The old New York Central depot at Forestport. I think this was a restaurant at one point, but it's a private residence these days. Cool structure, but starting to look a little delapidated these days.
The #3573 and #1835 approaching. I discovered at this point that while the #3573 hazed a little bit of smoke on throttle up, the #1835 really huffed smoke when they notched it up.
And pounding by the old depot.
Arriving at the old New York Central depot in Thendara.
The power was run around their train to head south after a 4.5 hour layover, during which the Adirondack shuttles passengers into touristy Old Forge, or they can ride railbikes north of Thendara. They could also theoretically ride the Otter Lake Explorer, which is the run south to Otter Lake and back to Thendara, but they just came through Otter Lake and will be heading south through Otter Lake again in the evening, so there's really no reason to travel the same segment four times in one day. When the washouts are fixed north of Thendara, they can also ride a short trip north to Big Moose, or stay on the train and ride it all the way to Tupper Lake.
The dome car that they have is ex-Union Pacific, and was used on the City of Portland, and just barely visible to the far right on the farther track is Alco C424 #2400, which was handling the Otter Lake Explorer runs at 12:30 and 2:30.
That Thendara/Old Forge depot is a seriously impressive old building. I believe this dates back to when the line was originally the Mohawk & Malone Railroad and was built in 1913.
I admittedly have never ridden the Adirondack Railroad where it runs in the Adirondacks. The sole time that I rode was January of '22, and that was from Utica to Remsen. You can see that the Adirondack region is all mountains, swamps, rivers, and lakes. There's very little dry land, and what dry land there is is not flat land. And very little civilization of any kind. On the roughly 22 mile round trip, we didn't cross a single grade crossing for a paved road. There were a couple of dirt crossings back into camps, but that was it. And let me tell you, on that 22 mile round trip, along a pretty curvy section of track (vertically and horizontally) they absolutely fly. They had only #2400 hustling our five car train right along.
I then drove back in to where the McKeever station is (the entire rest of the settlement of McKeever is long gone, returned to nature) and caught #2400 climbing the grade from where the line crosses the Moose River up to Otter Lake. This was the 2:30pm Otter Lake Explorer.
After a long wait fending off hordes of black flies, the #1835 and #3573 came racing south, with the #1835 again belching clouds of smoke.
I intended to chase them all the way south, since I was headed that way already. My plan was to catch them drifting south past Remsen Depot, but I got into Remsen and got snarled up in traffic from Remsen BarnFest, which caused me to not only miss them heading by Remsen, but also made it so I was hopelessly behind for the rest of the run.
Just saw this announcement, regarding FRA grants for rail improvements:
New York - Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Systemwide Tier 3 Clean Locomotive Acquisition
Project (Up to $12,600,000) Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad Corp.
The proposed project involves final design and construction activities to rehabilitate six (6) Tier 0 locomotives to meet Tier 3 Environmental Protection Agency standards. The project aligns with the selection criteria by improving system and service performance as it will help provide substantial operational savings (potential 40 percent to 65 percent reduction in fuel consumption) and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby imparting benefits to the rural New York population communities and rail users that the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad serves. The Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad Corp. is providing a 30 percent non-Federal match. This project qualifies for the statutory set-aside for projects in Rural Areas."
The LA&L still uses an entirely Alco roster, and it sounds like a bunch of them are either about to be retired or bastardized beyond recognition. Especially grim, considering subsidiary Western New York & Pennsylvania just unloaded all of their big 6-axle Alcos as well.
Also included in there was this bit
"California - California Napa Valley Railroad Locomotive Emissions Improvement Project
(Up To $2,058,750)
Napa Valley Railroad
The proposed project involves final design and construction activities to replace seven (7) highly polluting locomotives with three (3) near-zero-emission locomotives. The project aligns with the selection criteria by enhancing competitiveness, service performance and ability to meet existing and anticipated demand as it will allow Napa Valley Railroad to transport its passengers more efficiently with lowered fuel consumption, decrease the surrounding community’s exposure to harmful emissions, and it may aid with climate change mitigation. The Napa Valley Railroad and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District will contribute funds totaling a 75 percent non-Federal match. This project qualifies for the statutory set-aside for projects in Rural Areas."
Napa Valley Railroad is using a fleet of old Alco/MLW FPA-4s, and it sounds like those are about to bite the dust. Especially because, if it's like the EPA deal with G&W, those Alcos will have to be rendered inoperable and cannot be returned to service, even if they're sold off or donated to a museum.
