Cool Chromes -- Southeast New York State

Amtrak; Manitou, N.Y.; April 30, 1983

A lot of slides have come through the scanner recently showing scenes from the southeast corner of New York State -- the Hudson Valley and along the Southern Tier over towards Binghamton. Let's take a look at some of these chromes, and we'll do them in chronological order. Starting things off (above) we're in Manitou, just north of the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson River. A late spring has a lot of bare trees showing on April 30, 1983, as Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited splits a set of ex-New York Central signals.

Metro North Commuter Railroad; Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; November 9, 1986

 For our next shot we continue up the Hudson Valley to Poughkeepsie. Metro North Commuter Railroad (it has since dropped the word "Commuter" from its name) in conjunction with the State of Connecticut had rebfurbished and repainted some FL9 locomotives into the old paint scheme of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (the New Haven). A pair of the FL9s were used on a fan trip on November 9, 1986, that went from New York City's Grand Central Terminal, out the former New Haven to South Norwalk, Conn., then up the Danbury Branch to Danbury, Conn., and over the Maybrook Line to Poughkeepsie (EDIT: The Maybrook Line comes out at Beacon ,s oI don't know how we got to Poughkeepsie, unless this was a GCT-Poughkeepsie trip. Hmmmm.) The train is about to finish the trip by heading down the Hudson Line back to Grand Central. The former Lehigh & Hudson River Railway bridge over the Hudson sits silently -- it had burned in 1974 and no trains had used it since. It is now the popular Walkway Over the Hudson trail.

New York, Ontario & Western; Middletown, N.Y.; November 4, 1988

The New York, Ontario & Western Railway was abandoned in 1957, the largest railroad in history to have been abandoned at that time. The line has always had a fanatical following, even in death, and the O&W Railway Historical Society celebrated its 25th anniversary in style in 1988. The railroad's (and society's) headquarters was Middletown, N.Y., where the line's massive combination station and office building survives. For the anniversary, the society borrowed an ex-O&W NW2 diesel owned by the New York, Susquehanna & Western (and painted in O&W colors) and posed it at the old station for a night photo session on November 4, 1988. The original station sign and baggage cart were brought out from the society's archives to complete the scene.

New York, Susquehanna & Western; Bainbridge, N.Y.; February 1989

Moving northeast of Binghamton, we come to the Delaware & Hudson Railway. The D&H had been operated by Guilford Transportation for a few years when suddenly Guilford simply decided to stop running it in 1988. The New York, Susquehanna & Western was tabbed to step in and run the railroad, and run it they did. Here we see a Susquehanna freight heading north up the D&H and Bainbridge on a wintry day in February 1989.

New York, Susquehanna & Western; Oneonta, N.Y.; November 1989

Later that year the O&W Railway Historical Society (remember them from a few photos ago?) ran a fan trip over the Susquehanna's D&H from Scranton, Penn., to Oneonta, N.Y. At Oneonta the diesel power was run around the train for the return trip, pausing by shuttered FA Tower for a photo opportunity. FA Tower was eventually dismantled and now sits in kit form just northeast of Oneonta at the Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley Railroad, awaiting reassembly.

Amtrak; Oscawana Tunnel, N.Y.; April 3, 1997

Once again we are in April and spring has not sprung in the Hudson Valley. We're at Oscawana Tunnel just north of Croton-on-Hudson on April 3, 1997, as a southbound Amtrak train emerges from one of the two side-by-side bores here. The locomotive is wearing what has become known as the Phase III Amtrak paint scheme; Amtrak has brought this scheme back on one of its locomotives for its 40th anniversary in 2011, but few remember that the original Phase III had a silver front; the modern reincarnation has a black hood which provides less glare for both crew and photographers.

Erie 835; Suffern, N,Y.; September 19, 1998

We'll finish our tour with something completely different. The United Railroad Historical Society of New Jersey restored a pair of E8 streamlined passenger diesels into the paint scheme of the Erie Railroad (the diesels are actually former Pennsylvania Railroad and Baltimore & Ohio, if memory serves me correctly) and operated them on fan trips to raise funds for a proposed railroad museum in the Garden State. Running all over New Jersey Transit, the pair ran several trips including this one on September 19, 1998, that took the locomotives just across the state line into New York.

And that concludes our tour of southeastern New York via Kodachrome. Thank for coming along!

Adirondack Weekend

Adirondack Scenic; McKeever, N.Y.; September 2, 2012

For Labor Day weekend I was invited up to the Adirondack Scenic Railroad to conduct a night photo session in conjuction with a railfan weekend and the 20th Anniversary celebration of the railroad. With events on Saturday and Sunday on the long weekend, I headed north from New Jersey on Thursday night.

