As you read, you'll have to flick on that British accent switch in your brain.
Rough news for the Catskill Mountain Railroad and the hope for future expansion. From the Daily Freemen:
The Ulster County Legislature’s Ulster and Delaware Corridor Advisory Committee voted Thursday to recommend converting nearly all of the 1.8-mile undesignated section of the Ulster and Delaware Corridor to trail-only, while extending the Catskill Mountain Railroad rides just across state Route 28A, prompting the Catskill Mountain Railroad to threaten to pull its rides out of the county altogether.
The Committee voted 5-2 to support the trail-only option for the section west of a county-built terminus far enough west of state Route 28A to allow the train to clear the highway right of way. Republicans Jason Kovacs and Richard Walls cast the sole no votes, while all Democrats on the committee voted in favor. The meeting attracted a packed room of rail supporters and trail advocates.
The Catskill Mountain Railroad had proposed a terminal 1.8 miles farther west at Basin Road. In April, the railroad had proposed running a trolley bus from the Basin Road Terminal to destinations in West Hurley and Woodstock.
The recommendation will go to County Executive Jen Metzger’s Office, the Ulster County Planning Department, the county attorney’s office to deal with some easements along the corridor and then a vote before the full Ulster County Legislature.
Committee Chair Jeff Collins, D-Woodstock, said the county-built terminal would have restrooms open to both train and trail users. He continued to call this a “compromise solution,” which rail advocates denounced.
Catskill Mountain Railroad President Ernie Hunt pledged after the meeting that the railroad would not cooperate with this solution. He said the railroad would pull its tourist train operations, which attracted tens of thousands of visitors last year, out of Ulster County if the Legislature votes to remove the tracks in the undesignated section between Stony Holllow and Basin Road.
He called the county’s treatment of the railroad “abominable,” and he threatened to fight this “tooth and nail.”
“We think this was a preordained outcome from the very beginning and never listened to anything said and never took our proposal seriously,” Hunt said. “The result was preordained.”
Hunt accused committee members of disparaging other committee members and not being able to respond. He also decried the committee for making the hatred between rail and trail enthusiasts stronger than ever, comparing it to a previous committee where they came together. “That’s a sign of the total failure of this committee,” he said.
Opponents of the train extension cheered the decision.
Joel Bluestein, owner of Dreamland Recording studio along the undesignated section, said he was happy that a trail and not a “noisy polluting” train, would happen in this segment.
Trail advocate Nick Mercurio of Rosendale, said the trail will bring in far more money than a train extension would. “The wise economic choice would be more trail with rail continuing to operate successfully where it is,” he added.
Committee member Abe Uchitelle, D-Kingston, said he did not trust the Catskill Mountain Railroad to build out the undesignated section and its proposed terminal at Basin Road. He said with this proposal, the county, not a private company, can be in the driver’s seat.
Kathy Nolan, D-Shandaken, said she believed the trail is the better option for this segment, given the many wetlands it passes through and the challenge of building both through this area and the high fills along the corridor.
In voting against the plan, Kovacs, R-town-of-Ulster, questioned the issue of easements with some property owners along the line, as has been brought up by the Catskill Mountain Railroad. Nolan said the county has been able to resolve this in other places where it has built rail trails on old railbeds.
Other legislators who were not on the committee at the meeting were not so sure about the plan.
Manna Jo Green, D-Rosendale, said she thought the rail-with-trail proposal was a better idea for the corridor to capture the benefits of both attractions
Joseph Maloney, R-Saugerties, expressed arguments similar to Hunt about the outcome being preordained, while lambasting Nolan and Collins for advocating for trails while serving on the committee.
The Catskill Mountain Railroad was trying to convince the county to allow it to expand its train service to Basin Road, which would add roughly 1.8 miles to its current 4.7-mile tourist train ride. It would allow the train to move through an area of the county-owned railroad corridor that was left “undesignated” as part of a 2015 policy adopted by the Legislature for the county corridor. That policy earmarked the stretch of track between the Kingston Plaza and state Route 28A for rail and an 11.5-mile stretch from the Basin Road across the Ashokan Reservoir for a recreational trail. Due to what is seen as the difficult topography of the stretch between milepost 8.33 and Basin Road, the Legislature at the time did not decide how that portion of the corridor should be used.