I guess I need to get out to the Lakeville, Avon & Livonia sometime before whatever that grant is for happens. The problem is, it's hard to figure out when some shortlines run. Go stand by a Class I mainline, and you're guaranteed to see trains go by. Other shortlines run pretty regularly. Like how MA&N has a set schedule of Utica-Rome on Monday and Wednesday and Utica-Boonville on Tuesday and Thursday, with yard work on Friday, or how the NYS&W dispatches UT-1 at 9:30am Monday thru Friday. Reading & Northern even publishes their own schedule on social media and invites people to come out and catch the North Reading Fast Freight or the sand trains to Tunkhannock. Typically what helps with those is a dedicated fanbase who have established kind of an online guide.
But then you get to some shortlines and there's no real guide or not enough of a fanbase, and they run pretty erratically. Like, from what I've heard, Batten Kill Railroad is extremely erratic, only firing up their locomotives when CP drops off cars at the interchange. One guy was saying that basically the BKRR doesn't even know when they are running until the morning off, and he had made eight attempts to catch it running and had only been successful once. That's not bad when it's a ten-fifteen minute drive to the property, but when you're driving 2 hours, like I would have to to go to the LA&L, you'd prefer a little more certainty.
Sometimes you can call the railroad office and they'll tell you what's running and where, but not always. The WNY&P used to be really good about you could show up, swing by the office and they'd tell you what their schedule was for the day. I've heard they are not nearly as friendly anymore. A guy I was chasing the NY&LE with was saying he'd swung by the WNY&P facilities at Olean just to photograph stuff in the yard, and he had a long enough lense that he was standing on public property shooting into the yard, and an employee came out screaming and yelling at him that he was going to call the cops on him.
I really hope that none of the LA&L/WNY&P Alco C430s are on the chopping block for this green rebuild procedure, considering how rare they are. Alco only built 16 of them and LA&L ended up with four of them, 2 ex-NYS&W/exx-CR/exxx-PC/exxxx-NYC and 2 ex-Morristown & Erie/exx-CR/exxx-PC/exxxx-NYC. NYS&W at one point had had five of them, but one suffered an engine failure not long after being placed in service and sat around waiting for engine repairs that never happened, and two were wrecked in similar but separate incidents within a week of each other and were scrapped.
I'm curious how much work LA&L had to do on the ex-NYS&W C430s when they received them, since they were, by firsthand accounts, absolute junk when NYS&W was running them. The five they had had been some of the last diesels delivered to New York Central, then were abused and neglected all through the Penn Central era, and then in the early Conrail era, Conrail needed all the motive power they could get but didn't envision a long-term future for Alcos, so they ran them into the ground. NYS&W grabbed them up, because they needed motive power to handle the chunks of the old DL&W that they were taking over, and they were pretty unloved. Early on, they were the biggest and newest power on the Suzie-Q, but as soon as the ex-Burlington Northern SD45s started showing up, NYS&W bumped the C430s off to switching, local runs, and backup power because they weren't terribly reliable. According to an employee they faced issues with cracked heads, low compression cylinders, the air starters, low voltage control grounds, high voltage grounds, high voltage contactor failures, engine oil leaks, control air issue, faulty blue cards in the electrical locker, and random untraceable shut downs. Walter Rich, CEO of Delaware-Otsego Corp., wanted to put them back in service on a low budget and the CMO, Dave Powell, accommodated to a point, keeping the majority of the money focused towards the SD45 fleet.
All five of the Susquehanna's C430s cough smoke at Deposit, NY as the crew hits the train hard to get some speed up before Gulf Summit, which was a helper district on the Erie during the steam days.
The three Alco C430 demonstrator units being tested on the New York Central at Angola, NY in 1967. They tested only on the D&H, Seaboard Coast Line, and the New York Central. New York Central had been looking at 3000hp 4-axle power for the old Boston & Albany line and tested the GP40, the U30B and the C430 on the dormant Adirondack Division near Big Moose, since it had the closest track profile, and came away rather unimpressed with the C430, due to issues with the wheelslip system and the sanders not working. After their purchase of the RS-32s in 1961, New York Central had decided to go strictly with EMD and GE power but caved to peer pressure from PRR (the Penn Central merger was in the preliminary stages) to follow their practice and give Alco a small part of their business. Compared to the 105 GP40s and 58 U30Bs, New York Central settled for just 10 C430s. Penn Central did actually plan to place an order for another 15 C430s, and an unknown amount of C636s, in 1969, but by that point Studebaker-Worthington had stripped Alco of all the operating capital it needed to purchase construction materials and various components, and so Alco closed the doors instead. The trio of demonstrator units were actually bought at firesale prices by Seaboard Coast Line after Alco closed their doors and were relatively unloved there. When L&N found itself in a power shortage, SCL "helped" by lending the C430s and their other late 251-powered Alcos, C628s and C630s, out to the L&N and apparently the L&N was not so pleased with the "assistance".
