Grassroots Railroad Sports?

NickD said:

kazoospec said:

NickD said:

This weekend was the NY state model train fair in Syracuse, NY. I didn't take many pictures, but this one got a good chuckle out of me. Its a scale model of the 10'9" CSX bridge over the Onondaga Lake Parkway that gets clobbered like every 6 months.

LOL, great minds think alike.  From the layout I'm building for my son:

Someone I'm friends with who has the inside scoop on a lot of the Syracuse politics said that the city asked CSX to raise the height of the bridge over the parkway, and the CSX rep pretty much laughed in their face. The good folks of Syracuse apparently didn't understand that to raise the height of a railroad bridge a foot or so requires altering the roadbed miles in either direction.

The real issues is that segment of NY-370, called the Onondaga Lake Parkway, is used in a way that it was never intended. When they extended that stretch of NY-370 over the old routing of NY-57, the plan was for it to be a low-speed scenic drive along the shore of Onondaga Lake. But somewhere along the line, they changed it to four lanes and upped the speeds to 55mph and then all these buses and tractor trailers started using it to avoid going through Syracuse on NY-690. And then they started plowing into that old NYC bridge, which was part of the St. Lawrence Subdivision, formerly the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg.

They've got Low Bridge signs and all sorts of flashing warning lights miles out in either direction of that bridge and the lower truss is painted flourescent orange, and all commercial traffic is supposed to be banned from NY-370, but every year someone manages to plow a cube van or tractor trailer into it. NYC certainly built that bridge strong when they constructed it in '58, because it has taken a pounding. It even had a double-decker Mega Bus slam into it over a decade ago.

Sort of reminds me of events that occurred shortly before I started at the Prosecutor's Office a few decades ago.  I got DOZENS of tickets against Conrail to close out.  I finally started asking around about it because I was curious.  Apparently, some local official had decided to start writing Conrail tickets for obstructing traffic.  To be fair, people were complaining . . . a lot . . . because they tended to pass a train almost all the way through the two busiest grade crossings in town, then stop about five or six cars from the end of the train, throw a switch and back the whole E36 M3show up.  The whole process took 10 to 15 minutes and always seemed to occur during rush hour.   From what I heard, Conrail brought in lawyers to consolidated all these tickets into a single case, then filed a motion that basically said "berkeley off locals, we're the railroad, we can do whatever we want."  (and apparently had Federal law to back that up)  All the tickets got dismissed.  (Or so the story goes)

kazoospec said:

NickD said:

kazoospec said:

NickD said:

This weekend was the NY state model train fair in Syracuse, NY. I didn't take many pictures, but this one got a good chuckle out of me. Its a scale model of the 10'9" CSX bridge over the Onondaga Lake Parkway that gets clobbered like every 6 months.

LOL, great minds think alike.  From the layout I'm building for my son:

Someone I'm friends with who has the inside scoop on a lot of the Syracuse politics said that the city asked CSX to raise the height of the bridge over the parkway, and the CSX rep pretty much laughed in their face. The good folks of Syracuse apparently didn't understand that to raise the height of a railroad bridge a foot or so requires altering the roadbed miles in either direction.

The real issues is that segment of NY-370, called the Onondaga Lake Parkway, is used in a way that it was never intended. When they extended that stretch of NY-370 over the old routing of NY-57, the plan was for it to be a low-speed scenic drive along the shore of Onondaga Lake. But somewhere along the line, they changed it to four lanes and upped the speeds to 55mph and then all these buses and tractor trailers started using it to avoid going through Syracuse on NY-690. And then they started plowing into that old NYC bridge, which was part of the St. Lawrence Subdivision, formerly the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg.

They've got Low Bridge signs and all sorts of flashing warning lights miles out in either direction of that bridge and the lower truss is painted flourescent orange, and all commercial traffic is supposed to be banned from NY-370, but every year someone manages to plow a cube van or tractor trailer into it. NYC certainly built that bridge strong when they constructed it in '58, because it has taken a pounding. It even had a double-decker Mega Bus slam into it over a decade ago.

