Grassroots Railroad Sports?

Four paint schemes are present here, and not a one of them is D&H yellow, gray and blue, but this is a D&H train at Binghamton. The N&W units are leased power and it takes a second to realize that there are three different schemes at work there. The lead is the Pevler Blue with yellow "Norfolk and Western" lettering, the next two are the new black and white with the combined NW, and the fourth is black but with yellow "N&W" lettering. The two Alcos at the rear are a pair of the Lehigh Valley C420s that D&H inherited but they haven't been run through the paint shop yet.

D&H GP39-2s at Owego, NY, still in their Reading green and yellow. These GP39-2s were actually purchased by Chessie Systems, then long-term leased to the Reading as some of the last new motive power the Reading ever received. When Reading was rolled up into Conrail, they were conveyed to the D&H, who continued to lease them from Chessie systems until 1991, when the D&H was bought by Canadian Pacific. The lease was then cancelled and they were returned to Chessie Systems, which had become CSX by that point. Many of these GP39-2s still live on at CSX, and one has been donated to the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society. The GP39-2 was a bit of an odd bird, and certainly not a common one. Rated at 2250hp from a turbocharged V12 645 engine, they made more power than the 2000hp Roots-blown V16 GP38-2s, and also got better fuel efficiency at lower power settings. 

On the Reading, the GP39-2s were numbered in the 3400 block, but D&H renumbered them to the 7400 block by hastily painting over the yellow 3 with a white 7. They later received the standard D&H paint scheme. At the same time, D&H purchased an additional 20 GP39-2s from EMD, and was in such a hurry to take delivery of them to cover their newly expanded territory that they had EMD deliver them without an numbers or logos or lettering painted on.

Leased N&W SD45s, set up for long hood forward operation, at Susquehanna, PA undergoing a crew change.

D&H #1205 pokes it's nose out of the Whitehall engine house.

The D&H RF-16s alongside a bunch of Lehigh Valley power at Sayre, PA. Sayre was the headquarters of the Lehigh Valley, although the condition of the buildings in the background indicate that the Lehigh Valley had fallen a long ways at this point.

Leased Lehigh Valley C628s roll a northbound D&H freight under the Starrucca Viaduct at Lanesboro

Two D&H RS-11s bracket a pair of RS-3s at Esperence, NY in the summer of '63. The RS-11 was available in both high and low nose configurations, and most railroads seemed to gravitate towards the high nose. The D&H actually owned a handful of each configuration. Their first five had been ordered by the New York Central with high noses but the Central refused to take delivery of them, so the D&H stepped in and purchased them, numbering them #5001-5005. A year later, the D&H ordered five more from Alco, this time with a low nose, and numbered them #5006-#5010. The #5004 would also swap teams in '73, when it was involved in an accident and was rebuilt with a short hood afterwards. The first of the RS-3s is still wearing the original black with yellow chevrons that the D&H had as their paint scheme on all their early diesel power (S2s, S4s, RS-2s, and RS-3s) and while the RS-2s and RS-3s were all eventually repainted, this one is clearly a fugitive from the paint shop.

Shiny new Alco C628s growl their way underneath the Starrucca Viaduct at Lanesboro. The big C628s were serious workhorses and useful on the mountainous southern end of the D&H, but the Alco Tri-Mount trucks and heavy weight meant they also rode very rough, were prone to picking switches and breaking switch frogs, and ate their less-than-optimal track for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Purchased in '64-'65, these would be the final new Alco products that the D&H purchased, as they jumped ship to GE afterwards, but the D&H would continue to purchase all sorts of secondhand Alcos for years to come. The big C628s were relatively short-lived by D&H standards, following the PA-4us down to Mexico in 1978 where they were all run into the ground and destroyed.

D&H #4024, a steam generator-equipped RS-2, at Canadian Pacific's Windsor Station, about to pickup the southbound Laurentian and head for Albany on March 7th, 1966. The #4024, along with the #4025, would be retired in August of '67, when they overran a Stop signal and collided with a freight train while pulling the northbound Montreal Limited, resulting in 2 deaths and 34 injuries.

Taken in July of 1968, the ex-ATSF Alco PA-1s had been purchased and assigned to the Laurentian/Montreal Limited, along with ex-D&RGW lightweight equipment, but occasionally the PAs were unable to answer the call, and an old RS-2 would step up to the plate. RS-2 #4022 leads the southbound Laurentian, with a leased Canadian Pacific car in the consist, out of Montreal, passing by a CP FP-7 on a commuter run headed to Windsor Station.

North of Rouses Point, NY, the D&H actually traveled over the Napierville Junction Railroad, which was the D&H's Canadian subsidiary. Created in 1881, the Napierville Junction's purpose was to provide the D&H the fastest, straightest, most level route to Montreal. The NJR had very little corporate identity, typically using standard D&H power, but they did have two RS-2s that were built by Montreal Locomotive Works and were painted black with yellow Napierville Junction lettering and handled local freight from Rouses Point, NY to St Luc, Quebec. In this photo from 1969, the NJR RS-2s must have been predisposed or fallen ill, and so D&H RS-36 #5017 and a leased CPR RS-3 are handling the twice-daily train. The #5017 still exists and operates in D&H colors at the Delaware & Ulster Railroad at Arkville, NY.

