Grassroots Railroad Sports?

That 1980s restoration was a real debacle. PRR had run their steam hard, and with minimum maintenance, from about '52 on, so the #1361 was pretty tired when it was retired in '56. They then put it on a section of panel track up to Horseshoe Curve without a roof over it's head or any protection of any kind. In '85, Pennsylvania state assemblyman Richard Geist came up with the idea to restore the #1361 to operation, and Conrail was willing to help out and give it a place to run. It was moved off the piece of panel track and swapped out with an ex-PRR Geep that Conrail restored to Pennsy appearance and donated, and then moved down to the same Altoona shops that built and serviced it during it's life.

This was the tail end of the era where a lot of operational "restorations" were basically just "throw water in the boiler and make sure it doesn't leak". The #1361 was reportedly in pretty rough shape, running gear was pretty shot from the last couple years of operation, the one steam chest had a crack in it, and the years of storage hadn't been kind to it. It wasn't quite the "just throw some paint on it" restoration of some stuff from a decade or two earlier, but there was supposedly a lot of stuff not addressed. I also heard that it started out with a pretty good crew but there was one character who acted like he knew everything and really didn't know anything and slowly ran off a lot of the good crew and replaced them with a bunch of sycophants.

From those who hung around and still knew what they were doing, the #1361 never really ran right from day one. It had a bunch of issues with the engine brakes and the bearings always ran a little hot, but the know-it-all insisted that was normal and they would run cooler once they wore in. Conrail gave them permission to run over what was left of the old Northern Central, which had been severed by Hurricane Agnes and hadn't seen any real traffic by Conrail. The track was in pretty rough shape and they were supposed to be running at 10mph, although they were known to exceed that. The real issues started to transpire after they had a minor derailment on a switch in York, PA that dislodged the grease cake in one of the journal boxes for a drive axle. They rerailed the engine, but no one looked inside the journal and saw that the grease cake was no longer contacting the axle. They ran a few more trips on the Northern Central, but it was fine on the sub-30mph speeds they were running.

Conrail finally let them hit the mainline and while running at track speed it was setting off hotbox detectors left and right. But it finally came to a head when it had the journal box catch fire. Someone decided to use water from the tender to put out the fire, and the cold water caused the overheated axle to crack and that knocked the #1361 out of operation after about a year and a half of running. It was then decided to "do it right" and fully restore it, and Bethlehem Steel (RIP) even made three new drive axles and donated them for the effor in 1989 (and they even got the drive wheels pressed on those axles), but that restoration also turned into a complete debacle that stretched on for 30 years and was never completed, with a lot of work being done willy-nilly and a lot of money being thrown about.

Are you ready for Valentine's Day?

In reply to 914Driver :

I've been out there. That's a neat little operation. Actually rode in the cab of that S-1, which is the old Alco Schenectady plant switcher and has kicked around a lot of different places over the years. When the Adirondack Railroad started up in '92 they leased that for operation, and two founding members bought an ex-L&N EMD SW1, and it ran there for a little while until they got the RS-3, #8223.

That's where friends an I used to run the RailRiders.  Fun while it lasted.

In reply to 914Driver :

I'm currently waiting to see if they run up to Hadley for the maple festival this year. Last year, Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson got special permission to run an excursion north to Hadley specifically to haul people up to Maple In April. If they do that again this year, I'd definitely go.

Yesterday was warm and sunny, and I would have gone and photographed the Adirondack, but they weren't running this weekend. So, I decided, intrigued by my reading of John Taibi's Silver Rails Through The Heart Of The Park, to go try and find as much as I could of the line from Poland to Herkimer. This was built as the Herkimer, Newport & Poland Narrow Gauge Railway in the 1850s, and then was purchased in 1891 by Seward Webb to become a part of his Mohawk & Malone Railroad. He converted this 25 mile segment to standard gauge, rerouted it slightly to eliminate a few of the many crossings of West Canada Creek, and then built north to Remsen through Gravesville, Russia, Trenton Chasm and Prospect, with a short branch east to Hinckley from Prospect. The branch to Hinckley was yanked up in '31,  then in 1942, they removed the line from Prospect Junction south to Poland. This left a 2.8 mile segment from Remsen south east to Prospect Junction, and a 17.3 mile segment from Herkimer northwest to Poland. In 1965, the Remsen-Prospect Junction was removed, the same time that NYC was ending service from Utica to Lake Placid. The old Herkimer-Poland line, which had been renamed to the New York Central Poland Branch when the line to Remsen was severed, was actually active until 1972, seeing somewhat regular freight moves, but when Hurricane Agnes blew out a bridge less than 2 miles out of Herkimer, Penn Central couldn't afford to replace it, and the line was officially abandoned, although it wouldn't be ripped up until 4 years later. Since that line was abandoned later, I figured I'd have better luck finding any remnants of it, than I would the Remsen-Poland segment.

