Grassroots Railroad Sports?

On Friday and Saturday, Adirondack was supposed to be running trips from Utica to Thendara and back for the Old Forge "Christmas on Main Street" even, which goes from Friday to Sunday. The Adirondack can't run on the state-owned rails above Remsen (Snow Junction, technically) starting December 1st, so Saturday would be the last train on the north end for this year. I checked Friday night and saw that it departed at 10am, and also noted that the website alerted me that there was only 4 tickets available, which indicated it likely wouldn't be canceled for lack of ridership. The forecast also called for snow in the northern and western parts of NY, so there was hope there would be some snow on the north end. 

I got out to Utica at 9:30, to see what they were going to be using for power. I was partially expecting for MA&N's two C425s, since last I knew, the #3573 and #1845 were having mechanical issues and I hadn't seen the #1835 around much this year. When I got there though, the #1845 was hooked up to the head end of the consist by itself, which seemed an odd choice. One, the #1845 only has 1800hp, and, two, it had issues last I had heard. I bumped into Bill Moll up to Thendara when I chased #2400 south this summer, and he said that it had sat out most of last year due to mechanical problems, the shop crew solved those, it ran north to Thendara once and then developed a host of other issues. It was really odd that they were only going to use the #1835, since the #2400 was down at the east end of the yard idling away, tucked in amongst the passenger cars they weren't using. (The #2400 presumably isn't winterized yet, and it was too far away to hook up to the station's electrical power, so it was left idling to keep it from freezing the water in the cooling system)

As it got nearer to 10am, I found it odd that the crew hadn't lit off the #1835, or the undercar generators on the passenger cars, nor did I see anyone coming over the pedestrian bridge. The gate into the yard that MA&N and Adirondack crews use was also still closed. I eventually wandered into the station and noticed that the Adirondack's office wasn't open either. A check of their Facebook page had no mention of cancelations, but they sure weren't running. Since there had only been four tickets left, I can't imagine it was due to lack of ridership. The only thing I can surmise is that the weather was bad enough north that Old Forge canceled their event, and without the event, the Adirondack had no reason to run up there, and they must have e-mailed or called ticket holders. 

I hung around until 11, just in case the departure schedule was wrong.

"NYC" SW-1 #705 and GP9 #1267, along with an old ex-VIA coach. This track is usually where equipment is placed before leaving the property. I know the #705 is leaving the property, not sure on the #1267. Maybe the private owner is getting rid of it, maybe it's leaving to go be worked on somewhere, or maybe it was just placed here to get it out of the way for the time being.

New York Central 0-6-0 #6721 on display in front of the station. She looks pretty good, considering a number of years ago some kids cut loose a covered hopper and it rolled down the track and hit the #6721 hard enough to shove it back into the station tower behind it, breaking the pilot beam and number plate and cramming the tender into the cab.

An eastbound CSX autorack.

And an eastbound Amtrak Empire Service train behind P32AC-DM #717.

If I had wanted to get some trains running in the snow, I could have gone west and photographed the Arcade & Attica, who was running, I believe, 6 trains a day with two separate trainsets pulled by GE 80-tonner #113 and GE 65-tonner #112, and they got hit with quite a bit of snow. But my fear was that, since it's a three-hour drive out to Arcade, I would get partway out there and they would shut down due to snow, since they are really not that far from Buffalo, who got walloped with multiple feet of snow. Or, that I would get out there and get snowed in and not be able to get home.

I feel bad for Steam Railroading Institute. The Christmas season is the big time of year for their steam engine, Pere Marquette #1225, largely because it was used as the basis for the (nightmarish) Polar Express film due to it's number (#1225, 12/25, get it?). Unfortunately, an issue was found with the superheaters on the #1225, which already sat out most of the season receiving heavy running gear work, and SRI has determined that it is just not feasible to get the issue resolved for the 2024 season. Instead, the excursions on the Great Lakes Central will be pulled by diesels, with the #1225 on static display at Owosso.

I forget which line it was, but it was a pretty major tourist operation (I want to say Grand Canyon Railway) that said that Polar Express trips generated over 50% over their annual revenue, which is a pretty mind-boggling statistic. But I can believe it. Adirondack puts tickets on sale for theirs in early spring and they're completely sold out before summer, usually prompting them to add more capacity later in the year.

One thing I did learn was that, if possible, avoid using the Polar Express name. There was a volunteer for another operation who said that the first year they used the Polar Express name and they were busier than hell than the preceding Christmas season, but paying the royalties for the Polar Express name chewed up almost all of the additional revenue. The next year theye used the legally different name of "North Pole Express" and no one seemed to notice the slightly different name, ridership was still through the roof, and they didn't have to pay royalties.

One thing I've noticed that seems a big disingenuous is how Western Maryland Scenic Railroad keeps saying something to the effect that their Polar Express trains will hopefully be steam-powered, but they reserve the right to substitute power. Pretty standard fare for any steam-operating railroad, and nothing too bad at face value, until you hear that some people have directly contacted the railroad to ask about whether 2-6-6-2 #1309 will be running for Christmas trains and the railroad has outright told them that, no, the #1309 will definitely not be running for the Christmas season. Just comes across a bit of a bait-and-switch to keep saying the #1309 will hopefully be used for Christmas trains so that people will buy tickets, when off the record the railroad apparently knows that it definitely won't be running.