Sort of reminds me of events that occurred shortly before I started at the Prosecutor's Office a few decades ago.  I got DOZENS of tickets against Conrail to close out.  I finally started asking around about it because I was curious.  Apparently, some local official had decided to start writing Conrail tickets for obstructing traffic.  To be fair, people were complaining . . . a lot . . . because they tended to pass a train almost all the way through the two busiest grade crossings in town, then stop about five or six cars from the end of the train, throw a switch and back the whole E36 M3show up.  The whole process took 10 to 15 minutes and always seemed to occur during rush hour.   From what I heard, Conrail brought in lawyers to consolidated all these tickets into a single case, then filed a motion that basically said "berkeley off locals, we're the railroad, we can do whatever we want."  (and apparently had Federal law to back that up)  All the tickets got dismissed.  (Or so the story goes)

From a legal standpoint, railroads are pretty unassailable unless you are coming at them from a federal or state level. When the word got out that Tennessee Pass might be reactivated (haven't heard anything on that in a while) there were people who bought property along the tracks after it was idled who were suing to keep it shut down and one fellow, who was a lawyer dealing in railroad-related cases, was saying that those people might as well just throw all their money in a fire, because he had never heard of the STB siding with the public in cases like that. Lesson to be learned, if you're looking at buying a house near railroad tracks and the realtor tells you they are abandoned, don't trust that. Unless the tracks are physically gone, stuff is built on the right of way, bridges and crossing guards are removed, etc. it's simply dormant and could be reactivated pretty much any time. Look at the East Broad Top's southwestern line to Broad Top Mountain from Orbisonia: a train hasn't passed over that line since 1956, but they are now in the process of reactivating the line as far as Saltillo currently. Dormant for 65 years and going to make a comeback in the next couple years.

On the subject of blocked crossings, the one place my sister lived in in Texas had a Union Pacific line running right through it and there was a signal block on one end of towns. So trains headed one direction, if they got stopped at that block, then had their trains fouling multiple grade crossings in the city. She said sometimes they'd have those crossings blocked for an hour, hour and a half, waiting for a green signal and you had to take alternate routes around the city. A few years back, Union Pacific was discussing running 300-400 car trains and pretty much everyone everywhere pitched a fit. If they were running at low speeds, they'd foul crossings for 30-45 minutes potentially. I think what really did it in was the first responders complaining. Their, quite valid, point was if you had fire trucks responding to a call and they had to wait for one of these 400 car trains to clear the crossing, the house likely would have burned down before they could cross the tracks.

A couple more angles of the Amtrak #926 at the fairgrounds. I was incorrect in saying its the only GG1 on display in non-PRR colors. There are a couple in PC/Amtrak/Conrail "bankruptcy black". It is the only  preserved GG1 in the Amtrak "Platinum Mist" livery though, and was only one of seven GG1s painted in that livery in service. It has the typical GG1 rust and body cracking started in the ends, although it is definitely not the worst GG1 left.

My hot take on the GG1 in the preservation era is that they are over-represented and under-preserved. The damn things are everywhere, there's 16 of them total, as far flung as Green Bay, Wisconsin, Union, Illinois, and Dallas, Texas. There was actually 17 at one point, with one at the Whippany Railroad Museum that was scrapped in '92. The Smithsonian actually acquired one, concerned that the GG1 might pass into extinction, and then they realized there were so many of them being preserved that they got rid of theirs.

But there doesn't seem to be a real plan for a lot of them. There are a few really nice ones tucked away indoors and lovingly maintained. But there are a lot that are sitting outside deteriorating. As I understand it, when it was announced that they were finally being retired, every museum and historical group seemed to want to make up for missing out on saving the NYC Hudsons, and Alco PAs, and Baldwin Babyfaces, and they all jumped at GG1s and figured they could come up with a plan for it later.

In reply to NickD :

Two of those GG1s are seen in the movie The Seven-Ups - one in black Penn Central livery, and one in the Amtrak scheme. Not sure about the shooting location, but probably somewhere on the west side of Manhattan.

Some of the better preserved GG1s:

PRR #4935 "Blackjack" at the Railroad Museum of PA is probably the (Brunswick Green and) gold standard of preserved GG1s. Its indoors in a climate-controlled building and beautifully restored an painted. The #4935 is actually pretty interesting in that it was arguably the first heritage unit in the US. In 1977, Amtrak painted it back into PRR colors and unveiled it at a ceremony at Washington Union Terminal that included a speech from Raymond Loewy (even if Loewy's involvment with the GG1's design is wildly overblown). I've seen the #4935 in person twice and it's a beautiful piece.

Second nicest would be PRR #4890. The #4890 is a bit of a sore subject among some folks. It was originally donated by an individual to the B&O Railroad Museum, since GG1s were a common sight in Baltimore. Only a couple month after the donor died, the B&O Railroad Museum called it surplus to their collection, since it wasn't part of the B&O "family" (B&O, C&O, Western Maryland, and by a couple degrees separation, Reading and CNJ). There are those who are still pretty salty about the B&O museum dumping it, since it's still historically relevant to the area. It was then shipped up to the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who has seemed much more appreciative of the machine, and it sits indoors next to Big Boy #4017 and Dwight Eisenhower's WWII Command Train, beautifully restored in Tuscan Red with the 5 gold pinstripes.

