Grassroots Railroad Sports?

In reply to 02Pilot :

They also rolled out a Penn Central heritage unit very recently. Which is one of those where you really have to pay attention because it looks almost identical to the earlier Conrail heritage unit. For their commuter operations out of NYC, Penn Central used a blue and yellow scheme inspired by MTA's colors, and then when Conrail took over those operations in '76, Conrail continued using the same paint scheme on their FL9s, just with the Conrail "broken wheel" logo in place of the Penn Central "mating worms".

Two Conrail FL9s at Peekskill, NY with a Poughkeepsie-NYC commuter run in June of '81. 

In reply to NickD :

Check out that custom van!

One of the short-lived, under Conrail at least, "Valpo" commuter runs. Inherited from Pennsylvania Railroad/Penn Central, Conrail operated these Chicago-Valparaiso commuter runs for about 3 years until they managed to pawn them off on Amtrak. There's an ex-Cleveland Union Terminal/New York Central "torpedo tube" Geep on the lead, paired with an ex-Erie/Erie-Lackawanna E8, and then a handful of ex-Pennsy P70 coaches.

Another one of the Valpos, again with that old CUT GP9 on the lead, as well as a brand-new GP38-2, which is kind of an odd choice. According to the photographer's remarks, despite never being any longer than four cars, and only being 2 cars in length most of the time, this train always rated two locomotives. Power was old and untrustworthy? Needed the acceleration to keep a schedule?

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

It's pretty rad. Zooming it, it looks like a 4-pointed star porthole window, which I've never seen before. It also looks like a SportsRoof '68/'69 Ford Fairlane at the far end of the parking lot, albeit with a mismatched door.

Another Valpo with ex-Erie-Lackawanna E8 #4014 and another ex-CUT Geep, #7508, this one still in PC black, have crossed the iconic 21st Street Lift Bridge on their way out of Chicago. Again, ex-Erie and ex-NYC power with ex-PRR coaches. A giveaway that the #4014 is ex-Erie and not ex-DL&W is the single headlight on the nose. DL&W E8s had a secondary headlight on the front door.

Conrail commuter service to Valparaiso and Norfolk & Western's ex-Wabash commuter run to Orland Park both depart from Union Station, both behind austere black Geeps (GP9s for Conrail and a GP40 for N&W) with Tuscan red and gold coaches. The PRR corporate influence on N&W is strong. A federal law was passed that mandated that Conrail get out of commuter service unless those services' losses were fully subsidized. Either with the threat of this law looming or with Conrail's own discontinuance petition in mind, Indiana picked up the funding for the Valpo trains under the 403(b) clause of the Amtrak law, and the carrier took over the service from Conrail using the ex-C&NW intercity bilevel cars that seemed to have quite a varied career in the Amtrak era. At some point in the mid-Eighties, Indiana withdrew funding for the trains, and they came off.

It's all Erie-Lackawanna in appearance but this is a Conrail train. One of the other services taken over by Conrail was the Cleveland-Youngstown commuter runs that had come from Erie, and then Erie-Lackawanna. E-L had been running the E8s with the old Stillwell coaches on the eastern end, but when NJDOT funded the new U34CHs and Comet coaches, the E8s came west, while the Stillwell coaches were mostly retired. So, the #4833 is paired up with modern lightweight coaches as it races out of Cleveland in August of '76. This service was especially short-lived, biting the dust in the second week of January 1977. The #833 found a second life as one of the three Conrail Office Car Special E8s, renumbered to #4022, although it was never used as much as the other two, mostly held as reserve power. From what Bennett Levin said, the other two E8s, both ex-Pennsy, had had a number of electrical upgrades that made them nicer to run, while the #833/#4022 was mostly in as-built condition. The #4022 did have one advantage in that it had two fresh 1200hp V12 567s that were plucked from retired Reading "SW1200ms", which were old Baldwin VO-1000s that Reading had repowered.

That N&W commuter train mentioned above was colloquially known as the "Orland Park Cannonball" and although it was the sad remnants of the Wabash's St. Louis-Chicago Blue Bird. The Cannonball had served St. Louis-Detroit. The train ran 33 miles from Orland Park to Chicago Union Station and typically rated a non-passenger GP40, running long hood forward of course, and a bunch of old N&W lightweight coaches. In the summer, the cars had axle-driven AC systems, while in the winter, N&W used an old baggage car with steam generators mounted in it to heat the cars. That steam generator car actually found itself all the way out to Utica, NY for use on the Adirondack Railway during the 1980 Winter Olympics. Friday, July 27, 1979 was the last day that the N&W supplied the equipment for the commuter trains from Orland Park to Chicago. Starting the next Monday, Metra F40's and bi-levels would greet the commuters at the little station on 143rd St

Not to be confused with the Conrail passenger trains was the Conrail Office Car Special. Conrail grabbed ex-Erie E8 #833, renumbered to #4022, and some old heavyweight passenger cars and shot them in Quality Blue with black roofs and white lettering. After the OCS grew, they traded for two HEP-equipped ex-PRR E8s from Conrail, which became #4020 and #4021, and added more cars, as well as repainting the whole thing into a dark green with gold lettering. Damn tasteful looking. The #4022 became mostly reserve and was stored at the old Reading Co. locomotive shops in Reading, PA, while the other two and the cars were all stored at Enola.

The Conrail OCS inside the shops at Altoona.

Rounding Bennington Curve in Allegheny Township, PA. From this angle you can see the roof-mounted mufflers for the Head End Power generators.