So, starting out on Railroad Street in Poland, we have the original HN&PNGRwy depot, now headquarters of Rommel Fence, LLC. In Taibi's book he mentioned how, for years he had assumed that the Poland depot was long gone, and there were no other survivors on this line, since most of them had just been little shacks and passenger service had ended relatively early. He was told by an Adirondack volunteer that the Poland depot did still exist and he couldn't for the life of him figure out where it was. Well, this is it. It's identity has been all but obliterated by additions. I can't find any photos of it online to hotlink here that show the whole building, but basically the only clues to it's original identity are the two rectangular windows flanking the front door with the vaulted window over the top of the door. That's it. It is otherwise completely unrecognizable. The building was only about as wide as those two windows, maybe a little wider, and the tracks were on the far side of the building.

You can just make out the door, the two windows on either side, and the window above the door. Even the little awning over the door is completely different.

Just south of Poland we have bridge M16, which is a three-span flat deck bridge crossing West Canada Creek. The rail line crossed the creek at a 45 degree angle, while the old state highway crossed at almost a 90 degree angle, and so the rail line originally passed under the highway bridge's southern abutment before crossing the creek. With the rail line abandoned in 1972 and a new highway bridge built at a later date, the ROW under the bridge is now filled in.

This is facing the other way, south towards Newport.

I hiked in along the old right of way for a little bit, which appears to be some sort of camp road and is still pretty well-defined.

Facing back north towards Poland

Facing south towards Newport

Remains of old ties, covered in moss, lying along the side of the roadbed almost 50 years later.

Hiking a little bit further south I came to a bridge that I believe was M15, just a short little crossing of a feeder for the West Canada Creek.

And looking out into the main waters of the West Canada.

After this, the line went out through a farmer's field and I wasn't so keen on walking around out in the open like that. So, it was back to the car, and on further south to Newport.

This was in Newport, and while it's hard to read, that smokestack still says Borden's on it. This was originally built by the Michigan Condensed Milk Co. and produced \instant coffee and Dutch chocolate It was taken over by Borden in 1916, and for some time continued to produce that product as well as caramel. Both the caramel and milk powder phase of operations took place between 1934 and 1942. During World War 11, the government bought all the coffee the company produced for Army rations. In 1945, with removal of wartime restrictions on the sale of coffee, Borden introduced its instant coffee nationally. Those who lived in the area, even as far south as Middleville (4 miles away) talked about how when the plant was at full tilt, the breeze smelled like coffee. Unusually, the railroad outlived the plant; the plant closed in 1971 and has remained empty, while the railroad was pulled up in 1972. I will say, I imagine the plant's closing had some to do with the railroad being allowed to abandon the Poland Branch. If the factory had still been going, the ICC and Public Services Commission potentially would have denied the petition for abandonment. The railroad passed by on the far side of the factory and had several sidings there.

Somewhat tangentially related is the beautiful stone arch bridge, dating back to 1853 and built using limestone from the surrounding areas. Sadly, the hydroelectric plant at left spoils the view. The railroad crossed the road at the far end of the bridge, headed south to Middleville.

A three-span deck bridge, again crossing the West Canada Creek, on the southern edge of Newport. I think this was called M9. It's pretty intact, and appears to be used by folks as a trail, so I walked out over it.

Hard to see the right of way here, as it heads further south, but it's there.

Just north of Herkimer, in Middleville, NY, I stumbled across this little guy, wedged between Route 28/Middleville Road and West Canada Creek, crossing another feeder into the West Canada. To the right of this photo, the roadbed would have crossed over Shells Bush Road and then south of this, the East German Street Extension appears to be built over the right of way.

End of the line in Herkimer. Well, at least the last point of the right of way that I could find, as closer to the mainline, construction and development has wiped out a lot of traces of it. There were actually two separate connections to the mainline at various times. Originally, the NYC mainline ran right through the middle of Herkimer at ground level, with 7 grade crossings. Herkimer saw multiple sections of the “Great Steel Fleet” thunder through town at 70mph or faster, and few trains stopped in Herkimer, so there were 100-car freights around the clock also. Safety was an issue and from 1904 until 1939, the local newspaper tracked “over 30 killed”. So in 1939, the New York Central relocated the line further south, as well as elevating it to eliminate all grade crossings. The Adirondack Division/Poland Branch's southern connection also had to be extended and relocated to connect to the new line.

Also, not far from the the end of the HN&PNGRwy line is this old concrete arch bridge. This belonged to the Utica & Mohawk Valley Railway, which was an electric interurban line between Utica and Little Falls and also operated all the trolley lines in Utica. The U&MV and all the trolley and interurban lines in the area ended up being purchased by New York Central in 1912 and consolidated into New York State Railways, with trolley and interurban cars operating in major cities including Utica, Rome, Oneida, Syracuse and Rochester. This included the interesting third-rail electric Oneida Railway, which operated between Oneida and Syracuse on the NYC's West Shore Line. Most of the lines were shut down during the Great Depression, or spun off and converted into bus routes. The last interurban car to run over this bridge was in 1933.

