Grassroots Railroad Sports?

A CSX GP40-2, still in Chessie System paint and B&O reporting marks, leads one of the short-lived CSX RoadRailers through the remains of the old C&O yard at Covington, KY.

A real interesting one, one of CP's MLW C424s leading a RoadRailer at Milton, Ontario in 1992. Those MLW C424s were like cats. Every time CP would place them in storage and declare them retired, they'd drag them back out of the dead lines and put them back to work shortly afterwards. But, by 1992, they were about on their 9th life.

An SP GP60 and an SD40 on the "Swift Train", as SP called their RoadRailer service. Due to their lightweight, relatively short length, and fairly high speed, the general thinking for hauling RoadRailers was one, maybe two, high horsepower 4-axle units. Like 3800hp GP60s.

One of those SP Swift RoadRailers at Hito, Oregon, about a half hour from Southern Pacific's Brooklyn Yard in southeast Portland, where it will end its run from Southern California. In the lead is a St. Louis Southwestern GP60. St. Louis Southwestern? Why, that's the Cotton Belt Route.

A photo of the Amtrak mail and express RoadRailers, showing the dolly axles featured on the later designs.

The Roadrailers seem like one of those ideas that seems like a bit of a no-brainer, until some of the realities of how freight cars are used are realized.  To be clear, it seems like they can be mixed with regular cars, but ONLY behind them, which would make adding and subtracting cars potentially a lot more complicated. Which it seems like is done somewhat regularly?, especially with some the insanely long trains they like to build these days.

I wonder how they work with the switching yards where they just let the cars go to glide into place.  Or do they at all?  Seems like there is no forward truck on those?

In reply to aircooled :

They did have a forward truck, they basically shared a truck between each car, like an articulated container 5-pack. The rear of the leading trailer set down on top of the truck and the trailing trailer hooked the fifth wheel into it. You could, in theory add them onto the back of a freight, but you wouldn't want to put them in the middle (string-lining galore) or at the front (you'd likely tear the trailers in half). Anb, no, you didn't put RoadRailers through hump yards but that's not really an issue anymore, since under PSR most railroads are leveling their hump yards and going back to flat yards.

But a lot of the idea behind RoadRailers was that there wasn't really a ton of switching. They were to be predominantly used as high-interval, high-speed, express trains. You ran them in relatively short lengths (the early Mark IVs with the integrated rail axle couldn't be hooked up more than 25 or 30) but you were running them in end-to-end service on pretty much a daily service. Like the CSX RoadRailer was a daily run funneling auto parts from Detroit down to the GM plant in Atlanta, so they weren't pooling up 150-200 cars over a week's time and then moving it all at once. 

A big issue was that under PSR, they all want to run those 200-car monster trains once a week and put all the cars into the train in the order that they'd be disposed, and you just can't do that with RoadRailers.

A nice advantage of the RoadRailer; if you've got one giving you grief, you can limp it to a grade crossing and yank the offending trailer out with a truck and carry on.

NickD said:

Am I gonna go to the first runs on the 24th? 

Probably.

It's only a 3 hour drive out, and the first run is at 11am, so even if I leave at 7am, I'll get there with time to spare. I imagine there'll be a decent amount of railfans from New York area, but the A&A is a relatively obscure operation, so I don't think it'll be anything too crazy. Not like, say, the first run of Reading #2102 to Tunkhannock, or any of the #611 mainline runs where people are driving 10-12 hours and swarming the trackside.

Also, so far this year, the only steam action I've seen/had was the #2102 trip to Tunkhannock, and I think the only other stuff will be Essex Valley in December

Well, guess I'm not going to this. On Saturday there were videos being posted of Arcade & Attica using the #18 to tow their Alco RS-3u #114 around. A steam locomotive, like an internal combustion engine, needs some load on it during break-in to seat the piston rings, and an easy way to do that is to hook up a diesel, turn the dynamic brakes on in the diesel and pull or shove the diesel around. There are photos of Reading #2102 shoving one of R&N's Fast Freight SD50s around in the rain after she received new piston rings last winter. The #18 looked and sounded good and no one filming or photographing reported seeing any issues, but then late that evening, A&A announced on Facebook that there was an issue and the #18 will not be making it's debut on the 24th, and they are not announcing a new date. No word on what went wrong, but when you have the boiler off the frame and do a major overhaul llike that, you're sure to have a few gremlins. Honestly, I was pretty surprised that they announced the debut date so close after the first runs without a lot of test runs. Seemed a bit premature to me.

Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson has announced a little event for the return of the Alco RS-3s on Saturday August 24th that I might attend though. The #4118 has already arrived at the CPKC interchange at Saratoga Springs, with the #4103 scheduled to arrive later this week, and they are planning a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate their arrival at 9:30am. I'm guessing they won't be running them, since railroads typically have to give any new equipment a once-over, especially machines that have been sitting for a long time like these have, but their might be a neat photo-op with their D&H-painted Alco S-2.

I decided that I hadn't gone out and gotten any Adirondack Railroad action lately, so on Saturday, I loaded up my camera and got in the car. On Saturdays, they run the High Peaks Limited from Utica all the way to Tupper Lake, with a stop at Thendara to pickup passengers who only want to ride from Thendara to Tupper Lake and back, as well as the Big Moose Explorer from Thendara north to Big Moose, and the Otter Lake Explorer from Thendara south to Otter Lake. Of course, like every time I try to chase the Adirondack north of Remsen, it turned out to be a murky and rainy day.

Arriving at Utica to see what they were readying, I was greeted with kind of an odd sight. To get to Tupper Lake requires climbing the steep-but-short Remsen Hill and the shallower but longer Big Moose Hill (considered to be the worse of the two, the consensus with crews is that if you struggle at Remsen Hill, you're going to be in serious trouble at Big Moose) as well as covering 108 miles, the High Peaks Limited usually takes quite a bit of horsepower. Last summer, the M420W #3573 and the southbound-facing RS-18u, #1835, were handling most of the trains out of Utica, while the C424 #2400 was handling the Explorers out of Thendara and the northbound-facing RS-18u #1845 was up to Tupper Lake handling the runs to Sabattis. So I was kind of expecting that. Especially since, the last couple times I stopped into the Utica station the #2400 was nowhere to be seen, leading me to believe it was stationed up to Thendara already.

Instead, when I got there and parked by the old NYO&W freight house, Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern C425 #2456 was fired up and idling on the track where Adirondack stores some of their passenger cars that need more work, as well as an old Chessie System caboose. Since MA&N doesn't run on weekends, that meant that Adirondack was likely borrowing the #2456 for the day, which isn't uncommon. My guess was that they were going to have #3573 lead north, since it faces north, with the #2456 leading south. 

Then the #1835 appeared, switching passenger cars around, so I started thinking, "Okay, it'll be #1835 and #2456", which isn't pleasant for the crew, since they're running backwards all the way north. Then, as the #1835 moved a cut of cars off one track and shoved them down, the #2400, which also faces south, came reversing up out of the track the cars came from and backed way down clear of the switch. Okay, so we have three south-facing Alcos, all running, and no sign of the #3573 or #1835. And we've got two of Adirondack's Alcos running, but it looks like they're going to borrow an MA&N Alco. My first thought was that maybe they were taking one of the locomotives along to drop off at Thendara, but then the #1835 vanished off into the yard, the #2400 backed down onto the train, and then the #2456 hooked on ahead of the #2456. And there were Adirondack crews in the cabs of both locomotives. Huh. Alright. I know one of the RS-18u twins had some mechanical issues that needed addressing, and it was maybe the #1835, so they might not trust it to run all the way to Tupper Lake, but why use it for switching cars when the #2400 and #2456 were present and running? And maybe the two crews was because the crew for the Thendara-based runs was deadheading north on the High Peaks Limited and were spread out across both locomotives to free up space.

This is just north of Utica, at Edic Road in Marcy, and the two Alco Centuries, running long hood forward, are roaring right along, having just passed through the Utica Marsh and crossing over River Road.

I'm not sure if that spur to the left went any farther or what the history is, but it's not been used in a long time. 

Passing by the old depot at Holland Patent. Sure wish that van wasn't parked so far back at the left, but can't really control that.

Running along Sand Road as they head towards Remsen, and they're clearing Remsen Hill. I was told by an Adirondack engineer that when running Utica-Thendara, if you can make it to Sand Road, you're in the clear for the rest of the run.