D&H #18 making its final stop before it's destination of Montreal with the northbound Laurentian. You can see the ATSF red bleeding through the D&H blue around the windshield.

One of the Napierville Junction MLW RS-2s at St Luc next to a CPR RS-10. When the D&H fully absorbed the NJR into it's corporate identity in '71, the two RS-2s were sold back to MLW and resold to Ferrocarrill de Cuba.

One of the Erie-Lackawanna U33Cs that the D&H traded three SD45s off for. Rather than give them a full repaint, D&H just painted over the maroon with blue and added D&H lettering and logos. When the SD45s were returned to the D&H in Erie-Lackawanna colors, the D&H gave them the same paint treatment.

D&H #606, a sister C628, and a U30C prepare to head south out of Oneonta.

When D&H convinced Amtrak to revive the Laurentian/Montreal Limited route as the Adirondack and to allow D&H to run it, they talked the state of NY into coughing up coin to have the Alco PA-1s completely overhauled, since they were still 244-powered and pretty long in the tooth. The D&H sent them to Morrison-Knudsen in Boise, Idaho for a complete rewire, new traction motors, and 2400hp 251 V16s. But they needed power for the Adirondack during the time the overhaul took and the D&H had retired all of their steam generator-equipped RS-2s and RS-3s. So they swapped two of their RS-3s to the Boston & Maine for two of their steam generator-equipped RS-3s, #1508 and #1536. The #1508 is shown here, working with an RS-36.

Of the RS-36s assigned to help the Adirondack, it was typically either the #5020, shown here with one of the unrebuilt PAs, or the #5018. The RS-36 was the final Alco RS-series locomotive and was basically an update of the RS-11, a 4-axle road switcher rated at 1800hp. D&H's fleet of 12 was the largest, which is an indication of how poorly the RS-36 sold, and they traded in a number of aging RS-3s on them.

RS-11 #5004 with the #1508 at Whitehall. The #5004 was one of the high-hood RS-11s built for NYC that the D&H ended up with and was rebuilt to a short hood after an accident in '73. The dome car at the rear of the Adirondack was a long-term lease from Canadian Pacific, since the D&H was never a big player in the passenger train field (the Laurentian and it's nighttime counterpart the Montreal Limited were the only named trains on the D&H) and never owned any dome cars of their own. A majority of their passenger car fleet was secondhand, often from NYC.

GE U-boats congregate inside the former Alco stronghold that was D&H's Colonie Diesel Shops. Those at the D&H said that they didn't jump ship to GE because they built a better locomotive, it was because GE had much better customer support. Pretty sad, considering that Alco's factory in Schenectady was right on the D&H, and most Alco deliveries rolled over Alco rails, and the D&H still had issues getting parts from Alco.

A pair of Alco RS3s, a C628, a GE U30C and a Baldwin RF-16 occupy tracks in the Colonie shop. No EMDs in here! A real rarity in the '70s. There was an amusing sign on the outside of the Colonie Diesel Shops that proclaimed "Big Things Happen Here". Those who were around back then said that you signed into a guest book and paid a dollar and could have free reign of the place as long as you didn't get in anyone's way.

When the Providence & Worchester was split off from the Penn Central by the ICC in 1972 and became newly independent, it needed motive power. The D&H cleaned up five RS-3s, painted them in P&W colors and leased them to the P&W while it got its footing. Two of them stayed with the P&W, but the other three were returned several years later. One of those, still in P&W colors but with D&H lettering and herald reapplied, leads a freight at Mechanicville, along with two more RS-3s in D&H Lightning Stripe, and a leased Lehigh Valley "snowbird" C628.

Like every other railroad in the US, the D&H got in on the Bicentennial spirit. One of their commemorative units was U23B #2312, which was renumbered to #1776 and received a bright red/qhite/blue livery. The #1776 was actually used on the Preamble Express, a scouting trip that toured the US in '74 to drum up excitement for the American Freedom Train. Alongside it is PA-4u #17. And check out the brand-new GMC vans on the autorack behind it.

D&H #1216 at Watervliet with an excursion. The RF-16s were generally assigned to freight runs, but their lack of M.U. compatibility with literally the entire D&H roster and their lack of dynamic brakes really hampered their career with the D&H, as did their oddball nature. By and large, they were assigned to a freight run out of Whitehall called "the Slate Picker", but they also made visits to Sayre on TOFC runs.

It's crazy to think that Bruce Sterzing somehow rationalized the purchase of two oddball units in the mid '70s as the D&H was bleeding cash. The D&H wasn't Penn Central level of unhealthy, but it still wasn't financially stable. The sharks quickly earned the nickname of Sterzing's Toys, and while they were beloved by railfans, crews hated them. One person who got to poke around them at the Whitehall engine house recalled that the seats were so low and the windshields so high, that you could not see out the front if seated, and so the crews had to basically make the run standing up.