Heading east towards Little Falls, this building is tucked in off of the main road. My father claims that this was the carbarn for the U&MV Railway. The location is plausible, and it does have that sort of appearance (Seems like all trolleybarn/interurban carbarns have very similar design cues) but I cannot find anything to either support or refute that.

In Little Falls, tucked down on this dead-end road there is a bridge on the CSX mainline that still wears New York Central Systems paint and lettering. Impressive, considering that the NYC ceased to exist in '68. Even more impressive when you see that this thing was last painted in October of '55. It's dodged the business end of a paint gun for 56 years.

Near that trestle is another location that I had once mistakenly thought was the original alignment of Gulf Curve. Entering Little Falls from the east was a curve that was known as Gulf Curve and it was the sharpest curve on the entire mainline of the NYC and required a significant reduction in speed. NYC had had one bad wreck due to excessive speed there in 1903 that had killed two crew members, although that had been a newspaper train and had had no passengers aboard. In 1940, the Lake Shore Limited also derailed there, again due to excessive speed, resulting in 31 deaths and 51 injuries. NYC decided to launch a major reconstruction project to make the curve more gentle, and after WWII they launched a realignment project, blasting away the neighboring cliffside and completely altering the landscape. During this entire project, they kept the old lines intact to keep traffic moving (although they could have just as easily moved traffic across the river on the West Shore Line) and I assumed that this was part of that.

What this actually is is a spur to allow trains on the eastbound tracks (north side of the line) to service industries on the south side of the tracks without having to either run on the westbound tracks or tie things up crossing over. This line came off the northern outer track, then passed under the mainline and came up on the south side, with several switches and spurs there. It looks like the major customer was the Twin Rivers Paper Company.

I was surprised to see that the gantry for the telltales was still there, although the telltales themselves were gone. Telltalles were lengths of light chain or rope hung from an overhead cantilevered arm ahead of a low clearance area, like a tunnel or underpass. If a brakeman was on top of the cars and facing the other direction, the chains would slap him across the head and shoulders and tell him to get down before he got Wily Coyote'd against the tunnel.

The switches and spurs headed down to a loading dock at Twin Rivers Paper. The rails were left on that part, although the switch mechanisms were gone, while towards the mainline, the rails were removed but the ties and tie plates remained.

Hard to see, but this may have been a coal trestle, judging by the angled wall of concrete and open bottom over this segment that was not caused by coal erosion. You would put a loaded coal hopper over this, open the bay doors on the bottoms and it would poor down into bins.

And a CSX freight passing by, probably wondering what the hell I was doing over here.

Also off of River Road is this stone wall, over which the Little Falls & Dolgeville ran from Little Falls to, well, Dolgeville. It was later extended to Irondale and Salisbury Center, as well as a connection to Jerseyfield Lake for hauling pulp wood. Like so many of these little railroads in New York, it was taken over by the New York Central in the early 1900s, becoming the Little Falls & Dolgeville Branch, and, again, like so many of these railroads in the area, it ran it's last trains in the '60s as the New York Central desperately tried to jettison these low profit lines. 

This was where the LF&D climbed it's way up the side of the rock escarpment, on a flat spot blasted out of the rock wall, to the plateau that Dolgeville sits on. A lot of the original line closer to Little Falls was also destroyed during the Gulf Curve alignment, and farther up has been covered over with Route 169. The line also passed through the middle of the Pierce Stone Company gravel facility on it's climb, which was also a customer of the line. 

An Amtrak Genesis in the 50th Anniversary livery passes over that NYC-painted bridge with the Maple Leaf. The Maple Leaf is odd in that it operates entirely over NYC trackage through New York, but the Maple Leaf originally was a Lehigh Valley Railroad train that took a much different, more southern route across New York to Buffalo. The New York Central really didn't have a direct New York City-Toronto passenger train, although there were connecting services from Buffalo to Toronto over Canadian Pacific and the jointly owned Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo.

The old Pierce Stony Company gravel plant. The actual gravel quarry is up top, and Route 169, and originally the Little Falls & Dolgeville, runs through the middle of it. The building was for sorting, crushing and storing, and then it loaded cars on a siding off of the NYC mainline. 

I found a half-buried milk can, likely from a train, laying on the ground there.

Hard to see, but on the far side of the Mohawk River, which is where the New York, West Shore & Buffalo, later the West Shore Line under the NYC, ran is a second crushed stone facility. This was owned by the Little Falls Stone Company and that is the part under which cars were positioned and stone was loaded from. The upper portion of the plant was leveled with explosives at some point, but the car loader is still there.