They're just clearing Remsen and crossing State Route 12. This is still on the tracks that were shared by the NYC Adirondack and St. Lawrence Divisions, and now shared by Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern and Adirondack Railroad. Just north of here is Snow Junction, where the lines diverge. The MA&N heads northwest to Lyons Falls on the old St. Lawrence Division, while the Adirondack heads northeast to Tupper Lake.

At Forestport, we have one of the old Mohawk & Malone/Adirondack & St. Lawrence's "Great Stationhouses", as they were called. There were ten of these built along the line, designed by Robert Robertson for Seward Webb, who was the mastermind behind the M&M/A&StL. Working from the south to the north, they were at Middleville, Hinckley, Prospect Junction, White Lake (later known as Woodgate), Fulton Chain (later known as Thendara), Tupper Lake Junction, Saranac Junction (later known as Lake Clear Junction), Saranac Lake, and Paul Smith's (later known as Gabriels). There was technically ten locations but eleven Great Stationhouses built, since the first one at Hickley was destroyed in a flood in 1901 and a second one was constructed there. Why these ten specific locations were chosen and no others is lost to time, as John Taibi's book notes, and while some locations make sense (Fulton Chain, Saranac Lake and Paul Smith's were all big resort locations, and Tupper Lake Junction was where the New York & Ottawa met the M&M/A&StL) others like Forestport or Middleville were never very large locations. Originally all built to spec, a lot of the Great Stationhouses were altered during their railroad careers as their roles evolved. For example, Forestport grew a freighthouse off the north end, while Thendara had a huge awning constructed on the northern face.

Of the ten Great Stationhouses, only three remain; Forestport, White Lake and Fulton Chain. Forestport is a private residence and in dire need of attention. White Lake also is a private residence but is fairly unchanged from the original design and is pretty well maintained. And Fulton Chain is owned by the Adirondack Railroad and is still used as a train station. The tracks aren't even there are at Middleville, Hinckley, Prospect Junction, Saranac Junction, Saranac Lake and Paul Smith's anymore, which would explain their absence, but some of those bit the dust even before the tracks were gone. As early as WWII, NYC began trying to rid themselves of as much of the Adirondack Division as they could, and that continued until 1965, and that included removing a lot of stations as usage decreased. Those that didn't get torn down by NYC were often left to the elements and either fell in or caught fire or were demolished after they degraded too far.

The High Peaks Limited slows for Forestport, so that the brakemen can drop down and flag the two very close road crossings at N Lake Road and O'Brien Road. The crossing gates weren't working, and it was obviously a known condition, so they stopped just shy, the brakemen flagged the crossing and then swung aboard as the #2456 entered the crossing. Then it was back on the throttle. 

I had planned to catch them crossing the Moose River at the location known as Minnehaha, in the town of Webb (named for Seward Webb), as I've seen photo at that location from others. But I turned on Minnehaha Road, got partway down and there were all sorts of "Private Drive Do Not Enter" signs along the road. I'm not one for trespassing, so I abandoned that location. That's the problem with trying to shoot the Adirondack above Remsen; it goes through the middle of nowhere in a lot of the run, and then you'll see various grade crossings, try to get to them, and it turns out that they're driveways to private camps. 

So, I decided to skip them arriving at Thendara and decided to go up to the location known as Carter. Now, Carter is just a dot on the map and it's only accessible by dirt roads. The maps showed two ways in: either go up North Road just south of Old Forge and swing in that way, or go up 28N through Old Forge and then head in on Rondaxe Road. I figured that traffic in Old Forge is a nightmare in the summer, so rather than get stuck there, I'd head up North Road. Big mistake. To call them "dirt roads" is too generous. They're more like a "boulder road". Lots of hills and huge rocks, and I'm driving a 2012 Chevy Impala. Ya know, low, long, big overhangs, the ideal offroad machine. So, I'm trying not to knock the oil pan out or get stuck, and people are in there in Jeeps and lifted trucks looking at me like I'm insane. Which seemed a reasonable response. I should have turned around and gone back up 28N and gone in from Rondaxe Road, but the High Peaks Limited only stops for a little while at Thendara to take on passengers also headed to Tupper Lake and I wanted to catch it. So, I eventually got there, and without wrecking my car.

