Grassroots Railroad Sports?

NickD said:

In a couple months, they are running the Operation Toy Train trip from Syracuse to Binghamton on the Syracuse side of the Northern Division, and I'm planning to go get photos of that.

Doing some thinking on this one, and Binghamton is really only an hour north of Scranton, and the next day Iron Horse Society is running their Christmas trains out of Scranton to Nay Aug Park for Steamtown (well, provided this infernal government shutdown is over by then). Part of me is considering spending the night in Scranton and going and catching those, but I suspect they won't be steam-powered, since BLW #26 has a cracked boiler currently, although the NKP Geep or D-L Alcos wouldn't be too bad. 

Reading & Northern is also running Christmas trips out of Tamaqua that same Sunday (Dec 7th) but those will likely just be pulled by the GP38-2s that R&N uses for passenger service. I say "likely" because they did use the 4-6-2 #425 on the Christmas trains out of Tamaqua and they did say that the #425 would "return later this year" and it's not back yet. The Christmas trains would be the last chance for the #425 to make an appearance this year and also kind of fitting, since the very last time the #425 ran was on the 2022 Christmas trains out of Tamaqua. It's not out of the question that it might make a surprise debut but seems unlikely. And no steam out of Minersville either, since the #113 ran out of boiler time last year. It was supposed to make it's last runs on Christmas trains las year and then an FRA inspector swung by on a surprise visit and they found a small leak in the backhead that knocked it out of service. 

As if by coincidence, current photos of the #425 in the Port Clinton steam shop were posted on the R&N Facebook group and, yeah, don't think she'll be running this year

OK Nick.  Here is a weird, but probably easy one for you(!):

In reply to aircooled :

Entirely fictional. Someone took a J1 2-10-4 and duplicated the drivers, cylinders and boiler course. PRR had some articulated engines, but no 2-10-10-4s, nor did anyone else. ATSF and Virginian did have some 2-10-10-2s though, of varied success. ATSFs were wretched, Virginian's were pretty successful and long-lived but rarely photographed. 

If you want to run or fire a steam locomotive, Strasburg is doing a one-day only In-Cab Experience with Canadian National 2-6-0 #89 on November 14th. $600 to be the engineer, $400 to fire it. I considered it, but with having to buy heating oil for the winter, purchase snow tires for the new car, and school and city taxes due this month, not sure I feel like dropping $600.Plus I'll hopefully get two days of photoshoots with CN #89 next year, if the charter that was planned for this November actually happens. Still can't quite figure out how ticket sales can exceed expectation and still fail to raise enough money to make the event happen.

https://www.strasburgrailroad.com/89-in-cab-experiences/?fbclid=IwY2xjawNfZuZleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETEyZ2kzalZrZldRWEJnbW5YAR4Drj4FOmJtun9zl-MXWDU70M3WtcyYULhA5Ygn7oZ6pwqNN979qmzBeJamvw_aem_zS1-hOYDlFRYGKp9kKPdCQ

In reply to NickD :

Oh, good catch!   Sorry, not trying to fool you (good breakdown of the mod though).   I was not careful and was looking for a shot that was less obvious, but this is what I intended to post (I still suspect this will be super easy for you also):

In reply to aircooled :

That would be that ridiculous Soviet 4-14-4, the only 14-coupled engine built, and with good reason. The story goes that some young Soviet engineers came to the US in the '30s, saw Union Pacific's successful 3-cylinder 4-12-2s and decided to go one better. The other part of the design was that Russian railways were using 0-10-0s and 2-10-0s as primary power, and they were fairly small engines that just used the high axle count to run on the lightly-railed system (more axles spread the weight). The 4-14-4 was an idea of building an engine that was more powerful but could still be handled by the light rail, and the AA20-1 indeed could run on 73lb rail. There were plans to build two, but those were abandoned after constructing the single example, which proved to be a massive failure. It straightened every curve it came to and refused to negotiate switches and also had some other fundamental issues, notably too small of piston valves for the cylinders and usage of coal with too low of an energy content. It supposedly existed until sometime in the 1950s before being scrapped and I imagine that photo is of it from shortly before it met the torch.

In addition to UP's wonderful 4-12-2s, Germany and Austria did have a couple of 2-12-2 tank engines, and Indonesia also had 28 narrow-gauge 2-12-2s as well.

