Grassroots Railroad Sports?

"New" power for the Adirondack Railroad is finally on the way. Ex-Great Northern GP9 #1267 had been running down on New York & Greenwood Lake, but the NY&GL, which had had some longstanding financial troubles, closed down in 2012 after they lost their last customer. The #1267 had been stored at Passaic for a number of years, until the ex-NY&GL equipment began to be auctioned off, and the #1267 was scooped up by a volunteer at the Adirondack Railroad for use on the line. It, along with some of the other NY&GL equipment, were stored at the Delaware, Lackawaxen & Stourbridge, and the #1267 has been being prepared for the move by New York, Susquehann & Western to Syracuse and then east to Utica by CSX. I did see where he was griping that he wished the NYS&W Utica Branch tracks were still in service below Sangerfield (they're there, but they haven't seen a train in years) because then he could move it all the way to Utica by the Susquehanna. Well, the #1267 was spotted headed east on CSX at DestiNY USA mall in Syracuse this weekend. 

I don't expect to see the #1267 running to Thendara in the near future. From what I understand, the #1267 and other equipment there were vandalized pretty badly. I know there was an ex-Northern Pacific GP9 that the new owners have said will not operate again because it has simply had too much stolen off of it.

The #1267 and sister #1268 at the NY&GL in happier days. The #1268 is the ex-Northern Pacific unit that has basically been reduced to a static display piece due to vandalism and theft.

This photo popped up on Facebook today.

Those are New York & Lake Erie reporting marks. And the machine is one of the ex-Canadian National/Quebec Cartier Mining/NYS&W/Western New York & Pennsylvania MLW M636s, the #636 specifically. WNY&P put those in storage a few years ago, replacing them with ex-CSX GE AC6000CWs (downrated to 4400hp spec), and has been selling them off recently, with a bunch of them going to Genesee Valley Transportation.

But apparently, NY&LE is grabbing one up as well. Kind of an odd choice since, as far as I know, NY&LE no longer has any freight customers and is just a tourist line, running two MLW FPAs and an Alco S-1. An M636 seems like overkill for the three or four car excursions that they run fairly intermittently, and I know that those M636s were pretty tired when NYS&W had them. I'm not sure how much work, if any, that WNY&P did to them, but the fact that they didn't even repaint them makes me think there wasn't a ton done to them. Also, the NY&LE already has a bunch of equipment sitting around collecting rust, like a neat ex-N&W high hood C425 that used to run and is just in need of wheel work. I always cringe when operations get hung up on just acquiring more and more toys while neglecting what they have. I did hear some concerning discussion regarding how the NY&LE is run these days from one of the conductors at Arcade & Attica this summer (he had been working for NY&LE for quite a while had had left over the change in management) so perhaps it's not too surprising.

An M636 would look pretty good in the NY&LE paint scheme though.

One of the M636s when NYS&W had one. This was a bizarre era for the NYS&W roster, with M636s, ex-SP SD40T-2 "Tunnel Motors", and ex-BN F45s all simultaneously on the roster. The M636s were pretty reviled by crews and were nicknamed "Puke Monsters" over their propensity to vomit engine oil everywhere. The SD40T-2s has a weird issue where those low-mounted radiators, which worked wonders for preventing overheating in long tunnels, would suck up fallen leaves along the trackside in a NJ/NY/PA fall and clog up the screens and cause them to overheat.

On top of the M636s, the NYS&W was also leasing two of the C636 demonstrators from Rail Road Power Leasing (RRPX), which was owned by Morristown & Erie Railroad President Wes Weiss. After NYS&W/Delaware-Otsego Corp. president Walter Rich's death, the NYS&W unloaded a lot of their more unusual power, and the two C636s, #77  and #78, were returned to RRPX and stored on the Bath & Hammondsport at Cohocton, NY, only to be rather suddenly scrapped in 2015 without any advance notice for anyone that may have wished to save them. This reduced the number of existing C636s to just one. Especially wild was that these C636 demonstrators ended up in the Morrison-Knudsen leasing fleet during the '70s, and were at one point shipped over to Australia and ran there for a number of years, before coming back to the US and being sold to Quebec Cartier Mining.

The tale of the last surviving C636 is a particularly bizarre one. Pennsylvania Railroad, who was very much of the mentality of buying a little something from everyone until the very end, placed an order for 15 Alco C636s in late 1967. By the time they were constructed and delivered though, Pennsylvania Railroad had merged with New York Central, so they were delivered as Penn Central #6330 through #6344. The unit in question was #6342, which would make it the 13th unit in the order, and I guess this was lucky #13.

