In reply to 914Driver :
In a big move for Michigan railroading history, Pere Marquette #1225 is getting close to being operational again, after it had the boiler and frame lifted off the running gear last year for a major overhaul. This was a complete running gear job, with all the pins and all the bushings replaced, and the bearings re-machined, or in some cases replaced. The wheels were also taken down to Tennessee and put on the wheel lathes at TVRM and trued up and re-profiled, the first time since 1948. As far as the Steam Railroading Institute guys could tell, this was the first time anyone had been this far into the running gear since it was assembled in '41. Pere Marquette had been merged with C&O in '47, and the PM Berkshires, and most of C&O's western lines, had steam retired in '51, so she really only had 10 years of service on her, not enough to warrant PM or C&O to ever really tear her down that far.
Friday I decided to go and try to photograph one of the Adirondack Railroad's Beer & Wine Trains that they run on certain Friday evenings. I've been meaning to get out, but haven't been able to make my schedule line up. In fact, I haven't done any photography of the Adirondack since the Easter trains back at the beginning of April.
I got down there early, poked around the Utica station a little, and saw a CSX freight tied up down at the west end of the yard. I wanted to get a photo of the Adirondack train leaving out of the west end anyways, so I drove down to the west end, which is the NYS&W's section (Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern and Adirondack Railroad use the east end). I got there to see something that I have never seen before, which is CSX setting out cars for NYS&W. They had an ES44AC, two C40-8Ws (those have to be running out of time), and an AC4400W that was still in (battered) YN2 livery. The building to the left is the old DL&W freight house, since this was the end of the DL&W Utica Branch, where it met the New York Central and the NYO&W. I'm guessing that the boxcars that they were dropping off were headed to Oneida Warehousing in New Hartford.
It is really funny to see 16,800hp of modern AC 6-axle locomotives switching cars, although I'm pretty sure the lead ES44AC and the first C40-8W were the only ones online. I didn't hear the AC4400W at the rear even idling, and I didn't see any smoke out of the stack of the second C40-8W.
Heading out of the NYS&W yard and back onto the main to hook back to their train. Man, the YN2 livery on the #249 (also, always neat catching a very low numbered unit) is haggard. Also kind of interesting is that while the other three where the YN3 "Dark Future" livery, the first two have the logo with the CSX bracketed in a boxcar, while the third is the newer version from when CSX got rid of the boxcar, since boxcars are fairly rare these days.
While they were backing down to the train, I heard a train headed east on Track 1, coming up past the parked train, which is very unusual. Track 1 is almost entirely westbound, while Track 2 is almost always eastbound. It was also frequently hitting the horn, which I have to guess is so that if there's any brakemen working around the parked train, they are alerted that a train is passing by on an adjacent track and don't step out in front of it.
Okay, we've got two P42DCs on the lead, so it's not an Empire Service train (those use the dual-mode P32AC-DMs, and they're shorter, so they only have one locomotive) and an Amfleet car.
Hey, wait a minute, that's a new Acela cab car!
Yep, one of the new Avelia Liberty trainsets on a special eastbound move, likely headed down to the Corridor for testing. These are expected to enter service next year, and are based on the French AGV Pegase. I'd seen photos of one being towed over the WNY&P behind two of their 4-axle Alcos, but was not planning on catching one here.
I had decided to use my new MR2 Spyder to chase the train, so I took a photo of it with the CSX freight as a backdrop.
The Adirondack train was departing Utica at 6:30, but at around 6:20, the CSX freight was still there blocking my view. Finally they started rolling out, and like I said earlier, I think they only had one or two locomotives on-line. So they're absolutely crawling getting moving, and they had one hell of a long train behind them. There was a cool old Wisconsin Central boxcar that I missed getting a photo of, but I did snap this ATSF hopper car.
Fortunately, the CSX freight got out of the way just in time, and then Adirondack Railroad M420W #3573 came ambling out of the yard with a mix of passenger cars. I hope this thing gets painted sometime in the near future (they published a rendering of it in the new grey, green and yellow livery that #2400 wears even before they bought the #2400) because it is not a particularly photogenic machine.
The chase ended up being kind of a bust. This late in the summer, but 6:30, the light is dwindling fairly fast, and a lot of locations along the line are pretty shaded in by trees to begin with. I stopped at two locations, deemed the lighting to be really bad, hoofed it to Wood Road and caught it there, with the #3573 coughing up some smoke.
I tried to catch it again at Sand Road, by which point it was already too dark, and I got there too late, after getting held up trying to get across Route 12. So I turned and headed back home. But I did learn that the MR2 Spyder makes quite a chase vehicle. The ExtremeContactSport02s on it are insane on even so-so pavement, and the stock suspension is compliant enough to make it easy to haul ass on back roads (the Miata, with it's 800lb front springs and 500lb rear springs would send me to a chiropractor)
Photos taken by Mark Klingle of that Avelia Liberty set being moved over the WNY&P's ex-Erie trackage from Hornell to Erie.
There are a couple of the Avelia Liberty sets sitting in the yard at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. They really do have a European look to them.