So, this is at Carter, which is milepost H64. That H references Herkimer, which was the original southern terminus of the Mohawk & Malone, using the regauged Herkimer, Newport & Poland Narrow Gauge Railway. During WWII, the NYC severed the Remsen-Herkimer leg, tearing down the Trenton Falls bridge for a scrap drive, and moved all Adirondack Division traffic to the old Utica & Black River from Remsen to Utica. But north of Remsen, all the mileposts still reference Herkimer, even though Herkimer is no longer connected to the line. I suppose it was to avoid confusion with the St. Lawrence Division line that still used U mileposts.

Carter was originally called Clearwater and was a small settlement, as well as a junction between the Mohawk & Malone and the Raquette Lake Railway. The Raquette Lake Railway was funded by Collis Huntington and spearheaded by "Doc" Thomas Durant, and headed 18 miles northeast from the Mohawk & Malone at Clearwater to Raquette Lake, a popular resort town and part of the Fulton Chain of lakes. It was designed to ferry the wealthy folk to Raquette Lake, where they could hop on steam ships to go anywhere on the eight lakes of the Fulton Chain, named First through Eight Lakes (yeah, real creative names). Operated independently but using castoff New York Central equipment, the line immediately ran into financial issues when Collis Huntington died on it's opening day and deprived it of funding. By 1902 it was sold to Seward Webb, and the Raquette Lake Railway always ran in the red and papers in 1903 reported its attempt to stop winter runs failing approval due to the new reliance on its service.  The age of private rail cars and steamers ended by the time the remaining millionaire owners sold it to the NYC in March 1917, who assumed its $50,000 indebtedness.  In 1924, the NYC tried to sell the railway and property to locals but found no buyers. Ruth Timm reports its busiest volume of sleeping cars with children and camp leaders for Raquette Lake camps was in July, 1926.  But the automobile age was arriving, even in the remote Adirondacks, and traffic was already using the incomplete section of new highway from Seventh Lake to Raquette Lake in December 1929.  Papers reported a Raquette Lake car ferry being discontinued in July 1930, and the railway’s last regular season was June 15th to September 15th, 1933.  The NYC received permission to abandon the line effective February 27, 1934, and early in the summer of 1934, a special work train arrived at Raquette Lake Station and, starting where the tracks reached Carlin’s Boat Livery, workers began removing rails and ripping up ties.  Two years later, the station property was bought by the Raquette Lake Supply Company which operated the station house as a restaurant.  On December 8, 1972, the Raquette Lake Station house was destroyed by fire. You can still see the roadbed of the Raquette Lake Railway right-of-way running alongside of Route 28 from Rondaxe Road up to around Eagle Bay to this day.

Clearwater was renamed to Carter in 1912. The reason for the change in name was that the water supply from Little Safford Lake had been contaminated and was no longer drinkable, so the name Clearwater really didn't seem applicable anymore. Now, why they chose Carter is debated. Some suggest that the name was chosen because of Cornelius Carter, the "Poet Of The Adirondacks" who had passed away in 1905, while others, including Taibi's book, say the choice was more pragmatic. Clearwater was basically a railroad settlement and Herbert Carver had been the freight and passenger superintendent of the Adirondack Division from it's inception in 1893 until his death in 1911, so it was more likely named after Herbert Carver.

At it's peak, Clearwater/Carter had a number of camps, general store, a union station (both the Mohawk & Malone and the Raquette Lake Railway shared the station) and had been the site of a proposed water tank to be used by both NYC and RLRy trains. Raquette Lake Railway trains typically watered at the east end of the line, and had enough water to run the 18 miles to Clearwater and back, but it would add a little more operational flexibility, while M&M/NYC trains would be able to take on water before beginning the assault on Big Moose Hill, which actually started a little bit before Clearwater but was still fairly mild in grade. The water tower was never constructed though. 

Today, Carter is mostly just a dot on a map with a couple camps. Despite one having a sign that says "Carter Station" on it, this is not, nor was it ever, the station at Carter. The union station looked similar to the Great Stationhouses but smaller and with a large awning. It was also A) about a tenth of a mile north of this camp's location, and B) was torn down during WWII and replaced with a little, open-faced shanty with three walls, since by that point the RLRy was gone and Carter was a dwindling settlement. Today that shanty is even gone. Now, the general store building does exist, it's one of the handful of a camps along Carter Road, although I'm not sure which one.