NickD said:

Plus I'll hopefully get two days of photoshoots with CN #89 next year, if the charter that was planned for this November actually happens. Still can't quite figure out how ticket sales can exceed expectation and still fail to raise enough money to make the event happen.

I actually still have Monday and Tuesday Nov. 11th and 12th of this year off, since I took it off for that charter before it got pushed back a year. Kind of rattling around a few different ideas in my head currently.

One, just hang out in the area and get the NYS&W Utica Branch and maybe catch the Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern in action. NYS&W UT-1 is pretty regular and easy to catch, but the MA&N runs "as needed" and will spend whole days in the yard sometimes.

Two, take a crack at catching the Batten Kill Railroad. That's a real rare operation, but it seems like Mondays are a fairly solid bet. The big news over there is that they got RS-3 #4116 back in action just the other week, which was acquired from the D&H/Greenwich & Johnsonville when the D&H sold off the G&J subsidiary to Bill Taber to form the Batten Kill. They've also got Hal Raven's RS-1 and a pair of RS-36s operating. If I did that, it would likely be a case where I'd go out to the BKRR on Monday and then go to Utica for the NYS&W and/or MA&N on Tuesday.

Three, go west and try and get the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville's big Alcos before they're gone. Could be a two-day thing, or go over to the Finger Lakes Railway on the other day.

Four, and the one I'm kind of leaning towards, is to head down to Scranton on Sunday night or maybe even Saturday night and spend a couple days along the Delaware-Lackawanna. I've always wanted to photograph the D-L but while they seemingly run every day, there's no sort of set schedule for where they'll go. The phrase is always "Be at Bridge 60 at 8am." You get there in the morning when they're getting ready and find out whether they're going south to Mt. Pocono or north to Carbondale or just making a hop over to NS's Taylor Yard from there.

I hadn't seen Adirondack C424 #2400 running since this winter and wondered what was up. Well, apparently she needed some new shoes and received them yesterday.

NickD said:

Four, and the one I'm kind of leaning towards, is to head down to Scranton on Sunday night or maybe even Saturday night and spend a couple days along the Delaware-Lackawanna. I've always wanted to photograph the D-L but while they seemingly run every day, there's no sort of set schedule for where they'll go. The phrase is always "Be at Bridge 60 at 8am." You get there in the morning when they're getting ready and find out whether they're going south to Mt. Pocono or north to Carbondale or just making a hop over to NS's Taylor Yard from there.

Well, we're headed to Scranton in two weeks. Hotels are fairly cheap and I got one from Saturday to Tuesday. So I can either head down Saturday evening and have three days or leave really early in the morning on Saturday and have four days. I figure that over that span I should be able to catch some good operations on the D-L other than yard hops over to Taylor Yard. And if I do somehow get bored of D-L Alcos, I do have the option to jet down to Pittston and try and catch R&N's PIME (Pittston-Mehoopany).

Kind of the big three attractions on the D-L currently, are the freshly repainted D&H RS-3 #4068, the two freshly-repainted Erie-Lackawanna C425s, #2452 and #2461, and the big ex-Cartier M636s.

It is funny seeing the #4068 getting a bunch more use now that it's been repainted. D-L at one point had four RS-3s, one ex-CNJ and three ex-D&H, and after restoring them all and getting them running and back in original appearance, they were used sparingly. I've heard that crews didn't like the long hood forward configuration, and found the cabs hot and kind of cramped, plus I believe they still have manual transition on the traction motors. In pretty short order, all four were parked at the Von Storch Shops and only brought out for special events at Steamtown or the occasional charter over the line by certain groups. Last year, they sold off two of the D&H RS-3s, #4103 and #4118, to the SC&H, due to the lack of use on the D-L and the SC&H's strong D&H heritage. Then this year they repainted the #4068, and it's been spotted out and about quite a bit, frequently paired with ex-LV C420 #414. That lashup isn't that far out of the question in terms of history, since the D&H acquired the LV's C420s in 1976 as part of the agreement to become Conrail's competitor to keep Conrail from having a monopoly on the northeast. 

