In effect, the railroad would free up its main line and dump all the passengers onto US 101, the Bayshore Freeway. One of SP’s arguments was that all those commutes were getting in the way of its San Francisco freight trains. As the Nov. 22, 1976, issue of Business Week reported, SP said it would start “buying and giving away the vans, estimated to cost $6,000 each, but only if enough commuters are willing to make the switch from rail to highway to enable SP to file to discontinue train service.” The magazine saw the confrontation in historical terms. “The fight, which may be the last of its kind in history, is nevertheless a classic. The management of the SP does not see why its stockholders should be obliged to sustain a loss that now stands at $5 million annually and is growing every year to operate a passenger service used by a tiny fraction of the population, a fraction that is also generally the most affluent in the territory.”

I'm at work, so I don't have the book on hand, but one of Don Ball Jr.'s books has a quote from an N&W president in 1978 (and, remember, N&W was one of the more solvent railroads in the late '70s) taking about how untenable the whole situation became. The railroads had to fund, build and repair their own infrastructure, which the state and federal governments then taxed the bejeezus out of, and then the government turned around and used the money they collected from the railroads to build airports and highways to compete against the railroads. And the ICC set the rates and controlled mergers, abandonments, and termination of service, so you would be running an operation at a loss, that you couldn't charge more and make it profitable because the ICC wouldn't let them, and they couldn't dump that service unless the ICC let them (and the ICC was not predisposed to allowing termination of service). And unlike with a trucking company, where you could theoretically be losing money but still solvent and you could shut down the company and go home with the money you had left, the ICC forced railroads to keep running until they were bankrupt, and they often had to be bankrupt for decades (like he NYO&W, bankrupt from '37 to 57), before they would even consider allowing abandonment and liquidation.

I've read that NJ was the absolute worst for taxation. They kept an extremely low income tax by taxing railroads at an insane rate, and having some pretty wild tax laws. Like, if a railroad was headquartered in NJ but owned tracks and property outside of NJ, the railroad still had to pay NJ tax on that infrastructure outside of NJ state lines. The Central Railroad of New Jersey comes to mind, who was paying both NJ and PA taxes on all their PA operations, as well as NJ taxes on their NJ lines. The CNJ tried to get around this by creating the paper railroad of the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania, headquartered in PA, and selling all of their PA properties to the CRRoPA, so that they wouldn't have to pay double taxes. They made this move in 1946, only for the arrangement to be struck down by the courts and, in 1952, CRRoPA operations were merged back into the CNJ

In reply to Duke :

Southern Pacific/Texas & New Orleans 2-8-2 #786, owned by the now somewhat erroneously named Austin Steam Train Association. They restored it to operation, with it making it's first runs in December of '91, and then it was kicked out of service in July of 1999 when they found cracks in the cylinder saddle that couldn't be welded. It's been out of service now for 25 years, while the ASTA has tried to get it back in operation again. The Austin Steam Train Association spent 7 and a half years with an operating steam engine, versus 25-26 years without one. Photos of the #786 in operation are pretty rare, due to the relatively short operating period.

One of the wilder tales about the #786 is that on May 27, 1997, the tender, which had been uncoupled from the locomotive for a drawbar inspection, was toppled onto its side by a tornado that hit Cedar Park, where it's stored The locomotive remained upright and intact, and a subsequent inspection revealed that the tender received only minor superficial damage.Crews used a crane to reposition the tender, and then four days later, on June 1, #786 returned to service. 

Here's a photo I'd never seen before. That is an NYS&W SeaLand double-stack headed down Schuyler Street in Utica with three B40-8s on the head end. According to Bill Moll, there had been a derailment on Conrail's Southern Tier line between Buffalo and Binghamton. Remember, these used D&H trackage rights over the Southern Tier from Buffalo to Binghamton, and then NYS&W trackage rights on the Southern Tier from Binghamton to Passaic Junction. Since they couldn't use the Southern Tier, the train came east to Utica on Conrail from Buffalo with NYS&W power but Conrail crews, and then the power ran around the train on Track 2 between CP-237 and CP-235 at Utica. The power tied onto the west end of the train and NYS&W crews got on and headed south to Binghamton. It's hard to see, but the lead unit, which had been the rear unit on the trip east, was also facing backwards, so the poor crew had to run from Utica to Binghamton with a B40-8 running Long Hood Forwards. I also can't imagine that the locals on Schuyler Street were impressed with a mile-long double-stack creeping along Schuyler Street either.

Kind of skirting the edges of politics here, but worth discussing. Please don't flounder the thread, folks.

Our president-elect has nominated his head of the FRA, and it's a concerning choice. It's Dave Fink Jr., former president of Guilford and Pan Am. Fink is a “fifth-generation railroader” who “will bring his 45+ years of transportation leadership and success, which will deliver the FRA into a new era of safety and technological innovation.” When one thinks of Pan Am and its history, “safety and technological innovation” is not a phrase that comes to mind. 

