Grassroots Railroad Sports?

In reply to 02Pilot :

The Rome and Utica stations are still in use as well. The Utica station is pretty impressive, and my father can point out the offices that his mother's uncles and aunts worked in. The Utica station used to have 12 tracks and service the NYC, the DL&W and the NYO&W. Now it only uses 2 of the tracks and provides service to the Adirondack Scenic Railroad and Amtrak. The Rome station is also quite nice, but they no longer allow you into the actual station. The doors are all locked and there is no one selling tickets inside, you have to order tickets online and then you take the sidewalk behind the building and go up some stairs to the platform. It's all maintained and heated and lit, and I think they open it on special occasions

The interior and exterior of Union Station in Utica. It even still has a barber shop inside! 

NARCOA is a club of service car fans;  MUCH heavier and harder to turn around  with two people.  More expensive than the ones above and they are like some car marque people +/- wary of new faces, look down on anything not in their club. 

In reply to 914Driver :

I know where there is a New York Central track car like above, sitting in a shed. It's been there since I was a kid. There's no house on the property, and I've never seen anyone at the shed. The doors on the shed are missing and you can just make out the NYC lightning stripe paint scheme and the oval red logo. I wonder what the story is with it.

In reply to JesseWolfe :

You pretty much summed it up.  Also, I've worked on those trains.  You know what the acronym stands for, right?

We Meet And Talk Alot

Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton RF-16 "Sharknose" units prowling the NYC's Cincinatti yard.

Not a picture of a train, specifically, but this is my great-grandfather, c.a. 1945, working for the railroad in Western NY.  He was a crew boss, and would have been in his early 60's when this picture was taken.  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Cool! Its interesting how if you go back a generation or two, it seems like everyone had a relative that worked on the railroads, or traveled by railroad. Not as much the case anymore, but I recently read that Amtrak had record ridership this year and broke even, and might actually make a profit for the first time ever next year.

I'm in a Shark mood. Baldwin RF-16 "Sharknose" demonstrators. Only 3 railroads would bite, buying a total of less than 150. And I doubt the Pennsylvania even needed to see the demonstrators before ordering the largest fleet. If it was made by Baldwin, no matter how weird or ill-conceived, Pennsy bought a fistful.

Always loved inclined railway engines:

B&O RF-16s at the Salamanca Yard. This almost looks like a motive power move, considering the amount of locos and no visible cars. Perhaps they were headed for retirement in this photo. The other locomotives mixed in are weird as well, as Baldwins lacked MU (multiple unit) capability that made them play nice with EMDs and Alcos. They might be Baldwin road switchers though. Not a single RF-16 from the B&O would escape the cutting torch, nor would any of the Pennsylvania's.

The only two remaining "sharks" are 1205 and 1216. Built for the New York Central as the 3800-series, they were then renumbered to the 1200s. The NYC traded them in to General Electric, 7 cab units and 2 boosters. Monongahela Connecting Railroad purchased the set off of GE and used them from '67-'72, with only cab units 1205 and 1216 being operable at that point. In 1974 they were sold for scrap, but the Delaware & Hudson snatched them up, refurbished them and put them to work hauling freight and excursion trains. A management shakeup in '78 left them without a home again, where the Castolite Corp grabbed them up and lent them to Michigan Northern, who would use them for a year before 1205 suffered a crankshaft failure and 1216 developed a grounded-out traction motor. They were sent to Diesel Engine Services in Minneapolis to be repaired, but DES went out of business. Escanaba & Lake Superior then purchased them and has put them in storage. Over the years photos have surfaced of them, and reports of parts being stolen off them by vandals and employees have been heard. In theory, 1205 and 1216 could be combined, with the prime mover from the 1216 and traction motors from 1205, to make an operable unit, although they likely need an entire going-through.

Forgot I was at the B&O museum in Baltimore back in 2015.  There's a lot of cool stuff there, both inside and out.  The stuff outside is packed in pretty tight.

Here's one of those gear-driven locos, Cass #1:

Close-up of driveshaft and gears:

In reply to NickD :

That light blue livery on 1216 looks particularly sharp. They need to bring at least one of these back on line. Cool old locos.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

That top thing is a BL2, which is pretty rare. I haven't been to the B&O Museum, should try and get there. I know they had the roundhouse roof collapse a few years ago. I also know they have the GG1 that fell through the floor of Union Station in Washington DC right before Eisonhower's inauguration, although I guess they've let it go pretty bad.

Apparently Cass didn't have #1 in service for very long.  Originally G C & E #1:

http://www.borail.org/GC--E-No1.aspx

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Its interesting that Santa Fe didn't complain that the D&H literally took the Santa Fe "Warbonnet" scheme and then just changed the red to light blue. I think they are at least fairly safe from being cut up, as the owner of the E&LS has said that if anything happens to him or the railroad, 1205 and 1216 are to go to preservation. Still, it seems like he would just send them out now to have them restored instead of degrading further. As I said, you could theoretically combine the parts to make one operational unit (maybe restore that one to NYC colors) and then use the other as a static display (Put that one in D&H colors). But, just like cars, railroading is full of "I'll fix it up someday types", except with trains it's even less likely they'll get around to it.

What's really confusing is that the predecessor to the RF-16 (Road Freight - 1600hp) was the DR-4-4-1500 (Diesel Road, 4 axles, 4 driven axles, 1500hp) and any railroad that bought them got them with a goofy front end that looked like a prepubescent EMD F-unit. It was nicknamed the "Babyface" and derided for being a cheap knockoff of EMD's styling.