The #6342 and 11 of her sisters (Class leader #6330 was destroyed in a horrible wreck in Leetonia, Ohio in July of '75) were conveyed to Conrail on April 1st, 1976. The big 6-axle Alcos, running the spectrum of C628s and C630s and C636s, were in pretty rough shape from neglect by previous owners and they were orphans for almost a decade, but they were available horsepower, so Conrail took them and decided to run them until they dropped dead or could be replaced with new power. The #6342 became the #6792 on Conrail, and actually received Conrail Quality Blue paint, which couldn't be said of a lot of the other Conrail-owned Centuries. It, and most of the other 6-axle Alcos, were retired by 1980-1982. Unlike the rest of the C636s and C628s and most of the C630s, the #6792 avoided the torch and was sold to Delta Bulk Terminal in Stockton, California. I'm guessing that Delta Bulk Terminal bought it because it had plenty of horsepower and it was available for the right price: cheap. It had the leading edge of the nose painted white, was renumbered to #1001 and was relettered for Delta Bulk Terminal and toiled in relative obscurity there for almost two decades, switching coal cars loaded with coal from Utah. Later in life the Conrail lettering and "broken wheel" logo even began to bleed back through, giving it a case of identity crisis.

Genesee Valley Transportation eventually purchased an ex-UP C30-7, #474, and a bunch of spare parts and offered that in trade for the #1001. Delta Bulk Terminal bit at the office, and GVT shipped the C636 down to Pennsylvania for use on the Delaware-Lackawanna, where it briefly rattled around in flaking blue and white, and then was renumbered to #3642 following GVT numbering system (first two digits are horsepower, last two digits are the last two digits of it's original number) and then eventually gave it the GVT white, gray, yellow and red livery. When the #77 and #78 at Cohocton were scrapped in 2015, the #3642 became the last C636 in existence, and while it's rare, it still earns it's keep.

One of the C636 demonstrators at Chicago, Illinois. The C636 demos were outshopped in November 1968, almost a full year after the model's introduction, and by that time, the industry basically knew Alco was all but out of the locomotive business. They pulled the pin in January of 1969. The C636s had done some testing on the D&H, but the D&H had already decided to jump ship from Alco to General Electric and EMD, a blow that really had to have rattled those at Alco, since the Alco plant at Schenectady was an on-line customer of the D&H and the D&H had been an Alco stronghold even in the steam days. They did a quick tour on the Penn Central, and garnered an order from the PRR guard, and then went west to Chicago where the Santa Fe picked them up. Santa Fe was an odd choice to host them, since ATSF hadn't bought an Alco product since the fifty RSD-15s they had purchased in 1959. But ATSF had liked the pulling power of the RSD-15s, although they griped that they needed a lot of work to get right out of the box and the cost per mile was higher than the comparable EMD SD24.  There were just four test runs with the units over Santa Fe rails between December 1968 and January 1969, and three of them ended in road failures, due to issues with the traction motor blower failing, which would cause the prime mover to likewise shutdown.  One complete trip out of four attempts was considered "pretty much trouble free" to an Alco veteran by that date, but it wasn't good enough for Santa Fe.  Santa Fe repaired the demos at Barstow and turned them over to SP at Los Angeles. SP, who had long tossed Alco cursory orders to keep EMD honest, was so disgusted over piston failures on their C630s that they immediately gave them the boot and didn't even bother testing them. They then went to Western Pacific, an odd choice since the WP hadn't purchased any Alcos other than S-1, S-2 and S-4 switchers andespecially odd because Alco was out of business that point, but Western Pacific came away unimpressed. Despite Alco no longer constructing new locomotives, they continued their tour, going to Spokane, Portland & Seattle, who already owned ten C636s, where they briefly toured. Ironically, despite WP's dislike of the C636s, they spent a lot of time dealing with them, since SP&S would assign them to motive power pools and send them over WP rails. Their tour of duty done, the three were then returned to Schenectady and sold off to Morrison-Knudsen.

In reply to NickD :

I have vague memories of Conrail Alcos passing through Danville, IL prior to abandonment of the line. 

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, the big stuff mostly hung out on the west end of the line, based primarily out of Mingo Junction. NS actually still owns the Danville Secondary, but it hasn't seen a train in decades. Last I heard, they were using it as leverage against Canadian National; whenever CN would try to raise the trackage rights over the IC for NS grain trains, NS would threaten to put the Danville Secondary back in service and move everything over that.

A crusty ex-PC C636 and a shiny blue SD45 rest in the decrepit roundhouse at Mingo Junction. The SD45s weren't much longer lived than the big Alcos, with Conrail not caring for the reliability woes of the big V20 645, or it's thirst for fuels.

