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914Driver
914Driver MegaDork
1/23/21 7:15 a.m.

Dismantling an 1875 railroad trestle that's 240 feet above the river, by removing the ties.  >700 ties, each weighing 650lbs.

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/23/21 9:47 a.m.

In reply to 914Driver :

That's the old Erie bridge at Letchworth, isn't it? Well, the second one, since the original bridge that the Erie built there burned after only a few years. Since Erie was broad gauge (6 foot gauge) until between 1876 and 1880, that bridge was constructed for the Erie 6' gauge.

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/23/21 2:11 p.m.

Sadly the Erie was a railroad that peaked almost immediately after its construction was completed and then began a long slide from then on. It's 6' broad gauge construction wasn't an issue in the early days, when interchange between railroads was not viewed as beneficial or valuable, but by 1876 they began converting it to standard gauge. It was successfully used as a tool to fleece Cornelius Vanderbilt out of millions of dollars when Jay Gould and his gang manipulated Erie stocks while Vanderbilt was trying to seize control of it. Despite reaching Chicago, it always played a distant fourth to the other NY-Chicago competitors, the New York Central, Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio. It's New York-Chicago passenger trains ran a full 8 hours behind its competitors (24 hours to their 16). Over the course of its life, it would suffer 5 bankruptcies, leading to it being nicknamed "the Weary Erie" and was joked as "going from Nowhere-In-Particular to Nowhere-At-All". In '54 it began talks of a merger with DL&W and they began sharing tracks and terminals in '56 to cut down on costs. Delaware & Hudson would also enter talks on the proposed DL&W/Erie merger but would walk away, perhaps seeing the Erie's condition. Once the merger went through in 1960, the Erie-Lackawanna was almost immediately a disaster, losing millions from day one despite the predictions of financial analysts. In 1963 the company gained new leadership under Bill White and he began to stave off bankruptcy and improve earnings but then he unexpectedly passed away in '67.  The EL was faced with several setbacks in a row, first, the creation of the disastrous Penn Central merger and then PC's 1970 financial collapse, both of which resulted in service disruptions and loss of traffic.  The completion of Interstate-80 stole much of it's trailer-on-flatcar traffic in 1971. The next year, Hurricane Agnes, destroyed much of the system's eastern trackage and dealt EL a fatal blow, wreaking havoc on its property and forcing it into it's fifth and final bankruptcy. Originally, the government looked at merging EL into Chessie Systems but then incorporated it into Conrail, ending the Erie's 144 year existence.

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/23/21 2:13 p.m.

A PRR I1sa 2-10-0 meets an Erie E8A in 1955. Steam was completely gone on the Erie at this point, while PRR's steam engines were rapidly losing ground to the internal combustion engine.

02Pilot
02Pilot UltraDork
1/23/21 3:09 p.m.

There are a couple of Erie locomotives parked in Port Jervis, NY. I should get over there to photograph them one of these days.

In the meantime, here's one I caught over the summer. North end of the Harlem Line in Wassaic, NY. Single track passenger line, short trains a few times a day, small town platform stations - it's quite a throwback.

Edit: Weird artifacts in the photo - must be something to do with scaling down the full-size scan. Sorry.

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/23/21 5:43 p.m.
02Pilot said:

There are a couple of Erie locomotives parked in Port Jervis, NY. I should get over there to photograph them one of these days.

That's Erie #833, an E8A. It was used as one of the Conrail executive units. Funny enough, if you look at that photo of the Erie Es, Fs and FAs at the Hornell engine facilities that I posted, the E-units all the way to the left is, you guessed it, Erie #833.

Purple Frog (Forum Supporter)
Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) GRM+ Memberand HalfDork
1/23/21 6:23 p.m.

Want to see a lot of locomotives?

BNSF has like 150 parked near Gillette WY.  Coal died, they aren't needed.