D-L currently owns two of the LV/D&H C420s, #414 in LV "Yellow Jacket" paint and the #405 in Genesee Valley Transportation's corporate gray, yellow and red. Recently there was a discussion on Facebook about units that had left the D-L that were missed and founder, president and CEO David Monte Verde said that while it was never a GVT/D-L unit, he really regretted LV/D&H C420 #408 get away. The #408 was a third member of the low-nose C420s that Lehigh Valley purchased new and then was acquired by the D&H during Conrail's formation. In '87, Guilford sold off the C420s, and the #408, and the mostly parted-out #404, was acquired by a private owner. The #404 never left the D&H shops at Colonie and was scrapped, but the #408 made it's way up to central New York and was moved to Rome in the mid-'90s to have work done to it. It was eventually leased to the Adirondack Railroad, being renumbered to #2046 and repainted into solid black paint, but it did pinch-hit on GVT's Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern while still in D&H blue, gray and yellow with primer patches and the original number on it.

According to the Adirondack guys, it was a good running unit and spent a lot of it's years up on "the north end" (Lake Placid-Saranac Lake) but was in need of replacement of at least one power pack and had some wheels that were getting pretty thin by around 2004. The engine had also changed hands once, and the new owner continued to lease it to the Adirondack. The exact details of what happened get a bit murky and contentious. Some of he Adirondack guys claim they were never informed that the engine was up for sale, while someone else (maybe the owner) claims that it was offered to them along with an ex-Long Island high hood C420 as a parts donor for a screamin' deal that the Adirondack didn't bid on. Whatever happened, GVT/D-L wasn't aware that the unit was available and it sold to VLIX who moved it down to Tennessee to the Southern Appalachia Railway Museum, where it ran for a few years, but as far as I know, SARM stopped offering excursions in 2016 and it sits in a line of diesels, still in Adirondack paint, rusting away. The D-L would have really loved to have gotten their hands on that thing, due to the Lehigh Valley and D&H history.

The #408 at Mechanicvile, NY in the spring of '77, with the #414, and a Reading GP39-2, in the background. The #408 is one of the lucky ones that got D&H paint, and a pretty good paint job at that. A lot of the Reading GP39-2s and ex-LV C420s and GP38-2s rattled around in their original paint with D&H patch-outs well into the '80s, and some of them that were seemingly the lucky ones to get repainted ended up looking even worse because they didn't clean or prep them before applying paint. The ex-LV GP38-2s that were repainted ended up looking pretty scabrous when the D&H blue started falling off almost immediately because the paint had been applied over dirt and oil and grease. The #414 is also on it's second paint job, since the C420s were delivered in the unique yellow and gray and then many of of them were reshot into the more traditional Cornell Red before they were ten years old. The #414 is now owned by the Delaware-Lackawanna, and it wore the Cornell Red for it's entire D&H career, then was sold off as a wrecked out-of-service hulk to ARHS/Southern Railroad of New Jersey (parts off the #404 were used to repair the body), who got it running again and restored it to the original LV "Yellow Jacket" appearance, where it ran until acquisition by the D-L in 2011. 

The #414 undergoing repairs at Colonie in July of 1987, after having been smashed up in a derailment on the Adirondack Branch (Saratoga Springs-Tahawus). Parts were cut off of the #404 to make repairs to the #414 to get it off the property. The #404 was bought by the same folks that bought the #408, but by the time repairs were made to the #414, it was a pretty chopped-up hulk that was missing trucks and there was no way to move it from Colonie to Syracuse, so it was cut up at Colonie.