The High Peaks Limited roaring north through Carter. They're into Big Moose Hill here, so they need to have their speed up to make it to the top of the grade, which is just past the original station. The top of Big Moose Hill is denoted with a sign that says Summit, and that is the highest elevation rail line in the state of New York, and it was also the highest point on the New York Central's entire rail system.

A little ways up and on the right side of the rails would have been the location of the Clearwater union station, as well as the junction where the Raquette Lake Railway headed east to Raquette Lake.

I had already decided not to follow the High Peaks Limited up to Tupper Lake. First of all, by the time I got out of Carter, I wouldn't be able to catch them at Big Moose. Second, there really aren't any other spots to get them until they arrive in Tupper Lake itself. So, instead, I waited for the Big Moose Explorer, which runs from Thendara to Big Moose and back. I knew that #2400 was on the High Peaks Limited, and I knew #1835 was in Utica, so that left either RS-18u #1845, which I had seen parked at Thendara as I went by, or the unaccounted for M420W #3573. Well, technically there is also RS-3 #8255 at Thendara, and I keep hearing "We plan to have it running this year", but the fact that I hadn't heard anything about it running yet, and I'm sure there will be a lot of talk once it's running, meant I wasn't counting on that one.

And the #3573 it was, with a haze of smoke and a friendly wave from the engineer, headed north with four of the old NYC-painted passenger cars.

Some of the scenery on my drive out of Carter. I took the Rondaxe Road route out, which comes out on 28 and then requires you to drive through Old Forge. Old Forge traffic isn't great, but the roads headed out of Carter this way are actual dirt and much smoother. My Impala thanked me.

I then went south of Thendara and hiked in to a spot where the rail line runs right along a bend in the Moose River. I have seen photos here before and finally figured the location out, and it's about a 15 minute hike in. Of course, my original plan had been made with the assumption that the #2400 would be handling the Explorers out of Thendara, so it would be pointed the right way heading south through this location. But, since the #3573 was handling the Otter Lake Explorer, it would be running long hood forward past here, which wouldn't be as appealing. But I stuck with the plan anyways. And, I figured this would be a good test run for when the High Peaks Limited came south, since the #2400 would be leading that.

I also went back to the tracks and caught the #3573 coming back north past the milepost H57. Those wooden mileposts are recreations by a fan that were built quite a few years back. They're starting to get a bit degraded. While waiting here, I got practically eaten alive by mosquitoes. I forgot that in the summer, the mosquitoes and black flies are ravenous in this area. It then started downpouring, which got rid of the mosquitoes but didn't improve my mood. 

I then hiked back out and went back to the Thendara Great Stationhouse. The High Peaks Limited was due into Thendara at 4:20pm, and then was scheduled to depart at 4:50pm. My plan was to get a photo of the #2400 arriving at the depot, then hike back in to the Moose River and catch it heading south with #2400 in the lead.

The #1845 and the #8255 outside the engine house at Thendara.

The 1893-built Great Stationhouse. Originally known as Fulton Chain, after the Fulton Chain of Lakes, it was later renamed to Thendara, to match the name of the Census Designated Place that it is located in in the southern corner of the town of Webb. The big awning on the north end was added later by the Mohawk & Malone and is where most people wait for their train. This was also a union station, since behind the station was where the Fulton Chain Railway ran. The Mohawk & Malone/Adirondack Division heads straight north out of Thendara towards Clearwater/Carter and misses the main town of Old Forge. As a result the Fulton Chain Railroad was created in 1896, running through Old Forge (it paralleled Railroad Ave) and bridging passenger and freight traffic between the Fulton Chain station and the ships of the Fulton Navigation Company at Old Forge, which sailed on the actual Fulton Chain of Lakes. The company came under control of New York Central, who renamed it to Fulton Chain Railway, in 1902, who then operated it outright starting in 1917, becoming the Old Forge Branch of the NYC. In 1931 the NYC filed for abandonment of the 2.2 mile branch and was granted permission by the ICC in December of that year. The Fulton Chain Railway is gone, but if you look on Google maps, you can actually still see the roadbed, and the Tobie Trail crosses the Moose River at the same location of where the Fulton Chain Railway would have crossed. 

After unloading passengers, and with it's trips done for the day, the #3573 backed down past the old NYC freight house at Thendara and tied down alongside the little enginehouse and the #8255 and #1845.