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After getting a night shot at Susquehanna, Penn., of a New York, Susquehanna & Western freight under a massive coaling tower (a shot I detailed in this blog post) I continued my scheduled all-nighter by going up to Harpursville, N.Y., on the former Delaware & Hudson (now Canadian Pacific, but seeing a lot of Norfolk Southern traffic) and setting up my strobes for whatever came along crossing the bridge there. I had set up a little before midnight, and got an eastbound train a little later. There was another angle I wanted, so I kept the lights set up and fell asleep in the front seat of the car, hopeful that either a horn or a radio transmission would wake me up if anything else showed.

It was a radio transmission that got my attention. A train went through a defect detector just west of the bridge and I cleared my sleep cobwebs, grabbed my camera and ran out onto the parallel highway bridge. A couple of cars went by, probably wondering what I was doing in the dark with a camera pointed at the bridge. I soon heard the train blowing for the crossing just off the west end of the bridge and the train rumbled into the scene.

Norfolk Southern on Canadian National (D&H); Harpursville, N.Y.; August 31, 2012

It was only then that I noticed it was 5:30 a.m. and the sun was just beginning to brighten the eastern sky. There wouldn't be time for another train before daybreak, so I tore down the lights, got about another hour of sleep and headed north.

The plan was to spend the day on the Water Level Route of the former New York Central (now CSX Transportation). I had never been to Little Falls, N.Y., and did some exploring there, but wound up spending much of the day near Utica. The railroad was absolutely hopping, with trains running non-stop. As the day came to an end, I was on the platforms at the Utica Amtrak station getting trains in the last afternoon light before heading to the Adirondack Scenic at Thendara. Lodging would be Van Auken's Inn, directly across the street from the Thendara depot.

Amtrak; Utica, N.Y.; August 31, 2012

The next morning I watched the crews put the displays for the railfan weekend together and visited some of the displays at the depot (including a locomotive simulator, where I stalled a train in a snowstorm on a steep grade). The 20th Anniversary speeches occurred when the morning train from Utica arrived, then I rode first class from Thendara down to Otter Lake on the rear platform of a Baltimore & Ohio business car. At Otter Lake the two F-units powering the train ran around to the north end, putting them up against the rear platform for the return trip.

Adirondack Scenic; Otter Lake, N.Y.; September 1, 2012

Returning to Thedara, we found a rap group making a video on one of the railfan weekend display locomotives -- Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern M420W No. 2045. We watched with amusement as the group danced and recorded on the running boards of the locomotive, then had the rapper and part of his posse pose for a "railroad publicity shot."

Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern; Thendara, N.Y.; September 1, 2012

That evening we did several shots at the Thendara depot for the night photo session. Don Chaudruc, the mastermind behind the railfan weekend, posed in several of the shots at the classic ex-New York Central depot.

Adirondack Scenic; Thendara, N.Y.; September 1, 2012

On Sunday morning I took a drive through the busy tourist town of Old Forge, just up the street from Thendara. The sun was in and out, but I decided to drive down to McKeever to the bridge to photograph the morning train from Utica behind the railroad's freshly painted RS18s. It was cloudy when I walked into the bridge, but a large hole opened up at just the right time and I got a decent shot of the train in full sunlight (see the top photo in this entry). 

It was time to start heading back towards New Jersey, so I bid farewell to the great folks at the Adirondack Scenic and drove south (but only after another crack at the locomotive simulator -- this time I took an Amtrak train up the grade, topped the hill and promptly ran away down the opposite side at 80 m.p.h. until I wrecked). The Water Level Route was shut down to all freight because of a bridge replacement project near Albany, but Amtrak was getting through. Among the passenger trains I shot, I got the Lake Shore Limited passing eastbound through Amsterdam, N.Y.

Amtrak; Amsterdam, N.Y.; September 2, 2012

I had wanted to get over to Mechanicville and check out the restored railroad interlocking tower there. XO Tower at one time protected the crossing of the Boston & Maine and Delaware & Hudson; today it's Pan Am Railway and Canadian Pacific that pass by. Upon getting there, the sun wasn't quite where I expected -- it favored a northbound train, preferably on the D&H. I had about an hour I could wait, so the odds were against me seeing anything shootable -- but just as it was time to leave the northbound signal near the tower lit up and I was rewarded with a northbound CPR train, complete with a locomotive from CP component railroad Iowa, Chicago & Eastern in the lead.

Canadian Pacific; Mechanicville, N.Y.; September 2, 2012

From here it was time to head home. A quick stop at the new-ish station at Rensselaer revealed the platforms were off-limits to all but ticket holders, so I packed it in and headed back to the Garden State, wrapping up another adventure.