Jim Pettengill
Jim Pettengill HalfDork
1/23/21 11:33 p.m.

My grandfather Frank Brown was a locomotive engineer for the Atlantic and Great Western, which was absorbed by the Erie, driving a 4-4-0 back in the 6-foot gauge days, between 1868 and 1900, based in Meadville. PA.  When the Erie switched to what they called "narrow gauge" (which was actually today's standard gauge) in the A&GW area, they shifted about 400 miles of track overnight.  They had all new (well, different) equipment waiting and were back running the next day.  My family maintained ties in Meadville and although I grew up outside Rochester, NY, I went to college there in the 1960s.  These days I'm a narrow gauger and VP of the Ridgway, Colorado Railroad Museum (home of the Galloping Geese railbuses).

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/25/21 6:29 a.m.

Lawsuit in motion to decide fate of motionless train

Might want to get over to Port Jervis to see Erie #833, because Port Jervis is trying to get rid of her. It was owned by New York & Greenwood Lake Railway, which abandoned in 2012. According to the news article "Jim Wilson parked his old Erie Lackawanna engine and several train cars in the yard in 2006 with a one-year lease but has paid nothing for the space since then, according to Mayor Kelly Decker. Last year, the Common Council approved pursuing a proposal for a transportation museum for that location, which required that Wilson’s train either depart to make room for it or become part of it. Several months ago, Frank sent Wilson a letter with a deadline of Oct. 14 for removing his train, and then Wilson asked for an extension until Nov.1, which was granted. But after mechanics were seen working on the engine on several days, nothing moved. If the city wins the abandonment lawsuit filed this week, the train equipment would become city property, unless Wilson removes it before the determination is made."

There is also an ex-D&H RS-3 at Port Jervis and a bunch of passenger cars. And furthermore, they had a bunch of equipment over at Passaic, including an ex-LIRR Alco FA cab car, that is facing an uncertain future as well.

Erie #833, as Erie-Lackawanna #833, was the last locomotive assigned to the Cleveland-Youngstown commuter train, which ended in January of 1977. It was renumbered to Conrail #4022 and was one of their trio of executive units. Of the three Conrail E8s, the #4022 was not heavily upgraded electrically like its sisters were, but it had the best engines, which were culled out of former Reading re-engined Baldwin VO-1000 switchers. Bennett Levin and his Juniata Terminal Company purchased former Conrail #4021 & #4022 from CSX in 2001 with the overall goal of reuniting #4021 (PRR #5711) with CR 4020 (PRR 5809) previously purchased from Norfolk Southern.

Levin never had any concrete plans on what to do with #4022/#833, other than to store it properly and prevent as much deterioration as possible. He wasn't that interested in it, because it wasn't a PRR locomotive (He restored #4021 and #4020 to PRR colors and ran excursions with them until PTC shut that down) so he sold it off in 2006. Erie #833 did go down to Spencer, NC for the Streamliners At Spencer event and Levin said an NS Road Foreman asked him to look at it when it would not load. It was running on just the #2 engine with the #1 engine tagged down with internal water leaks. Nothing was in the condition it was when it left Juniata Terminal back in 2006.

 

02Pilot
02Pilot UltraDork
1/25/21 8:18 a.m.

In reply to NickD :

Have to see when I can make a run over that way. Not real close to me, but I'll be annoyed if it goes away before I get a chance to see it and get a few photos.

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/25/21 9:05 a.m.

In reply to 02Pilot :

It depends on what happens with it. If the owner chooses to abandon it, then it will become part of the planned Port Jervis museum. If he fails to move it soon (and he's had several years to get it out of there and hasn't), then it will be considered abandoned and also go to the museum. It's only if he fixes it up and moves it that it is is leaving. And it sounds unlikely he'll be doing that. At least it sounds like it isn't in danger of being cut up for scrap, which is good. I imagine if there wasn't a museum being built on the property, scrapping might be on the table.