The Conrail OCS at Gang Mills, NY on what was called the Corning Secondary. Under the New York Central, this was the Pennsylvania Division, sometimes referred to as the Fallbrook/Fall Brook line. From a connection with the Water Level Route at Lyons, NY, this line shot straight south through Geneva, Dresden and Corning (where it interchanged with the Erie and DL&W), then crossed the border to PA at Lawrenceville, and continued on to Tioga, Wellsboro, Jersey Shore and Newberry Junction, where it connected with the Reading and the PRR. It also continued west into the Clearfield coal regions at places like Mahaffey, Phillipsburg, and Cherry Tree, and connected with the B&O there. The Pennsylvania Division was a neat operation since you don't typically think of the New York Central in PA, it had 2-6-6-2 Mallets and helper districts and unit coal trains (again, all atypical of the NYC) and it ran through the bottom of the Grand Canyon Of Pennsylvania, Pine Creek Gorge.

If you compared grade profiles, which is important for big unit coal trains, then the ex-NYC Penn Division beat the daylights out of the PRR Buffalo line, hands down. But, even though the NYC  was a superior route grade-wise, the PRR won over the NYC primarily because Conrail  largely pulled out of the Clearfield coal region in favor of the Monongahela region, and the Buffalo line featured more on-line traffic sources. Also, Conrail began shifting the Dewitt yard from handling loose carload traffic toward an intermodal yard, which pretty much doomed the bread-and-butter SYEN-ENSY (Syracuse-Enola/Enola-Syracuse) trains. Another big impediment to the Corning Secondary hosting the daily mixed BUEN-ENBU (Buffalo-Enola/Enola-Buffalo) trains on long term basis was the lack of a speedy connection at Gang Mills which allowed northbounds on the NYC to head west on the Erie (The BUEN came from Buffalo to Corning on the Erie, then took the Corning Seconday down to Newberry Junction, then took the PRR to Enola). There was a wye track there, but the west leg threaded THROUGH the yard itself, something that the east leg of the wye didn't do, which made dispatching a nightmare.  There were also a few spots where the Corning Secondary was susceptible to rock slides, and Conrail piled up a few trains there, resulting in locomotive write-offs.

This photos was taken on July 27th, 1988, and just two months later, Conrail would remove the rails south of Wellsboro Junction, including the scenic bit through the bottom of Pine Creek Gorge. It seems odd that an Office Car Special would be heading through here so shortly before the line was removed, but I've read that Conrail did run employee picnic trips up this line to Corning, so maybe it's one last employee picnic. Or maybe it needed to get elsewhere and the lack of traffic on the line made it easier to send it over this line, rather than dodging other trains on the PRR Buffalo Line.

The same day, the same OCS passes through Lindley, NY on the Corning Secondary.

Exiting a tunnel in Antis Township on the Pittsburgh Line

Sixty-five years ago, the New York, Ontario & Western made its final run, an extra, led by F3A #805, for it to depart from Norwich, NY and head to headquarters at Middletown, NY. With that, the NYO&W ceased to exist, the first of the anthracite roads to fall and the first major railroad in the US to be abandoned in it's entirety.

The photo above was taken two months after the shutdown, with the F3s and FTs gathered at Middletown awaiting final disposition. Three of the F3As, #501, #502 and #503 went west to the Sacramento Northern and then on to SN parent Western Pacific, only to be traded in to EMD later in life. Two FTA-FTB sets, #806 and #807, went to the Baltimore & Ohio and lived there for a while as their #4412 and #4413 before being retired. The remainder of the F3s went to the Erie, where were placed in general service until eventually being retired and traded in to EMD and scrapped. The remainder of the FTs had too high of an asking price from the trustees and sat in long-term storage until 1968, when NYC finally got a deal on them and traded them in to EMD. NYC also got most of the NW2s, some of which hung around into Conrail and one of which still exists. And the 44-tonners had been sold off even before the end of the O&W, and a couple of those still exist.

The ex-New York, Ontario & Western F3As, having traded the Catskill Mountains of New York for sunny California. As the Sacramento Northern's own corporate identity faded into the Western Pacific, they ended up on the WP roster, where they were easy to pick out by the lack of a second headlight and the lack of front M.U. hookups. At least on one occasion they got put in the WP/Burlington Northern pool for the Gateway freights up to Oregon and one of them had to lead because of that lack of M.U. hookup on the front. They were gone by '71 traded to EMD and GE.

So, on Saturday the Adirondack Railroad was running their Easter trains between Holland Patent and Remsen. I decided to go out, since they usually run push-pull mode, basically giving you two different consists to shoot, and they also run three times that day, giving you a few more chances to catch them.

This is them deadheading north to Holland Patent, passing through Stittville. While I had hoped that they would be using C424 #2400, like they did last year, the #2400 appears to still be winterized and so they were borrowing Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern C425 #2456.

Waiting at Holland Patent while riders board. A bit hard to see, but they had the white class lights over the cab lit up. White class lights indicate that the train is a non-scheduled extra, while the green indicates that the train was regularly scheduled one but a second section was following behind it, and red indicates that it's the end of a train. Alco tucked them up above the number boards over the cab like this.

I like how the whole front of the cab, including the windshield, is that it's vee'd, unlike the EMDs with the flat cab windows with the vee'd number boards overhead.

Heading north through Barneveld, NY, approaching Mapledale Road. That's an original stone milepost, and since they are still on the old Utica & Black River, the milepost is based off of Utica.

This is my favorite of the sequence.

The #2456 in tow as they clear Mapledale Road. Now, technically, the class lights should be on red here, but I won't give them too much grief. Class lights are practically a thing of the past.

The #3573 cresting the very top of Remsen Hill at Plank Road in Remsen. This long fill, from Barneveld to here, was actually originally a wooden trestle, but as was the case with a lot of these long wooden trestles once they got old, the whole thing was encased in a dirt fill.

The #3573 arriving into Remsen.

The #2456 heading south out of Remsen, passing these little falls in the Cincinatti Creek,