But the Pennsylvania, who always had a special relationship with Baldwin, got all their DR-4-4-1500s with a sharknose body exclusive to them (and designed by Raymond Loewy)

Same with all the DR-6-4-xxxx units (6 axles, 4 driven axles)

Seaboard Air Line got Babyfaces

Pennsy got "Sharks". The better reception of the "Sharknose" led them to drop the Babyface from then on out.

Oh, and to hammer home Baldwin's "built to owner" mentality, they gave Central New Jersy double-ended DR-units, with cabs on both ends

Stuff like this is why Baldwin would fall out of the market.

Little-known fact:

The building used by Richmond Locomotive and Machine Works, aka American Locomotive Company (Alco) Richmond Works is currently in use as a movie theater, operated by Bow Tie Cinemas.  Seen many films there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Locomotive_and_Machine_Works

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Weird. There was a Rome Locomotive Works here in Rome, NY from the 1890s into the 1910s

Then, after the RLW folded up, the building became a factory making road graders, called Rome Manufacturing and then Rome Grade, before eventually being owned by Pettibone

Then in 1989, the Rome Locomotive Works name got brought back and they were refurbishing old locomotives. It's bit of notoriety was that they were fixing up O. Winston Link's ex-Canadian Pacific #453 4-6-0, and during that time his wife supposedly started having an affair with the owner of the RLW. That was when O Winston Link got involved in that lawsuit with his wife who was trying to have him declared mentally unsound and take control of all his assets. The restoration stopped, and then the engine got shipped to New Hartford to be put on display (missing a lot of parts that had been removed) and there it sat for years until it got moved to parts unknown a few years ago.

CP 453 headed to be restored

There were rumors it was headed to Roanoake, but not sure if it made it there or where it went. I hoped it would instead be fixed and operated on the Adirondack Scenic Railroad. 

In reply to NickD :

The last reference I can find online is that it's sitting on dispaly along a NYS&W branch in Utica, NY.

Looks like the same picture, minus the Burrito Jonz.  Hey somebody call that number and ask if there's a loco out their front window?

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Its definitely not there. The hobby store to the left of it went out of business years ago and was replaced with a used furniture store. I was down there last fall and it's not there. They moved #453 out of there back in 2016 on trucks, lifted the boiler off the frame. People have spotted it at North Fork Lumber in Goshen VA, still disassembled. Whoever owns it is unknown, as is what its future will be. 

Like I said, I was hoping the Adirondack Scenic RR would get it. They got a nice operation and I like that their fleet is almost entirely old Alcos and MLWs, with a couple old EMD F-units, as opposed to a couple GP40s like some places, but a steam engine would really make the place, and #453 has enough grunt to not be useless but not too big. But they're involved in a pitched legal battle with New York state right now, so I don't think a steam engine is even on their radar.

NickD said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

But they're involved in a pitched legal battle with New York state right now, so I don't think a steam engine is even on their radar.

Well, just read where they won their case. The Supreme Court told NY state to knock it off. That has to have old Andy Cuomo spitting nails. Good.

Time for some narrow gauge love, nothing in this topic yet except the nice photo of the High Line on the Denver and Rio Grande (now the Durango and Silverton) here in SW Colorado. I'm the vice president of the Ridgway (Colorado) Railroad Museum, home of the famous seven Galloping Geese railbuses that were built from Buick and Pierce-Arrow automobiles in the 1930s.  These were about the most Grassroots railcars you can imagine that were built for revenue.  Google Galloping Goose RGS  (for Rio Grande Southern, our home railroad, it closed in 1951) and visit our website at ridgwayrailroadmuseum.org.  As you would expect, some of our other board members are also car guys and gals.  We are expecting arrival in late 2020 of a brand-new narrow gauge steam locomotive, a 4-4-0, which will be the first new NG steam loco built in decades.  It's a re-creation of a Baldwin built in 1880 for teh D&RG and later sold to the RGS in 1891.  Lots of fun stuff to see here, visit the website.

In reply to Jim Pettengill :

That's awesome. I've been thinking of flying out to Colorado next year for a vacation and try and hit up the narrow gauge railroads. I love the Durango & Silverton narrow gauge stuff. Ugly in a cool way.

There was a museum here in Rome about the Erie Canal and they had a short 2-foot gauge line that ran around the park, called the Rome & Fort Bull Railroad. The equipment is all still there but has been parked for years. It was a museum that was about the canal and had Erie Canal-era buildings, and a recreation of a canal packet boat drawn by horses. But sometime in the '90s the bottom of the boat sprung a leak and it sits on the bottom of the canal and they also parked the trains around then and without those two draws, people stopped attending. It technically still exists, but the boat is still sank, the buildings are falling in on themselves and are condemned, and the trains haven't run in years and the track is all overgrown and the ties rotted out. It came under new ownership 3 or 4 years ago and the guy made big promises that he would have the place restored and running like the good ol' days but there has been no further announcements and no work undertaken.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/97630304@N02/38599886400

Some dredging around dug up a photo of R&FBRR #1, which was a cute little 2'-gauge 2-6-2 Prairie (can't figure out how to hotlink from flickr) and an ancient photo of the little Davenport 0-4-0T they also ran there

Unknown what the condition is or even if they are still there.