D&H also had a single C420 that didn't come from the Lehigh Valley as well, the #401. In the days before Conrail was officially created, it stood to inherit 21 Alco C420s; twelve LV units numbered #404 to #415, and nine Lehigh & Hudson River units numbered #21 to #29. When the last minute decision was made to make D&H become a Conrail competitor by doubling it's size via trackage rights over Conrail, the USRA also gave the D&H permission to raid the pool of motive power for equipment to help out with all their new territory. Along with the brand-new Lehigh Valley GP38-2s and Reading GP39-2s, the D&H also grabbed up the twelve Lehigh Valley C420s, which were 13 years old but still in decent shape and were relatively familiar equipment to the D&H (they hadn't owned any C420s, but they knew Alco 251s from the RS-11s, RS-36s and C628s). This left Conrail with just the 9 L&HR C420s, which made them oddballs on the roster, and the lack of dynamic brakes made them even less desirable. Conrail wasn't terribly inclined to keep any of the Alcos, but they did repaint some of the C425s, C430s, C628s, C630s and C636s and the big 6-axles hung around for a while. The L&HR C420s, on the other hand, were used with the orders that they were to be given basic maintenance just to get them over the road, but no major overhauls and no paint, and when a failure sidelined them, they were to be disposed of. Conrail began selling them off or cutting them up in 1980, and D&H purchased the #29 as a parts donor. It arrived at Colonie Diesel Shops, and the D&H found that it was in good operational condition, so they instead renumbered it to #401 and pressed it into service with D&H patches on the nose and hood. Always at a bit of a handicap due to the lack of dynamic brakes, it still hung around into the Guilford era, where it received the #420 and was given the gray and orange paint with the big G. Like the rest of the C420s, it was unloaded in 2987, and it went west to the Arkansas & Missouri where it became their #58 and is still rattling around. It's shown here with two of the C424ms (basically C420s in a C424 shell), an ex-LV C420 in D&H paint, and one of the ex-Reading GP39-2s, also in D&H paint.

The #413, still in very poor condition LV "Yellow Jacket" paint, leads a road freight through Allentown, PA. The two locomotives behind it were ex-Long Island Rail Road C420s, which were built with passenger gearing, steam generators, and Long Hood Forward controls. When the long-term lease on the first batch of C420s came due, LIRR let the units go and the company that financed them was storing them at the D&H's Colonie shops. They decided to try leasing them out and D&H pressed the 10 into service starting in January of '77. The high-speed gearing and lack of dynamic brakes did them no favors on the hilly D&H, and they were used only sparingly and left the property before the year was out. Behind the three C420s is an RS-3u, which was an MKRail rebuild of an RS-3 with a 200hp 12-251 in place of the 1600hp 12-244.

The #409 had received a D&H herald on the nose and a black line through the Lehigh Valley lettering on the side of the hood when the D&H took ownership, but after seven years, that's nearly faded away. The #411 behind it received the solid dark blue dip with yellow end chevrons, but is absolutely filthy in this photo. They're passing through the old LV yard at Lehighton, which was always sort of a strange arrangement, since it was the opposite side of the Lehigh River as the LV's mainline. Use of Lehighton Yard declined after the 1967 Joint Trackage Agreement with the Jersey Central, when the CNJ and LV coordinated and combined operations west of Easton, PA. Both mains remained as far as Allentown, with the LV main being used as a bypass around the former CNJ Allentown yard and west of there, all the way to the Lackawanna Valley, the operations of the two roads were combined on more-or-less alternating sections of CNJ and LV trackage, with pieces of former CNJ left in place to reach a few customers, along with Packerton Junction where a piece of CNJ was left in place to reach Jim Thorpe and the line over to Haucks, PA. This made Lehighton Yard largely superfluous and by this point.it has become a field of bushes, but a few tracks remain on this side of the main tracks to serve the anthracite mines on the Hazleton branch. The ex-Erie caboose is new to the joint, but the Conrail blue SW8s were also LV, equipped with dynamic brakes and M.U. hookups for use on runs to the coal mines.

One of those awful D&H repaints that just didn't hold up. The whole engine was at one point painted dark blue with a solid yellow nose, and most of the blue has fallen off to reveal the Cornell Red and LV lettering. I also like the wacky numberboard on the engineer's side that look like kids wrote the numbers

NickD said:

NickD said:

In a couple months, they are running the Operation Toy Train trip from Syracuse to Binghamton on the Syracuse side of the Northern Division, and I'm planning to go get photos of that.

Doing some thinking on this one, and Binghamton is really only an hour north of Scranton, and the next day Iron Horse Society is running their Christmas trains out of Scranton to Nay Aug Park for Steamtown (well, provided this infernal government shutdown is over by then). Part of me is considering spending the night in Scranton and going and catching those, but I suspect they won't be steam-powered, since BLW #26 has a cracked boiler currently, although the NKP Geep or D-L Alcos wouldn't be too bad. 