It largely sounds like the usual cautionary tale of private individual-ownership. Guy buys a nice piece of equipment, irks the hosting property by never paying lease, runs the equipment into the ground and then doesn't have the money to fix it or move it when the bill finally comes due and then there is a mad scramble to try and save it before it gets torched.

02Pilot
02Pilot UltraDork
1/25/21 9:31 a.m.

In reply to NickD :

Yeah, I don't imagine removal is imminent, but I'd still like to get over there while it's still "in the wild," rather than after it's been (potentially) caged up in a museum. From what Google Street View shows, all the equipment is pretty accessible for photography right now.

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/25/21 10:23 a.m.

In reply to 02Pilot :

No mention of what is going on with the RS-3, #935. Hopefully that means it is already spoken for and has a future. While covered wagons seem to be recognized as a protected species, it seems like any era road switcher is fair game for the cutting torch.

The problem with this sort of situation is it makes all preservationists look bad and makes future efforts difficult. This one didn't involve a Class I, thankfully, but there have been similar instances. A historical chapter purchased an old Alco RS-3 and an S-1 and some freight cars and a caboose that were being retired and convinced CSX to move them and then store them in a yard until they could get the money together to assemble a display track and move them onto their own property. "Shouldn't be more than a year." The stuff then proceeded to sit there for over a decade, never paying rent, no further motions made to move the equipment to a new home. Finally CSX was making moves to abandon that yard and said "Listen, this needs to go" and the group still didn't have the money so CSX cut the stuff up where it sat, and then everyone on the internet tears CSX a new one for cutting up historical artifacts. So, after all that hassle, the next time someone comes to CSX with a similar plan, even if they actually have a solid plan and the money and are only going to store it there for a year, CSX is going to go "Last time this was a huge hassle and we got a lot of bad PR over something that wasn't our fault. Nope, no way." 

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/25/21 11:47 a.m.

I recently read an article where someone was pointing out how rail preservationists have honestly done a somewhat terrible job of preservation. They were slow on the draw in the '50s and '60s and let a lot of stuff get away. But then, they've never moved on from that era. Some important equipment from the '70s and '80s has gone completely extinct or is nearing extinction and there is no effort to save any of it, because they're hung up on saving every F- and E-Unit. There are few surviving GE U-boats, with some models completely gone. Not a single one of Amtrak's GE P30CHs were saved. No United Aircraft TurboTrains or French-built Turboliners either. The very first GE Genesis is in an Amtrak deadline rusting away. The GE C30-7 could be the next EMD E7 (once commonplace, but now only one left in existence) and would anyone really know? Amtrak's 50th anniversary is coming up this year, and Conrail's in a few more years, and employees from the early days are now starting to die off at a rapid rate, and yet there is no word on if anyone is writing a comprehensive history or trying to record the history they are losing. As a whole, there is a horrible track record  at recording and preserving oral history from those who were on the scene and participating at the time.

914Driver
914Driver MegaDork
1/25/21 12:42 p.m.

An abandoned liine in Miami.

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/25/21 2:29 p.m.

 Conrail #4022 pulling an officer car special. Conrail had installed Hancock air whistles on these, which were odd-sounding. 

 

NickD
NickD UltimaDork
1/25/21 3:18 p.m.

Some more footage of Hancock air whistles. New Haven had them on their FL9s and they hung around into the Metro North era.

 

NickD
NickD MegaDork
1/26/21 7:49 a.m.

CSX had an interesting derailment in Cincinatti yesterday. I cant quite figure out what happened here. Maybe the train slack ran in? No one was hurt, and no deadly chemical spills.

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter)
Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
1/26/21 8:29 a.m.

In reply to NickD :

surprise I sure wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere near that when it occurred! I wonder if Virtual Railfan has any cameras that caught it though?

02Pilot
02Pilot UltraDork
1/26/21 8:44 a.m.