The Delaware & Ulster has announced that they will not be running trains this year, and are hoping that next year they may resume service. The Delaware & Ulster, which is based out of Arkville, NY and runs over the old Ulster & Delaware (taken over by the New York Central in 1932 and billed as "The Only All-Rail Route to the Catskill Mountains"), has not operated a train since 2019. The pandemic, and the state of New York's measures during that time, obviously closed them down, and during the downtime they decided to launch an aggressive track rehabilitation program, as well as do some maintenance on their rolling stock. They are most focused on the five-mile segment from Arkville to Halcottsville, since they say that those tracks have never been rebuilt and they are dealing with deferred maintenance issues that have been ongoing for 100 years. Unfortunately, rising costs have forced them to stretch the work out, and while they were hoping to be able to run fall foliage trains this year, they said it's not going to happen. As Todd Pascarella, the executive director of Catskill Revitalization Corporation, which operates the railroad said "We just cannot start running trains until this track can provide a reliably enjoyable experience for riders." I've never gotten down to see this operation, so hopefully they get it running next year.
The motive power on the Delaware & Ulster is pretty interesting. Their main power is ex-D&H RS-36 #5017, which was the very last active Alco on the D&H. It was on the property even after the 1991 sale of the D&H to Canadian Pacific, finally being sold in 1994, when the D&U purchased it.
Their other locomotive is NYO&W EMD NW2 #116, possibly the only surviving NYO&W NW2 at this point. There's three preserved NYO&W 44-tonners, and a couple NW2s were kicking around at various points, all at insular industrial railroads where they were hard to get to, but most of them, while not confirmed scrapped, have not been spotted in a while. With all the FTs and F3s long gone, this is one of just four confirmed preserved NYO&W locomotives.
Ironically the open window coaches that they use, while painted for New York Central, in keeping with the heritage of the line, are actually old PRR MP54s
In addition to the MP54 open window coaches and two converted flat cars, the D&U also has a neat 5-car set of Budd stainless steel coaches that they collected from a bunch of sources. They are round-end observation car NYC #61, built 1948, tavern-lounge Minneapolis & St. Louis #52, built 1948, dining car ACL #5936, built 1950, Vista Dome Missouri Pacific #891, built 1948, and ATSF baggage car converted to generator car, number and date unknown.
D&H #5017 working the East Binghamton Yard in Conklin, NY in March of 1993, two years after the CP buyout. The #5017 was the last operating Alco on the D&H after the C628s had been sold off in '78 as part of the big 6-axle purge, the C420s had been sold off in '87 by Guilford, the rebuilt RS-3us had been sold or retired in 1988, the old RS-11s had all been either sold off or parked throughout the years, and the other RS-36s had either been scrapped in 1988 or sold off since.
The #5017 switching cars at Binghamton in 1989, during the NYS&W era.
Moving D&H and Maine Central "wide vision" cabooses around East Binghamton Yard in 1985. While the RS-36s were used as road power early in their life, by the '80s, the #5017 was largely just the East Binghamton Yard switcher.
D&H #5017 at Ville St. Pierre, Quebec, Canada, en route to Canadian Pacific's St. Luc yard from Rouses Point, NY over the Napierville Junction Railway. The Napierville Junction was the D&H's subsidiary that operated their trackage in Canada, and was also headquartered in Canada, as a way to get around Canadian laws that were designed to prevent foreign investment. That Napierville Junction also operated all local traffic using MLW-built RS-2s, again to work around laws requiring Canadian railroads to buy Canadian-built locomotives. Clearly those two RS-2s came up on lame on this day in February of 1969, because RS-36 #5017 and a leased CPR RS-2 are working the transfer run.
The #5017, an RS-3u, and another 50xx-series Alco, could be an RS-11 or an RS-36, drift downgrade at Tunnel, NY. They were running as a helper set up over Belden Hill
Surprisingly there are still three ex-D&H RS-36s kicking around, all in D&H paint. There weren't many RS-36s built to begin with, with Alco only managing to sell forty of them and D&H being the biggest buyer with just 12 units.
The #5015, which was painted in a unique livery in 1972 as an attempt to reduce time and cost of painting units, is now owned by Southern New England Railroad, which is a motive power leaser in New England. They repainted it back into the experimental yellow and blue livery, but with the Batten Kill Railroad name, where it is currently on lease, in the D&RGW speed lettering, instead of the blocky D&H lettering that was used. This actually puts it in line with the original concept, since the D&H had wanted to use speed lettering, but had decided that block print was easier to apply.
There's the aforementioned #5017 at Delaware & Ulster Railroad.
The third is #5019, which at last report was stored out of service in North Walpole, VT on the Green Mountain Railroad. It had been owned by the Upper Hudson Railroad when they had been running the old D&H Adirondack Branch, then was sold to Iowa Pacific Holdings when they took over the line as Saratoga & North Creek, until they went bankrupt in 2018 and were forced off the line. From what I understand, the #5019 has a radiator that leaks like a sieve and the wheels need replacing or re-profiling.
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