Of the 16 C430s that were built, there were only two that the railroad actually ordered. As mentioned above, NYC bought theirs due to peer pressure from PRR and SCL just bought the demonstrators after Alco got out of the business. Green Bay & Western ended up with a single C430, the last one constructed and the only one without dynamic brakes, simply because they wanted another C424/C425 and by that time Alco had superceded the model with the C430. But Reading actually went out and ordered two, #5211 and #5212, as part of their first order of seven C630s. Reading's two were also the only C430s delivered with standard trucks, instead of the new Alco Hi-Adhesion trucks they were promoting, since Reading preferred the interchangeability with the C424s that they already owned. The railroad was never particularly pleased with the C430s, and although the early "publicity" photos showed them hauling freight as a pair, in actual practice they were paired with other units to ensure the train wouldn't be left stranded. While Reading would eventually order another batch of C630s, they determined the C430s to not be an upgrade over the C424s, and decided not to order anymore C430s. Eventually their recurring mechanical issues and the downturn in traffic in the 1970s sealed their fate, and they were stored out of service (with many of the other Alco units) at Reading in 1975. They did get a brief reprieve when Conrail took over and were operated at least as late as 1982, even receiving Conrail Quality Blue paint, before being officially retired and scrapped.
C430 demonstrator #430-2, showing off the odd Alco Hi-Adhesion truck with the big coil springs off the side, which Alco promoted heavily on the C430, C630 and C636. The design was supposed to reduce weight transfer fore and aft, which caused loss of traction, but according to those who were familiar with the design, they only thing it did was make them ride really damn rough.
The C430 had originally begun life marketed as the C428, which was to have been a 2,750-horsepower, four-axle locomotive, powered by the same engine as the C628. Due to the complexity of DC generators at this level of power, they decided to use an AC generator feeding DC traction motors, and between the horsepower freed up by the AC generator and the trend toward 3000hp 4-axle units from the competition, the C430 was developed instead.
While the GP40 was a rousing success and the GE U30B sold fairly well, the C430 was an outright bomb. Part of it was that previous Alco products had worn out Alco's welcome on a lot of railroads, and Alco's customer service, or lack thereof, was also doing them no favors. D&H said that when they made the jump to GEs, it wasn't that GE built a better locomotive, but that GE had better customer service and technical support, and Alco was an on-line customer of D&H's!
The C430 also just wasn't a particularly good locomotive. The AC/DC power transmission system was reportedly quite fiddly, and it required railroads to stock a new supply of parts. This was a big complaint of GB&W's; it had an entirely different electrical system than all the other Alcos on their roster, and so it was mostly a roundhouse queen. The Alco Hi-Ad trucks also required stocking another set of parts, and their traction advantage wasn't easily discerned, but the poor ride quality was. And finally, the 3000hp 16-251 prime mover, used on both the C630 and C430, had serious reliability issues, especially concerning pistons. Alco tried developing an all-aluminum piston for the 3000hp variant, but immediately started having pistons disintegrate fairly early in their life. Alco devised a new piston with a steel crown that fixed the issue, but when the supplier couldn't keep up and Alco was staring down the barrel of delivery date requirement, they shipped units with faulty aluminum pistons. Alco was repairing or replacing the engines, but their parts supply and customer service was spotty, and that was considerable downtime on brand new engines for an issue that Alco had supposedly "fixed."
Reportedly Green Bay & Western was considering ordering ordering another C430 late in 1969, maybe with the hopes that if they got a couple on the roster it would familiarize the crew with them better or simply because the C430 was all that Alco was offering for 4-axle power at the time. By the time they placed the order, Alco was kaput, and the #315 remained an orphan. The GB&W instead bought a used RS-27 that C&NW had traded towards C425s, ultimately ending up with three of the C&NW's four RS-27s. The #315 ran into the early '80s, when an engine failure knocked it out of service, and the GB&W donated it to the National Railway Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin some time afterwards.