PRR #4877 is one of two owned by the URHS of NJ, and similar to how Amtrak repainted the #4935 into PRR colors, NJ Transit repainted the #4877 into Tuscan Red with 5 gold stripes in 1981. After retirement in '83, it sat in Hoboken Yard for years, unprotected from elements or vandals and by 2003 had fallen into pretty sad condition. It was moved to a small NJT yard in Morristown in 2006 to begin an extensive cosmetic restoration and by 2013, it looked like near-new in Brunswick Green with 5 gold stripes. It has since joined the URHS of NJ collection at Boonton, NJ.

Also owned by the URHS of NJ is the #4879, which was the last GG1 to haul a revenue passenger train on October 28th, 1983. The #4879 is a bit of a rags-to-riches story, as for years it was considered among the worst GG1s surviving (although not the worst). There were once plans to restore it to the Brunswick Green single stripe/large keystone scheme and display it at the NJ Transportation Heritage Center in Phillipsburg, NJ but they never materialized. It then sat outside in extremely deteriorated condition, wearing PC "bankruptcy black", eventually ending up at Boonton, NJ. Around 2012 they got serious about restoring it, and in 2014 it rolled out in Brunswick Green with the large single gold stripe.

The last of the nice ones (used to be considered third but has been bumped by the two URHS of NJ units) is the #4927 out to Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois. Its an older restoration, having been done in 1999, but it is in one of IRM's indoor barns, although not climate-controlled, so it hasn't deteriorated much. The #4927 is a weird historical footnote in that, when it was owned by Amtrak, it was renumbered to #4939, which made it the first GG1 numbered higher than #4938 in over 42 years (the 139 GG1s were numbered #4800-#4938.

And then there is the rougher end of the spectrum.

Amtrak #4916/PRR #4918 is at the National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis. This was the unit that the Smithsonian originally saved, operating on the thought that the GG1 is an American icon and wanting to preserve it from going extinct. Then they realized there were 16 more of the things saved and decided to unload it. Since the NMoT already had the last surviving PRR P5a electric, was originally supposed to receive the Northumberland Collection (right up until the PRR rep ran over one of the museum curator's cats, which killed the deal just as dead as the cat, no joke), and the GG1 is very popular, it made sense as an addition to the museum. It is still in PC black with Amtrak patch lettering and has never been restored while they've owned it. It's under one of their awnings and tucked in the very back, crammed in amongst a bunch of other stuff, so photos of it are rare, but its definitely rough. I seem to recall reading something about this being parked in the infamous NMoT tunnel, but don't quote me on that.

PRR #4913 is one of the Altoona-built units and so, quite fittingly, is displayed at the Railroader's Memorial Museum at Altoona, PA. On arrival at the museum in 1983, it was painted in Tuscan Red with the 5 gold stripes. That seems to have been the last time it has seen a paint brush, and it has since sat outdoors in the Pennsylvania elements with little apparent care. It has some pretty severe rust in the ends where it always seems to develop. 

Amtrak #4934/PRR #4917 is one half of the famed "abandoned" GG1s at Cooperstown, NY that has long campitvated photographers and sparked all sorts of rumors. The #4917 was originally at the Wilmington & Western, since Wilmington was a gathering ground for GG1s and the W&W at the time was trying to collect as many PRR pieces as they could (they had a B6 0-6-0, the M1 long-haul tender, a PRR doodlebug, and some other stuff) and so the #4917 was there for a while with intent to cosmetically restore it. They gave up on that pretty quickly and the it was instead supposed to be moved north to a museum in Connecticut, but they made it as far as Cooperstown Junction where they were stored on the old D&H Cooperstown branch, presumably while travel plans were solidifed. The deal fell through and the #4917 then passed into the hands of the Leatherstocking Railroad Museum/Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley Railroad and has sat there since 1986. In 2008, it was supposedly purchased by the "GG1 Rehabilitation Society" in Miami, Florida (and it even has a plaque from said society affixed to it) with plans to move it to Miami and "make a TV show about restoring it." They scraped and primed one end of it, did a brake test using the C&CV's ex-NYO&W NW-2, and that's as far as they got. Said society has since fallen off the radar and performed no more work on it. The #4917 has always been of particular interest to GG1 fans since it still has it's transformer on board, it's just been drained of the nasty polychorinated byphenol coolant, unlike the rest of the GG1s that had their transformers crudely hacked out of them. In theory, if you were to return a GG1 to operation, the #4917 would be easier since its more complete electrically, but that's ignoring the whole other horde of mechanical and logistical issues.