In reply to NickD :

One report says it was a remote control train with no crew aboard. Only seven cars apparently, so quite short, and all empty. I wonder if it ran away and eventually derailed the front locomotive, causing it to stop abruptly and the rest to come flying forward. Front engine seems to be missing the rear truck.

NickD
NickD MegaDork
1/26/21 8:53 a.m.

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

I can't seem to find any footage of it happening. What's really baffling is it was just a cut of eight cars being switched at low speeds with a locomotive and a yard slug under remote control. I expected to hear it was a long train and running at high speeds and the slack ran in and jack-knifed the train in a vertical direction. But to stack cars up like that at 10mph with less than 10 cars is weird

914Driver
914Driver MegaDork
1/26/21 9:08 a.m.

914Driver
914Driver MegaDork
1/26/21 9:10 a.m.

The Cobble Hill Tunnel is said to have been sealed with an 1836 wood-fired locomotive inside.

Thirty feet below Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, there’s a tomb of stone. Its story is of a steam locomotive suspended in time, a man with a vision, and a city that holds all the keys.

In 1844 the Long Island Rail Road chose to bury a section of the line under Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn to avoid accidents between the train and local pedestrians. Fifteen years later the Cobble Hill Tunnel was sealed, possibly with a locomotive inside, and its location was lost in history.

The tunnel was half a mile long and massive, with enough room for two train tracks side by side, A 17′ arched stone ceiling, and limestone block walls 22′ apart. An absolute engineering marvel for the age.

In 1980 a Brooklyn man named Bob Diamond heard a comment on a radio show about an unknown tunnel underneath the city. Using old maps, he digs his way from a defunct utility hole 30 feet under Atlantic Avenue.
 
That locomotive has yet to be found. Diamond’s logical conclusion is that it, along with the tunnel’s lost marble station, existed on the other side of that stone wall at the other end of the tunnel.
 
914Driver
914Driver MegaDork
1/26/21 9:13 a.m.

CSX derailment in Harlan County, KY; caused by a rock slide 17 December, 2020.

NickD
NickD MegaDork
1/26/21 10:21 a.m.

CSX and other Class Is are facing a big pushback from the Brotherhood Of Locomotive And Trainmen. There have been a number of fatalities and derailments resulting from the remote control operations that they are trying to implement. Between March and May of 2020 there were six incidents alone. You have to wonder when the cost of all these derailments and collisions will outweigh the savings of remote operations. And then you have all the string-lining derailments and other incidents from Precision Scheduled Railroad. Norfolk Southern was putting trains on the ground pretty frequently because they kept string-lining trains, which is a pretty easy problem to avoid if you stop worshipping at the Church Of Hunter Harrison and drop that PSR nonsense.

And now I hear Union Pacific wants to try and run 400 car trains. Everyone is pitching a fit about that. Firefighters and policeman are concerned about crossings being tied up for 15-30 minutes. Crews are not pleased because 400 cars is a lot of slack to manage, plus you're going to have to jam all sorts of Distributed Power Units in the middle or you'll be ripping couplers apart left and right. They already aren't happy with the 200 car trains being run under PSR. Railroads are putting the bare minimum amount of horsepower that they can get away with on trains, so they struggle to get moving out of the yard and then hit a sag in the tracks or there is rain and the train stalls out before it clears the yard and they have to send the yard switchers to give a shove and get it moving again, and then if you lose an engine out on the road, you are stranded because you don't have enough power to keep moving. If you trip a hotbox detector or pull a coupler apart, you are hiking down a over a mile of cars trying to find the issue, while snarling up traffic because everything is so intricately scheduled. Up on CN, they were running trains longer than the passing tracks, so if you had to be put "in the hole", you had to dump half the train at one passing track, run ahead and put the locomotives in the next passing track, wait for the oncoming train to clear you, then reverse back and pick up the rest of the train and then proceed on and hope that another train didn't approach in that time.

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