Rock Island actually looked at buying ten C430s circa 1967, which is a bit surprising since the last Alcos purchased by The Rock, were some Alco RS-3s in the 1950s. They were ready to pull the trigger, but at the time, Union Pacific and Rock Island were pursuing a merger, and Union Pacific wanted nothing to do with the C430s, which would end up on UP's roster if the merger went through. UP caught wind of the order of C430s, slapped Rock Island across the back of the head, and ordered a batch of GP40s that they eased to Rock Island instead. Rock Island did somehow slip an order of those odd C415s past UP though. The UP/RI merger proceedings would stretch from 1965 to 1975, getting increasingly convoluted as the ICC tried to use it as an anvil to reshape the west, and it would eventually be approved, but UP would cancel the merger on account of Rock Island's deteriorating condition.
Central Railroad of New Jersey also almost ordered some C430s, which would have been called C430Ps, since they were intended for commuter passenger usage. CNJ was relying on a bunch of aging power for commuter runs, like GP7s and H-24-66s, and needed some newer motive power. CNJ determined that they needed 3000hp and four-axles, and Alco pitched the idea of a passenger geared C430, similar to the passenger C420s that Long Island Rail Road had. The problem was that NJDOT had an agreement with the B&O, who controlled the Reading who controlled the CNJ, that the B&O would underwrite the purchase and would take the locos off the state's hands if the CNJ's commuter service went bust. The B&O insisted that locos purchased be compatible with its existing fleet, hence, they were painted blue instead of green, had easy to overpaint CNJ lettering, were numbered as part of the B&O roster. But, the B&O hadn't bought a non-EMD unit since Baldwin went belly up, and didn't want to get stuck with any oddball locomotives, so they forced CNJ to go to EMD instead, and CNJ ended up with the EMD GP40Ps instead. Now, probably the better choice, since the GP40Ps are still running on NJ Transit, and likely the Alcos would have been long gone.
NJ Transit actually has repainted some of the ex-CNJ GP40Ps into heritage liveries in recent years to get ready for their 40th anniversary this weekend. The #4101 wears the NJ DOT "bluebird" dark blue/silver/red livery, while the #4109 wears the original B&O-mandated CNJ livery. NJ Transit really went all-out with the makeovers, including having new cab numberboards built to the original design, since the locomotives had been modified heavily and repeatedly during their decades of service. The #4109 had also been relegated to MoW and switching service previously, but after the repaint, NJ Transit also reinstalled a HEP generator so that it could be used in revenue service again
Marc Glucksman actually caught NJT #4101, as well as GP40P #4102, being used to move the United Railroad Historical Society of New Jersey's cosmetically restored NJDOT/Erie-Lackawanna U34CH #3372 and ex-NYC tavern lounge car #43 to NJT's Meadows Maintenance Complex this week. The #3372 will be on display at this weekend's 40th anniversary celebration, since it isn't operational yet, and the #43 will be used on NJT's special 40th anniversary excursion this weekend.
He also caught NJT GP40P #4108 moving in two of Juniata Terminal's PRR-painted passenger cars and their ex-PRR E8 #5711, also headed to Meadows Maintenance Facility for this weekend's big shindig. The passenger cars will be used on this weekend's excursion as well for VIP sitting, while the #5711 will be on display at Meadows. The #5711, and Bennett Levin's other E8 #5809, used to run excursions with his passenger cars over NJT, SEPTA, and NS for quite a few years, but were parked in recent years due to lack of PTC and general unfriendliness from Class Is
The URHS of NJ just unveiled the #3372 last weekend during their open house at the facilities in Boonton Yard. NJT even loaned them GP40P #4101 for the occasion.
Its pretty amazing how nice the #3372 looks, because not that long ago it was pretty rough. It was retired by NJT in 1994 and then was donated to URHS of NJ in 2000. URHS of NJ lacked any sort of facilities at the time and had their collection scattered all over, so they had the #3372 stashed away at New York & Greenwood Lake's Passaic yard. The NY&GL went defunct in 2009, and the #3372 was pretty much trapped there, sitting outside in the elements, and it wasn't until 2014 that URHS of NJ was absle to raise the funds for Morristown & Erie to clear the tracks between Passaic and Garfield and then move it the 60 miles over the M&E, Norfolk Southern, and NJTransit to the facilities URHS had acquired in Boonton.
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