The other half of the "abandoned" GG1 pair is PRR #4909/Amtrak #4932. The history on this one is even murkier than the #4917, but it did spend some time at Steamtown USA at Scranton, PA, either being held there for someone else or originally being purchased for their collection. There is painted-on instruction mentioning "Save for Steamtown" and there is at least one photo of it at Scranton. In 1986, it made the move north with #4917 to Cooperstown Junction in 1986, also ending up in the hands of the Leatherstocking Railroad Museum/Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley. In 2008, The Henry Ford Museum announced that they had purchased the #4909, with intent to move it to Dearborn, cosmetically restore it and display it alongside their C&O Allegheny. They scraped and primed a good bit of the body in preparation for the move, only for CSX to refuse to move it, due to nonfunctional brakes, old Timken sealed roller bearings, and the generally decrepit condition. There also were supposedly clearance issues with a tunnel on one part of the route. No further work has been performed and The Henry Ford seems to have generally forgotten they own the thing. The fact that The Henry Ford, which has much deeper pockets and resourse than most strictly-railroad museums, can't get the thing moved speaks volumes.

The worst of the worst is PRR #4876 at the B&O Railroad Museum, another sore subject like the #4890. The #4876 is historically noteworthy for being the GG1 that had a brake failure and plowed into Washington Union Terminal and fell through the floor, weeks before Eisenhower's inauguration. A false floor was built over the top for the inauguration and then the PRR cut it into chunks and lifted it out of the basement and reassembled it and put it back in service. After retirement someone purchased it with grand plans of restoring it and putting it on display at Washington Union Terminal. They needed a place to store it and the B&O Railroad Museum offered to store it for the time being. Then the group went and talked to the folks at WUT and they said "You want to do WHAT? With WHAT?" WUT uses every inch of their trackage and has no interest in tying up a track for a display piece, they have no interest in commemorating a (thankfully non-fatal) accident, and even if they did, you can't get to the platform without a ticket, so the only people who could see it were those in a rush to get on their train and make their commute. It has since sat at the B&O Railroad Museum out in the elements, on an area without public access, rotting away and being heavily vandalized. The B&O Museum has no interest in restoring it,for the same reason that they got rid of the #4890, and CSX refuses to move it, same as the #4909, so it is essentially landlocked on the property with no real future.

In reply to NickD :

Are there other GG-1's in the middle of the spectrum, or is this all that remain?

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

The one at the New York Central Museum in Elkhart is pretty much unrestored, but not at rough as some of them.

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

The one here in Syracuse is pretty middle-of-the-road in terms of condition.

So is the #4800 "Old Rivets". This is the first GG1 built and has its nickname because it was the only GG1 built with a riveted body (Raymond Loewy's big contribution to the GG1's design was the suggestion of welding the body), as well as the GG1 that wore a bicentennial livery and was the only GG1 painted in Conrail blue with the "broken wheel" livery. It's at the RRMoPA but is on display outdoors and getting a little scruffy. I seem to recall that the issue is that it is owned by an NRHS chapter, and not the museum, and the museum charter is written so that they can't display any equipment not owned by them indoors. With the US semiquincentennial and Conrail's 50th birthday coming up in 2026, it'd be nice to see the #4800 get painted in either the Conrail or bicentennial scheme.

#4859 is owned by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and on display at the Harrisburg Transportation Center. It pulled the first electric passenger train from Phillie to Harrisburg in 1938, and also pulled the last GG1-powered freight train in 1979. After retirement, it was cosmetically restored to it's PRR colors at the RRMoPA and then moved to Harrisburg. Its on display, under the awning with a caboose hooked to it. It's better than most, but not the spit-polish of some like #4935 or #4890. The big issue with this one is that every couple years, Amtrak starts making rumblings that they want it out of the station so it isn't tying up a platform. If that ever happens, the PA museum commission would likely move it back to the RRMoPA, at which point the museum would have 3 GG1s and you have to wonder if they would get rid of one.

PRR #4919 is at the Virginia Museum of Transportation at Roanoke. The paint job was looking pretty scabby, but it didn't have the widespread rust of some. It looks like it had a repaint back in 2017 though, although it is not under any sort of roof.

PRR #4903 is the most far-flung, at Frisco, Texas. The #4903, along with the #4901, hauled Senator Robert Kennedy's funeral train from New York to Washington on June 8, 1968. It was originally owned by the NYC museum in Elkhart, but they traded it to the Museum of the American Railroad in exhange for New York Central Mohawk #3001 (which was disguised as Texas & Pacific #909). The warm dry climate has done it a lot of favors in terms of preventing deterioration, and despite being well away from the GG1's homeland, it's supposedly well loved by visitors. Also, the #4903 is parked alongside Big Boy #4018, making it the second GG1 displayed alongside a Big Boy. If Steamtown had held onto the #4909, that would have made for three Big Boy/GG1 combos.