When the Catskill Mountain Railroad unveiled a plan for a “rail with trail” through that undesignated section with a train depot and announced it had received a state grant to rehabilitate the track and construct a welcome station on privately owned land at Basin Road, Legislature Chairman Peter Criswell, D-Kingston, created the corridor advisory committee to recommend to legislators the best use for that segment. That committee began meeting monthly in June 2024.
During the course of the committee’s meetings, it became increasingly apparent that there was little appetite to allow the train to extend its operation fully into the undesignated section or build a station at Basin Road.
Pretty sad how the county has screwed the CMRR at every turn. The threat about moving is...odd. I'm not aware of any tracks looking for operators, although maybe they're thinking of trying to consolidate operations with the Delaware & Ulster.
Speaking of Delaware & Ulster, they resumed operations for the first time in 6 years this weekend, operating on the rarely-used Arkville-Fleischmanns 2-mile segment. I didn't go down, both because I had stuff going on this weekend and because I heard the previous weekend from a Railfan & Railroad Magazine photographer that that section is nigh impossible to photograph; wrong direction to be properly lit, no easy access, tree tunnels everywhere. Marc Glucksman got some photos of an interesting consist, with genuine NYO&W NW-2 #116, an NYC-lettered ex-PRR MP54 depowered EMU, a flatcar, a stainless-steel ex-ACL diner and a stainless-steel ex-NYC observation car.
Kind of a wild rumor came out on Ahead of the Torch yesterday, and that is that Canadian Pacific 4-8-4 #3101 is reportedly going to be restored to operation by private owner Gary Southgate, an extremely well-heeled production farmer. He's been buying up a ton of old coaches all across North America and shipping them up to Canada (Seriously, he got the CN Cape Tormentine sleeper, which had been in FL, out of KY) for the past decade or more. He's put together three GMD (Canadian) FP9As and one GMD FP9B from a couple different sources, he tried at one point to buy CN 4-6-4 "#5700" at the Elgin County Railway Museum in St. Thomas, Ontario, and back in 2013 he bought Canadian Pacific #3101 from the IPSCO steel plant in Regina, Saskatchewan, where it has been on display since it was sold to them for scrap in 1960. Now, he's never moved the engine from there, but now the rumor is that he's planning to have it restored to operation for his proposed Eastend Scenic Railway. Someone who seems pretty clued in says that Southgate had long planned to run excursions on either CN or CP and they convinced him that the Class Is don't play ball anymore and to partner with a short line. He seems to be setting up shop on the Great Western Railway out of Eastend, Saskatchewan and is hopping to begin excursions with the F9s and coaches. Those familiar with the railroad say it's extremely heavy-railed, because they haul big grain trains, and the use of B40-8Ws seems to support that statement, which should mean its up to the task of supporting a CPR 4-8-4.
The #3101 is pretty interesting in that it's one of only two CP 4-8-4s ever built (rival CN meanwhile had 105 of the wheel arrangement, the most in North America), so she's a pretty rare beast. CPR turned the two out of their Angus shops in '28, the first engines built in Canada with one-piece cast-steel bed frames, and they proved to be too heavy for all but the Montreal-Toronto line, where they pulled the night trains #21 Chicago Express and #22 Overseas Express for 25 years. CPR subsequently stuck to Pacifics, Hudsons and Mikados for the bulk of their motive power, aside from thoses fascinating "Selkirk" streamlined 2-10-4s out west. David Page Morgan encountered her in '54 and described her as, "She was spotless. The wine red panel down her flank and across the tank was gloosy, boiler jacket and cylinders had recently been repainted in gray; and driver tires were, in the grand manner, white. The heat surging off her grates, the whine of the turbogenerator, the thump of the air pumps -- she was the good life." The crews report was that "She rode better than a Hudson and was good for an extra sleeper or two, yet couldn't turn as fast a wheel and was a tempermental one to fire."