A sad-looking ex-Reading C630 sits at Mingo Junction, surrounded my much nicer EMDs.

A Conrail freight sits stalled near New Brighton, PA on the ex-PRR main line to Fort Wayne, led by an ex-PRR/Penn Central C628. Judging by the fact that the hood doors are open and a crew member is poking around inside, the Lehigh Valley C628 two units back has likely died and is the source of the stall.

Conrail EMD GP40-2 #3283 waits in the hole with an eastbound manifest, while an eastbound Trailvan, lead by ex-PRR/Penn Central Alco C425 #2419 and two ex-Penn Central EMD GP40s, pass by at Banks Tower, near Marysville, Pennsylvania, on February 5th, 1978. Definitely an odd photo, with newer power on the regular manifest and an old Alco leading a TrailVan, which were about the hottest things on Conrail tracks. The GP40-2s were the darlings of TrailVan service since Conrail basically continued the New York Central’s approach of using four-axle locos with passenger-style gearing in piggyback service, likely because their head of operations, Dick Hasselman, was a Central alumni.

Ex-PRR Alco C425s move a string of fresh Conrail blue cabooses in the old E-L Brier Hill Yard at Youngstown, Ohio.

Curious.  Are these pictures fairly current?  or aged a bit?  (years back)

In reply to Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) :

They're all circa 1976-1981. Conrail had most of the Alcos parked by '78 and all were pretty much stricken from the roster in '81

NickD said:

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, the big stuff mostly hung out on the west end of the line, based primarily out of Mingo Junction. NS actually still owns the Danville Secondary, but it hasn't seen a train in decades. Last I heard, they were using it as leverage against Canadian National; whenever CN would try to raise the trackage rights over the IC for NS grain trains, NS would threaten to put the Danville Secondary back in service and move everything over that.

That's interesting. I'm presuming the Danville Secondary is the line heading south out of town? I wasn't sure who's that was now. Granted, I haven't seen it in about 8-years, but it always looked well maintained despite not ever seeing a train on it. 

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

NickD said:

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, the big stuff mostly hung out on the west end of the line, based primarily out of Mingo Junction. NS actually still owns the Danville Secondary, but it hasn't seen a train in decades. Last I heard, they were using it as leverage against Canadian National; whenever CN would try to raise the trackage rights over the IC for NS grain trains, NS would threaten to put the Danville Secondary back in service and move everything over that.

That's interesting. I'm presuming the Danville Secondary is the line heading south out of town? I wasn't sure who's that was now. Granted, I haven't seen it in about 8-years, but it always looked well maintained despite not ever seeing a train on it. 

This would have been the Cairo Division of the Cleveland, Cincinatti, Chicago & St. Louis (usually called "The Big Four"), which was part of New York Central Systems. It ran north-south from Indiana Harbor down to Evansville with a leg off to Cairo just north of Evansville near Mount Carmel, and it crossed the Chicago Division of the Big Four at Sheff, the Kankakee Belt Line (another NYC subsidary) at Schneider, the Peoria & Eastern Division (which ran west-southwest from Peoria to Indianapolis) of the Big Four at Danville,  and the St. Louis Division (Indianapolis to St. Louis) of the Big Four at Paris. The line south of Schneider down to Danville was embargoed in 1994. The rails are still there but a lot of the crossings have been paved over, and the line was blocked south of Morroco when the county filled in the original, two-lane Highway 41 over pass.

In reply to NickD :

Ok, I think we're talking about the same thing? 

In other train news, a train manufacturer wrote code into their control units which would lock trains up after being serviced at third party repair shops.




Highlights:

The computer code analysis detected a condition that forced a failure that sounded like this:

• if the day is greater or equal to 21 and-
• if the month is greater or equal to 11 and
• if the year is bigger or equal to 2021

Then report a compressor failure.

The controller actually contained GPS coordinates to contain the behaviour to third party workshops.

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

My, how very John Deere of them

Today kicks off a 3 day tour of PA steam holiday trains. Kicking off at Strasburg Railroad, and, my, what a change of weather. Left New York and it was 30s and snowing, got to Strasburg and it's in the 50s and sunny, albeit windy. I was hoping #475 would not be on duty, because I've seen the #475 quite a bit this year, and I've never seen #89 and #90 is due for an overhaul beginning of next year. Well, #89 still eludes me, but checking Virtual Railfan's camera shows #90 on duty

So, while driving by the east end of the line, I saw that The Pacific Lumber Co./Sugar Pine Lumber 2-8-2T #37, sans it's saddletank, was loaded aboard a drop-center tractor trailer and ready for it's move to Sugarcreek, Ohio to it's new owner; Age of Steam Roundhouse.