GG1s just present a lot of difficulties in preservation. They're really tall, quite long, quite heavy, and they have a wheelbase that's less flexible than your average B-B or C-C diesel, so you can't just park one anywhere. They lived a long life with some owners who were none too particular with maintenance and repairs (looking at you, Penn Central and Conrail), so they have a lot of Bondo and fiberglass in the noses and other crude rust repair in the body, along with many, many layers of paint over the top. In addition to lead paint and good ol' Vitamin A[sbestos] insulation on the steam heat generators, they also had transformers that were filled with delightful Polychlorinated Biphenyls that started to leak out years after they were parked. That makes them a can of worms when you get into restoring them and then have to do a bunch of environmental hazard abatements.

Getting one moved any sort of distance is also pretty much a non-starter these days as well. While they do have roller bearings, they are sealed roller bearings, which are on CSX's E36 M3 list, and they are 40+ year old sealed bearings at the newest. They, like most old equipment, lack Alignment Control Couplers, which has become pretty much a mandate. You have to have functional brakes, and unlike most diesels or cars where you have 8 or 12 sets of brakes, a GG1 has 20 axles, so that is 40 sets of shoes to be replaced and 40 cylinders to be coaxed back into life. The real nail in the coffin for the GG1s useful life was they started developing extensive frame crack, which makes a lot of Class Is nervous that if they take one of these things that has been sitting for 40+ years and then cut it into a consist and try and move it along at 30+mph, it may shake itself to pieces, not helped by the fact that the ones that need to be moved are the most dilapidated (#4876, #4909, #4917) while the nicest ones are in pretty secure homes and not going anywhere anytime soon. Also, when you move something like a GP9 or an F7 dead-in-tow, they have dynamics that aren't dissimilar from anything else on the rails. But a GG1 has a 2-C-C-2 wheelbase more like a steam locomotives, so just tucking one in the consist and rolling along like its business as usual isn't an option. And due to their construction, you can't just lift it off the trucks with a crane and set it on a flat car and load the trucks on a separate flatcar like they do when moving old switchers. Again, the fact that The Henry Ford Museum, with their money and resources, couldn't get theirs moved and has essentially given up on the idea gives an idea of just how difficult they are to relocate.

I honestly expect that sometime in the next decade, we'll probably see at least one of the three bad GG1s, the two at Cooperstown Junction and the #4876 in Baltimore, get cut up for scrap. Sad after surviving all these years, but at least there are a quite a few of them still preserved elsewhere. Nowhere near as unfortunate as that sole surviving New York Central T-Motor electric and one of only three surviving NYC S-Motors that are landlocked down in a forest near Albany, rotting into the ground with pretty much a zero percent chance of being relocated.

That S-Motor (actually the very first S-motor built) and the only surviving T-Motor down in Glenmont, NY. The story is that these were purchased by a now-defunct group, along with a Conrail U25B and an NYC RS-3, and parked down on this out-of-service track in Glenmont in hopes of finding a permanent home for them. The group folded up and they've sat there for decades now. The bridge on one that connected to the Port Of Albany completely rotted out and was demolished, eliminating the connection on one end. And the other end is cut off with a fence and leads into a power plant that has stated they have no interest in taking down the fence and allowing the stuff to be moved out over their rails. Its also very soft/swampy ground and in the middle of a forest, so craning it onto some flatbed trucks is very much out of the question. Someone said that the Danbury Railway Museum took ownership of them about 4 years ago, but they are still sitting down there with no real way to get out.

Electric operations were one of the few areas where the NYC didn't match or exceed the PRR. The NYC never electrified large chunks of their mainline like the PRR, instead restricting their electric operations mostly to getting trains in and out and around Manhattan, and getting in and out of Cincinatti Union Terminal. And once diesels arrived on the property, they de-electrified the Cincinatti Union Terminal operations. A lot of the CUT equipment was moved east to New York City, retiring the older eastern equipment, but that was a relatively short-lived reprieve. Once the Penn Central merger went through, all of the NYC electric equipment was retired in favor of the ex-New Haven FL9s, which allowed them to eliminate power changes at Croton-Harmon and just run trains straight in and out of Grand Central with the same engine and crew on the point.

Scrap is high and Virginia Transportation Museum is poor??  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqRbbwFvaE

In reply to LS_BC8 :

One guy in the comments says that that wasn't headed to scrap, but was being moved to an off-site storage location. Not sure if he knows more than anyone else though. The E8 and some of those heavyweight cars looked pretty far gone, but the wrecking derrick looked pretty nice

One guy on Facebook has been uploading a bunch of slides that he recently acquired, all of the original 1979-1981 Adirondack Railway Company, which was the revived ex-NYCC Adirondack Division for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. There are some pretty cool, rare photos.

One of the two RS-3s rolling out of Utica Union Station with a northbound train. The big building with the smokestack on the left is the steam heat plant for the station, now gone.