Big for CPR, the two K1s were relatively small. Despite a 5" taller driver (75" vs 70"), a CPR K1 is over 45 tons lighter and almost 10 feet shorter than a Reading T-1, and even though those 75" drivers weren't anything to be ashamed off, they were eclipsed by NYC Niagaras, UP FEFs, and SP GS-2/3/4/5s. Canadian National's veritable armada of 4-8-4s were another 25 tons lighter than a CPR K1 though. The pair were eventually supplanted on Montreal-Toronto runs by diesels in the mid '50s. Hopes to run them on Montreal-St John service clear through to Saint John in New Brunswick reportedly ran afoul of the ICC's reluctance to allow them to operate in Maine(?), so their portion of the run ended in Megantic, Quebec. CPR later sent them to Western Canada and there they were converted to oil burners, with #3101 on passenger trains Winnipeg-Moose Jaw and other runs, and #3100 is shown as being used in freight service. The #3100 went to the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa after retirement, and the #3101 was sold to IPSCO for scrap, only to be put on display.
The Eastend equipment stored at, well, Eastend. I know the FP9s on the left came from the Keeokuk Junction, who ran them in freight service from about 2012 to 2019.
Keokuk Junction Railway's A-B-A set of FP9s crossing the Illinois River Bridge at Peoria on August 25th, 2015.
The FP9 set and two GP20s lead a train load of pipe at the west end of the TP&W.
Next time I am in Regina I should see if I can even SEE 3101 from the road. Its out near the yard I hit for previously enjoyed car parts so its not like I need to go out of my way at all
In reply to DjGreggieP :
Looking at Google Maps, it looks like it's north of Armour Road, directly north of Owens Landscaping.
You can see here that the B-unit wore DL&W-esque colors, since it was acquired from the Algoma Central and the Algoma Central used the same EMD-designed catalo livery that the DL&W chose. The owner of the Keokuk Junction at the time joked that if he had a dollar for every time someone asked "When will it be repainted?", it would have been repainted a lot sooner.
The Keokuk Junction FP9s were sadly retired by a change in ownership of the railway. The previous owner loved the F-units, but the railroad was taken over by a new investor and he had no love for these antiques, and they were promptly retired and sold off.
F-units creeping through a busy modern rail yard is an odd sight.
Leading a turn job from an interchange with the Tazewell & Peoria in the summer of '19, near the end of their time on the Keokuk Junction.
Tiptoeing through the weeds with one of their last trains on the KJRY before retirement.
Swinging through the woods at Marietta, IL on their very last run with the KJRY, August 7th, 2019.
Speaking of F-units, here's one for sale if you're so inclined. Grafton & Upton is selling their out-of-service F7A, #1501, on Facebook Marketplace. This thing was built for the Bessemer & Lake Erie, did time on the Toledo, Peoria & Western during the weird period of Delaware-Otsego ownership, then came east to the Adirondack Railroad, before being sold to the G&U in 2011. I heard it had a prime mover failure on the Adirondack in 2006, and G&U replaced the prime mover only for it to have another failure in 2014 that put it out of service. Adirondack guys said it was solid and rust-free (rust is a huge issue on the unibody F-units) but was mechanically very tired and required heavy investment that they weren't equipped for.
From the ad: "Serious inquiries only, as long as the post is up it is available. I will not respond to anything other than serious inquiries. Yes I work for the company, yes I am directed to sell this by the owner. Project locomotive needing work. Not running. Will make for a good restoration. Grafton and Upton railroad has no use for it and we would like to find a buyer. Serious inquiries only. Interchange is CSX, will need draft gear alignment adapters to be interchanged."
And, I learned at Ahead of the Torch, the sale of the #1501 is very much a "If somone doesn't buy it, it will be scrapped."