Had a bit of an "Oh, duh" moment with this plan yesterday. I got looking at the Operation Toy Train schedule to see if there was another OTT event in the area of Binghamton on the 7th, and they're basically picking up right where they left off a Binghamton and heading down the NS Southern Tier from Great Bend, PA to Shohola, PA, including passing through Lanesboro, PA and crossing the Starrucca Viaduct, which will be a pretty rare daylight shot, since the only real moves over that bridge anymore are the Susquehanna's SU-99/SU-100, which take place at night (They can't leave NJ until after the NJTransit evening commuter rush is over, since NJTransit uses their rails between Sparta and Hawthorne) other than instances where they get so delayed that they depart early the next morning.

Sadly, shots like this at Starrucca are no longer possible, and not just because the D&H isn't around anymore and NKP #759 isn't running excursions. No, its because the rails beneath Starrucca have been gone for 40 years now. The D&H's Penn Division from Binghamton to Scranton passed under the north end of the viaduct, and that was a twisty, hilly piece of railroading. There was a ramp track that connected to the D&H, at a location called Jefferson Junction, and then climbed up to the Erie line on the south side of the viaduct (compass south, railroad north) that allowed interchanging cars or even detouring over each other's line, called the Jefferson Junction Connector. Circa 1980, the D&H petitioned to acquire the DL&W mainline from Scranton to Binghamton, which was shorter, straighter and had milder grades, since the Erie-Lackawanna hadn't used it much and Conrail was using it even less. The D&H got the DL&W line, and most of the traffic was moved over to there, other than oversized loads, since the Belden Hill Tunnel on the DL&W was on the small side. By 1984, the D&H had enough of that, and they launched a program to enlarge the Belden Hill Tunnel, and it brought a brief resurgence to this segment of the Penn Division. Trains would leave Scranton with road power on the head end and bring them up to Lanesboro and under Starrucca. Then the road power would run around to the other end and a "puller" set stationed at Jefferson Junction would hook the to tail end, drag the train up the Jefferson Junction Connector and onto the Erie mainline and unhook, and the road power would take the train up to Binghamton, where it would either stay on the Southern Tier and use trackage rights to go to Buffalo, or it would hop on the D&H mainline and head to Mechanicville, or Albany, or Montreal. Then in '85, the Belden Hill Tunnel, now big enough to handle double-stacks and the like, reopened and with that, they ripped up what was left of the old Penn Division.

A Conrail bay-window caboose passing over Starrucca in 1983, with the weed-strewn Penn Division underneath, essentially abandoned for the past 3 years.

And four-axle Conrail power, including a B23-7 and a GP30, climbing towards Gulf Summit, with the Penn Division below. The track to the right is the former mainline, while photographer Doug Lilly was standing on the Jefferson Junction connector.

The big occasion six years ago was when Bennett Levin's E8s made their last runs on the Southern Tier for the Operation Toy Train. Bennett Levin owns a trio of gorgeous restored PRR passenger cars and he also bought a pair of ex-PRR E8s that he restored and used to haul fundraising trains and private railcar charters all over the northeast. When the new PTC rules hit, he approached NS and offered to supply the equipment if the railroad would supply the crews. NS agreed, and Levin set about rounding up additional cars for the train. Other donors included John Webb, who provided two cars; the Western New York & Pennsylvania Railroad and the Morristown & Erie Railroad, which supplied an additional car; and Amtrak, which donated two baggage cars. Sadly, due to lack of PTC, the E8s could not lead on the trip, so a pair of NS SD60Es were tacked on the head end, but when they reached Starrucca, NS parked the train, cut the SD60Es off, and allowed photo opportunities of the E8s on the bridge. This was the last time the E8s ran, and they've been placed in long-term storage ever since.

Starting next year, Metro North is going to be making runs to Albany and back to NYC, which is a 68 mile extension of their current Poughkeepsie-NYC operations. Amtrak has had to decrease Empire Service frequencies and even merge a couple routes (the Capitol Limited and Silver Star were combined to revive the Floridian name) as they work to overhaul the East River Tunnel that they use to access New York Penn Station. This tunnel reconstruction project is slated to last several years, and so, in an attempt to ease traffic issues, Metro North and Amtrak have worked together to add a northbound and southbound run from Grand Central Terminal to Albany-Rensselaer, with Metro North equipment and crews. It's an interesting solution, since Metro North's access to NYC is unaffected, although the times seem a little backwards; the northbound NYC-Albany run is in the morning, while the southbound run from Albany to Grand Central is in the evening. Kind of backwards for anyone planning to use it as a commuter run.