This is the ADIX #28 at Union Station platform. This was an ex-D&H RS-3. Still exists but is now sadly rusting away on the Buffalo Southern but with a broken crankshaft and severe vandalism. There are those who want to buy it and move it to Remsen to display with #25, but it'd be hard to move it that far and it needs a lot of work to even be a display piece.

The #28 waiting for a Conrail train to clear the switch and enter the yard, so the Adirondack train can get to the station. You can barely ssee it, but there's one of the cool little dwarf signals telling the Adirondack train to wait.

The #28 waiting to go north at Union Station. I believe this is the platform they use today. And the yard to the left is no longer Conrail, but Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern.

The #28 under one of the awnings at Utica, with the engineer looking back for the highball signal from the conductor. I think that is one of the PRR P70 coaches that they had. Some of those P70s sat around after the Adirondack Railway went out of business and were scrapped and some of them ended up down in Austin, Texas on the Austin Steam Train (which ironically hasn't run a steam engine since the '90s).

According to one comment "what remains of track the train is on is today the east and west stubs. This was brought about when the platform was widened. Also, the north end of the station track didn't exist until around 2002. In 1980, all Adirondack trains backed out of the station to the switch down by the old tower."

Rolling through Snow Junction in the summer of '80, with an MoW crew with a Jackson Tamper

Crossing the Kayuta Lake bridge. It is nowhere near as open as that anymore. A couple more years you won't be able to see the lake.

Crossing McKeever Bridge

Heading south at Nelson Lake. The right of way is nowhere near as wide as that anymore.

Northbound, approaching Forestport.

At Thendara Station. Looks pretty much the same today, except the stub track on the left now crosses the road and runs forward to a switch, which is where they run the train around to head south to Utica.

Both of the RS-3s at Thendara. The #29 was ex-Roberval & Saguenay and ended up on the NYS&W after things shut down, then was scrapped later on. Also, check out the Porsche 914 zipping by in the foreground.

The #25 at Thendara yard. The #25 was an ex-Seaboard Air Line Alco RSC-2 (RS-2 with A-1-A trucks) that Adirondack Railway bought from Florida Power & Light. Having come from Florida and wearing the FP&L blue and orange, it was called the Tampa Tiger. It never received the dark metallic green with gold stripes and lettering while it was in operation. After it was displayed at the Utica Children's Museum, it then was painted the green and gold. This is the unit whose move north to Remsen that I chased. Missing too much to ever be a runner again.

An Alco 244 engine at Thendara. This was in the #28 and blew up and had to be swapped out.

Rare photos here of the #107. This was a GE 44-tonner, possibly Hoboken Shore Railroad, that was owned by an Adirondack Railway shareholder. It was used for the revitalization efforts and then eventually sold to the Claremont & Concorde and parted out and scrapped. I've never heard of this unit and there aren't any photos of it really out there. Pity these two aren't a bit better.

Another rare one, trains meeting at Sabattis. The track on the right was not a passing siding, it was a stub track. This siding was only used "when absolutely necessary" if a train was running behind and the passing tracks at Beaver River or Tupper Lake couldn't be reached. It was in bad condition even back then, and crews hated having to take this stub because the ties were so bad and they were worried about putting it on the ground. There were two meets a day, one at noon at Tupper and the other around 8pm at Thendara. Meets at Sabattis became more frequent as track conditions deteriorated in late July-August of 80 and slow orders made keeping the schedule difficult, which was ultimately shut down the railroad.

Another really rare one: that's the #25 "Tampa Tiger", which there aren't many photos of, but the unit in the lead is a Conrail "Dewitt Geep", an RS-3 repowered with an EMD 1200hp V-12 by Penn Central at their Dewitt shops. According to Lisa Ellison, wife of ARC engineer Doug Ellison, the #29 blew a head coming south on August 2nd. They cut the #29 out at Thendara, and put #25 on to run the train into Utica. Next morning, they picked up the #9968 from Conrail, went back to Thendara, dropped the #25 at Thendara and ran the rest of the way to Lake Placid with #9968

A southbound train during the winter of '79/'80. At this time, the crews weren't cleared to run over Conrail tracks, so they had to have a Conrail pilot crew aboard to take them into Utica.

Alco #5 and NY #8223 being moved up to Thendara in 1993 to prepare for likely the first revenue runs of the Adirondack Centennial Railroad. It was so named because it was to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the line's 1893 construction. It then became the Adirondack Scenic Railroad and is now just the Adirondack Railroad. Alco #5 was the shop switcher at the Alco plant and has been all over, including Strasburg, a short stint in the early days of the Adirondack, the Saratoga & North Creek and is now undergoing a mechanical overhaul by Raven Rail.