The #1501 when it was Adirondack #1500 in the weird NYC-inspired paint scheme that the Toledo, Peoria & Western was using right before Delaware-Otsego owned it. From Matt Giardino: "I remember when that thing showed up in the Susquehanna yard shortly after they purchased the TP&W. I thought "Why did they bring that thing east?" The next week it was in the MA&N yard (Adirondack didn't have their own track in Utica at that date). "That's why!" I said."
The other, other O&W.
When a railfan hears "O&W", typically their first thought is of the New York, Ontario & Western, which quite frequently went by Ontario & Western or just O&W, even in company materials. The logo was even just a W inside of an O, and their mascot was named Owen W. The sickly anthracite hauler, which famously started nowhere, went nowhere and ended nowhere, vanished on March 29th, 1957, after years of mounting losses.
But those in the southeast might think of the Oneida & Western, a shortline that traveled thee roughly 30 miles between Oneida, TN and Jamestown, TN. A prosperous timber hauler in the '20s, at the O&W’s peak in 1922, the railroad featured three daily round trips for passengers, but the popularity of the private automobile saw passenger ridership numbers decline, and by 1936, the O&W offered only three daily round trips via a motorcar on the tracks. Additionally, the Great Depression had softened coal sales, and all of the virgin timber had been harvested, and talks of the Wolf Creek Dam in 1938, and traffic from hauling construction materials, were dashed by the outbreak of WWII. Post-war, the Jewell Ridge Coal Company purchased the O&W and intended to use the line to access new underground coal reserves along the Big South Fork and to an active mine at Zenith. But a lack of investment and maintenance in the tracks or locomotives made Jewell Ridge Coal’s plans financially impossible. Despite mining plans that were still under development, the O&W had only one profitable year since 1930 and was running with just two or three trains per week. The operating ratio soared to truly dismal 155%, the company filed with the ICC for euthanasia in 1953, and the last train operated over the line on March 31, 1954. David Page Morgan recounted happening upon the O&W's funeral procession with Phil Hastings and watching as a single 2-8-0 would shuffle forward with several flat cars, a crew of gandy dancers would pull spikes, unbolt joint bars and lift the rails, and then the whole process would start over.
Jump forward to 1981, and the Shamrock Coal Company was moving considerable amounts of coal from their mine to a South Carolina power plant, and L&N was the one hauling it. But, the Ol' Reliable wasn't so reliable, and was having issues with power and car shortages, which was causing some consternation at the Shamrock Coal Company. Since the L&N couldn't guarantee a supply of locomotives and hoppers, Shamrock made a decision to buy eight SD40-2s to L&N specs, enough coal hoppers to kit out two unit trains, and two cabooses. These solid unit trains would be operated by the L&N over L&N rails and would guarantee there were always locomotives and coal cars available to keep the power plant fed. The locomotives and cabooses were painted an odd two-tone green and the Oneida & Western name was dusted off. This arrangement would last until 1987, when CSX took over the L&N, and the O&W SD40-2s went north to BCRail.
New York & Lake Erie announced that they have MLW M636 #636 fully painted and in service hauling excursions. I believe this will be the only place you can ride behind a 6-axle Alco/MLW in regular service. I'll have to get out there and see the big #636 this summer.
On the subject of blue, yellow and gray Alcos, D&H RS-3 #4085 made it's public appearance this weekend at the D&H Railway Historical Society's Railfan Weekend on the Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson with it's cab repainted in the classic D&H lightning stripe livery. The #4085 was recently acquired by the new historical society and moved to the SC&H in an Erie-inspired paint scheme leftover from previous owner, the defunct New York & Greenwood Lake. There was a lot of speculation on what paint scheme the #4085 would be painted; delivery black and yellow, the famed "lightning stripe", and even a few championing the Altschul Blue dip. The debate was ended, with the #4085 making it's appearance with the cab repainted.
From what I've heard from those who have seen her in person, don't expect to see the #4085 running in the too-near future. She's intact and complete, but pretty rough after spending nearly 2 decades sitting outside in New Jersey.
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