Now, as a rule, the FRA really should not have a railroad executive as it's president. It's kind of like how you aren't supposed to nominate current or recent generals as SecDef. The FRA does not work for the railroads, and it's really not on the side of the railroad. The FRA's purpose is really to protect customers and passengers and the general public, and keep railroads safe and honest. When you put a former railroad executive in charge, you run the risk of them undermining the FRA's authority and making it subservient to railroads instead.

And if you're going to pick a railroad president to lead the FRA, Dave Fink Jr. is really not a good choice. Pan Am and Guilford, under him and his father before him, were the model for everything the industry should NOT be. An entire regional railroad running under 10mph orders, 5 days to make a trip from Mechanicville to East Deerfield, yards cut off on both ends from derailments, nightmarish track quality, customers interested in rail service that went completely ignored by the railroad, the only railroad still operating their own wreck trains because derailments were so common, single-man crews, beat-up and obsolete motive power that no Class I would accept on run-through trains. CSX got so fed up with Pan Am's poor service that they bought out Pan Am just to take control of service on that end and get things up to speed. And they have done that; you now have six-axle power on the east end of the line and 25mph and 40mph territory where it was once Excepted and Class 1.

I'm not as familiar with Jr., but Sr. was a real piece of work, and I'm sure the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Sr. was a tyrant who ran off customers and no one in the press would dare interview anymore because he was so sue-happy if they wrote anything remotely negative. As Jervis Langdon put it, "Tim Mellon, who knows nothing about railroading, has delegated authority to those who think they know but actually don't." There was a story about International Paper, the D&H's biggest customer, calling the office and complaining that boxcars of newsprint were scattered all over the Guilford system and not getting where they were going. Fink Sr. grabbed the phone and screamed "I'll tell you where you can cram your boxcars" in front of the horrified D&H execs. International Paper promptly stopped shipping their products by rail and moved all their traffic to rail. And Fink Jr. did preside over Guilford/Pan Am from 1998 until it's 2022 sale, during which the railroad's infrastructure and equipment crumbled to dust.

Now, Tim Mellon owned Guilford/Pan Am and put the Finks in charge, and he contributed $165 million to the election campaign. Can't imagine that's connected. And that's all we'll say on this subject.

Kind of an embarrassing one for Cuyahoga Valley Scenic; their final North Pole Adventure of the season rolled a rail at Peninsula and 4 cars derailed on Saturday around 8:53PM, about 45 minutes into the 90-minute scenic ride. While no one was hurt and no equipment was damaged, people were stuck there until they could get rides for passengers from Peninsula down to Independence, with many not getting back to their car until 1AM.

Cuyahoga Valley is teasing that NKP #765 will be returning for Steam In The Valley for the first time in a couple news. Good news in the fact that apparently CSVR has solved the erosion issues that have kept steam away for the past two years. But I'm pretty sure I'll pass on going, because I've heard that CSVR is distinctly unfriendly to railfans. As one person recounted: "I only went once, for the #765 trips. To start things off, I asked the ticket agent if they allowed people to ride in the vestibules, this was behind steam so that makes a difference in hearing the engine. She said yes. That’s why I booked coach instead of the dome. The day of the trip, the conductor decided he didn’t want railfans in the vestibule and closed them off to us. Again, this wasn’t railroad policy, it was 1 employees attitude towards railfans. The runby was policed as though everyone was a 2-year old. Again general attitude was “we are annoyed that you railfans are here” And then they had park police at every crossing on the following trip that I chased scolding people for stopping to take photos." Not just an isolated report either. A guy I've bumped into a couple different times said that he and his son went out and rode one trip and were going to chase some that weekend. He said the park police passed them at a high rate of speed, and then stopped their vehicle across the park road and were turning people away,  and in other locations were setting up barriers in public areas, and were openly hostile and confrontational to anyone with a camera, and so they gave up and left. 

 The anti-fan attitude apparently goes back to the early years of Midwest Chapter NRHS providing the train when B&O/Chessie still owned the rails. Their leadership was very anti-railfan and it rubbed off on the Western Reserve Historical Society people who took over from them. And they in-turn got the park service and the local police to make it next to impossible for the photographers to get anything by the end of the #765 trips.  

Honestly, last weekend was a bad weekend for various holiday trains. In addition to the Cuyahoga Valley derailment, California State Railroad Museum was involved in a grade-crossing collision. No injuries occurred, and the vehicle involved drove off. 

And in New Jersey, the Conrail Shared Assets Operations Santa Train, led by NS heritage unit #8098 and NJT heritage unit #4208 struck a minivan, again no injuries, at a grade crossing despite being lit up like, well, a Christmas tree.