Hercules Powder #68 leading a work train on the Adirondack Scenic. This was shortly after they acquired it. It's an ex-L&N machine and is still on the property in New York Central colors and renumbered to #705. Typically used for switching cars at Thendara, work train duty and occasional rescue power. First caboose is a Grand Trunk/Santa Fe end cupola and was brought to Thendara. It was then moved over the highway to Inlet, NY where it was turned into a restaurant/food stand (Still stands, place is called The Caboose - 151 NY-28, Inlet NY). Car behind that was a 12-1 Pullman sleeper out of the Conrail work fleet that was turned into the "New York Central #83 Mountain View" open air car. Behind that is the work flat that was almost used to haul canoes for Tickners before the ex-Adirondack Railway baggage car showed up. And on the end of the train is an ex-CN caboose that got painted as an NYC Pacemaker caboose and was used in the late '90s and early 2000s. I believe that caboose is now out to the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic.

Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern #2453 arriving in Rome with a string of ex-VIA cars for the Adirondack Scenic Railroad. The Adirondack opened in 1993 using leftover cars from the 1979-1981 Adirondack Railway but then snapped up a bunch of retired VIA cars, which were brought to the MA&N's single-stall facilities in Rome to be repainted. The observation car in C&NW colors was also repainted to Adirondack's modified NYC lightning stripe colors and renamed the Nehasane. Its privately-owned and stored in the MA&N Utica yard. The CN caboose was never repainted and was also sold to a private owner who moved it to Ohio.

Also, photos of the #8223 moving the business car and caboose southbound at Forestport and MA&N #2453 moving the business car at Utica.

Alco C420 #408 at Boonville and Utica yard doing some work for the MA&N during the winter, as well as going through some mechanical work at the MA&N shops in Rome before becoming Adirondack Scenic Railroad #2064. This was one of the Lehigh Valley C420s that the D&H scooped up on Conveyance Day (Conrail's formation), and then was purchased by an MA&N employee and leased to the Adirondack. Years of poor maintenance under the Guilford Fail Systems meant she was a real roach on arrival and took quite a bit of sorting-out over the years. Painted all in black with just cursory lettering, the #2064 was one of the workhorses of the North End operations (Lake Placid-Saranac Lake) along with beloved GP9 #6076 "Rosie", but by the end of the lease had developed thin wheels and had a power pack that needed some attention. Despite being given an offer to purchase the #2064 and a second parts C420 for the price of the #2064 alone, the Adirondack never put a bid in on it and it was sold to Southern Appalachia Railway Museum, where it still runs around in the plain black paint from the Adirondack years.

The ex-USAF GE 80-tonner is still up on the ex-Griffiss Air Force Base and still wears the same dark blue and number but is lettered for Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern. They don't have the Rome shop facility anymore, but it does switch cars at the olive oil plant that MA&N service.

And in its new paint at Utica

The #2064 headed north past the construction site of the new Remsen Depot behind newly arrived F7A #1508, still in Alaska Railroad colors.

A year later, in 1999, an Amtrak charter train rolling past Remsen station with F40PHs and old Heritage Fleet stainless cars. I think this trip originated in Albany and ran to Utica over the NYC mainline and then hopped on the Adirondack's rails up to Thendara. I don't believe it went up to Lake Placid because passenger trips were not regularly run over the line from Thendara to Saranac due to the condition of the track, and the North End wasn't open yet either. The Utica-Thendara and Saranac-Lake Placid segements were essentially two different operations, with equipment only run light from Thendara north. There was at least one special trip run over that line in 2000 to celebrate the North End operations beginning and it was a slow crawl from Thendara north, with a crew chasing to rerail anything that hit the dirt. According to someone on that crew, there was a spot where the track gauge was out by 3".

There was a similar Amtrak charter up the Adirondack in 2017, held by the American Association of Private Car Owners Inc, with Genesises (Genesii?) on the lead. Knowing Amtrak's attitudes towards charter trips these days, I wouldn't count on it happening again anytime soon.

An MA&N crew building the station track for the Adirondack Scenic Railroad, with ol' faithful, the #806. This unit is still kicking around in the Pacific Great Eastern/BCRail two-tone green

Equipment in storage at Utica, winter of 2000. In the front is #4343, nicknamed The Great Pumpkin. The big Alco C424 was a real boomer unit, having been built for the SP&S, then became a Burlington Northern unit, then was sold to Chrome Crankshaft, who leased it to Kyle Railroad, then it was sold to the Arkansas & Missouri, then on to Thomas Carver Rail, who leased it to Massachusetts Central (where it was painted orange and black) and then was leased to the Adirondack. The #4243 was the first unit to wear the new green, black and yellow look, when they painted over the orange with green and added some yellow stripes. The lease expired in 2010 and Thomas Carver Rail sold it to the Delaware-Lackawanna. Behind the #4243, in NYC gray lightning stripes, is the #1500, an ex-BL&E F7A that was sold to the Toledo, Peoria & Western and then was purchased by the Adirondack. They ran it for a number of years but then it blew up the prime mover and was parked until it was sold to the Grafton & Upton around 2011. Further down, in the blue and yellow Alaska Railroad colors, is the #1508, another F7A. This was repainted into the modified NYC gray lightning stripes and was a matched set with the #1500. Its still on the Adirondack but is out of service for worn-out wheels and some other niggling issues. Those involved say it wouldn't take much to get running again but they just never seem to get the time. Behind that, I think is either the #2064 or the #8223.

The #1500 and the #1508 in fresh paint in 2002, looking like the Lake Shore Limited of years past. It's a pity that the #1500 is gone, the #1508 is rather rough-looking and out of service and the #1502 is in the new look green, black and yellow. I liked when the Adirondack was shooting for the NYC revival look, and it made sense considering the heritage of the line.

Then you have the oddity that was the Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern's Northern Division and the Lowville & Beaver River Railroad.

The MA&N operates several parts of the former New York Central St. Lawrence Division, which was the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad. Out of Utica, NY you have the Southern Division line that runs north to Remsen, which is where it splits and the Adirondack Division (now Adirondack Railroad) line to Thendara/Saranac Lake/Tupper Lake/Lake Placid heads northeast, while the St. Lawrence Division (now MA&N) heads north-northwest to Boonville/Lyons Falls. The Southern Division also runs west over CSX trackage (former NYC mainline) to Rome, where it crosses the Erie Canal and goes to both the ex-Griffiss Air Force Base/now-Griffiss Industrial Park rails, to service an olive oil plant, and the former NYC St. Lawrence Division line out of Rome. That part of the St. Lawrence Division once went to Watertown, but is abandoned on the west end of Rome and is just used to store cars and serve a couple local customers.

The MA&N Northern Division comes down from the CSX interchange at Carthage, NY and heads south to Lowville. This is also part of the St. Lawrence Division and was the old Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg. There is also a 46 mile line east-northeast from Carthage to Newton Falls, formerly Carthage & Adirondack and then NYC, that served a paper mill and an iron mine at Newton Falls. And then from Lowville, the Lowville & Beaver River Railroad ran 11 miles east through the Beaver River valley via New Bremen and Beaver Falls to Croghan. The Lowville & Beaver River was purchased by Genesee Valley Transportation (parent company of the MA&N, Delaware-Lackawanna, and others) and operated as an extension of the MA&N Northern Division in 1993. 

The 14 miles between the northernmost point of the Southern Division at Lyons Falls and the southernmost point of the Northern Division at Lowville was once connected but the New York Central abandoned that segment in 1964 and tore it up, leaving the two halves disconnected. After that, to get from Lyons Falls to Lowville by rail would require going 45 miles south to Utica, 55 miles west to Syracuse over the mainline, then 88 miles north to Philadelphia, NY, and then 33 miles south to Lowville. Confusing? Look at this map for sections marked MHWA and LBR and it becomes much clearer. You can also see where the the NYC abandoned the section that connected Lowville and Lyons Falls. https://www.dot.ny.gov/divisions/operating/opdm/passenger-rail/passenger-rail-repository/2019%20NYS%20Rail%20Map.pdf

Because of this physical disconnect, the Northern Division and Southern Division were operated essentially like two separate systems. The Southern Division uses a collection of ex-EL/BCRail C424s and ex-BCRail M420W #2042, while the Northern Division used ex-BCRail M420W #645 and the Lowville & Beaver River's three GE 44-Tonners, the #1947, #1950 and #1951 (numbered for the year of purchase). There weren't any MHWA trains running from Utica to Lowville over CSX tracks, the two divisions strictly serve local customers and interchange with the CSX at Carthage and Utica. While the Southern Division plugs right along, the Northern Division is essentially dormant. The loss of it's customer at Lowville, embargoing of several bridges on the L&BR, and the closure of the Benson Mines and Newton Falls Fine Paper Mill at Newton Falls made it not worth operating and has lapsed into dormancy. Genesee Valley Transportation tried selling the Carthage-Lowville section and the L&BR line to Lewis County, with the plan to reactivate the L&BR as a museum and tourist line and the conversion of the Carthage-Lowville line to trails, but Lewis County passed on the deal. The state also completely rehabilitated the 46 miles from Carthage to Newton Falls, in hopes of drawing in new businesses at Newton Falls (its the only land in the Adirondack Park that has industrial zoning) but it has never materialized and is just used for storing cars.