Speaking of bait-and-switch, NS held a poll last month for which of four railroads they should honor with a new heritage unit:

• Delaware & Hudson
• Tennessee, Alabama & Georgia
• Atlantic & East Carolina
• Pittsburgh & West Virginia

D&H was the overwhelming winner of the poll, since the other three are relatively obscure, especially the A&EC, and the D&H has a larger fanbase as a result. I did think the inclusion of D&H was a bit odd, since the real purpose of heritage units is trademark protection, and while NS owns D&H trackage, CPKC owns the D&H corporate entity still. Why make a heritage unit to protect a trademark that you don't own?

The new heritage unit was to be unveiled on December 4th. Well, someone flew a drone over Altoona yesterday and caught a freshly-painted unit outside the shop. And it's in TA&G route paint. Not going to deny that it's damn good looking, but why even offer the poll if they were just going to ignore the results and make what they wanted to make?

The interesting thing is that while NS owns the TA&G trademarks, they no longer even operate any of the old TA&G system, having ripped up the last remnants of it back in 2010. Southern acquired the line in 1971, and the TAG reporting marks were used in the NS area, mainly for accounting purposes. There was an ex-TA&G locomotive on the NS roster until 2015 though, GP38 #80, the first high hood GP38 and the last new diesel bought by the TA&G. It was named John A. Chambliss in honor of the railroad’s vice president, and was dedicated on his 80th birthday, hence being numbered #80, and when NS retired it, as NS #2789, the Chambliss family raised the funds to purchase it and donate it to TVRM, where it was restored to it's original appearance.

The Tennessee, Alabama & Georgia’s entire diesel roster, a GP38, GP18, and three GP7s, heads a freight out of Chattanooga in 1970. The 90-mile TA&G, which linked Chattanooga with Gadsden, AL, was absorbed by the Southern Railway on January 1st, 1971. You can see the differnce beween the early round cab roofs of the GP18 and GP7s, and the angular "Spartan cab" of the GP38.

Apparently the New York & Lake Erie has partially-painted their newly acquired MLW M636 and put it back in service. This was one of the ex-Quebec Cartier Mining M636s that Western New York & Pennsylvania had purchased and then parked back in 2020 when they got the GE AC6000CWs that they're now getting rid of. I had seen photos of the #636 at the WNY&P's Olean shops with NY&LE reporting marks, but no real other info. Asking around I had heard one theory that they had bought it for use down on the Oil Creek & Titusville, which is an NY&LE subsidiary down in PA that hauls revenue freight and weekend excursions and is supposedly the real moneymaker of the two operations. The other theory I had heard was that they had purchased the out-of-service #636 to use as a parts donor to keep their two MLW FPAs in service and maybe put the ex-N&W high hood C425 back in operation.

Well, they've painted the nose of it in the NY&LE blue and yellow and on Facebook they've posted videos of it hauling passenger trains. According to someone who seems to have inside knowledge, the plan actually was to part it out, because they thought that, since it had been parked for almost 5 years, it would need too much work to make run again. Instead, they found it was in very good shape and they would rather not part out a good locomotive. It is kind of big for NY&LE operations, since they don't have any freight customers and their excursions are just three cars. But on the flip side, it's the same horsepower as their FPA-2u/FPA-4 pair, but with 2 less axles and associated brake parts, 2 less traction motors, 4 less cylinders, one less turbo, one less generator, one less control stand, etc. Of course, now I'm thinking, "Hmmm, I can drive to Gowanda and back in a day, and they're running 3 trips this Saturday, and they have lots of snow....." 

Conway Scenic ran a plow special with ex-MEC/VTR GP38 and their ex-Lamoille Valley V-plow up to Crawford and back. Historically, CSR didn't run the MEC Mountain Division in the winter, and that line hasn't seen regular passenger service in the wintertime since '58, but this year they've decided to do snow trains to Crawford and back, and that requires keeping the line cleared.

A rare piece of snow-fighting equipment, the Jull Centrifugal Snow Excavator, which was invented by Mr. Orange Jull of Ontario, Canada, in the late 1880s. This odd-looking machine looks like a giant corkscrew on wheels, and the idea was that when this machine encountered a snow bank the rotating blade would burrow into the snow and throw it out a chute to the side of the track. This machine was supposed to be more efficient than traditional rotaries. However, the machine was plagued by problems and less than a dozen were built from 1880 to 1892, including one for the Illinois Central and two for Union Pacific. A copy of reports written by an Illinois Central manager, written after this machine made its first run on the IC, bandied about the terms "not impressive" and "unsuitable for our purposes" repeatedly. I know that the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg tested one, and I believe the New York & Oswego Midland also did, and none of them bought them either. I recall reading that the RW&O found that they were prone to jamming and that the screw hanging out so far over the front truck made it prone to derailing. In April 1890, a snow plowing trial was held near Alpine Tunnel, Colorado, and the more conventional, and well-known, Leslie rotary plow won the trial, at least in the trade press of the time, which likely contributed to Jull's downfall.

NYS&W has a one-way plow that they keep stationed up to Utica. I believe this thing came from Conrail, and it's hard to see but it only throws snow to the right, and it only has a wing on the right. This is because it was intended for use on double-tracked mains; you wouldn't want to use a V-plow and be tossing half the snow on the other track, and railroads use right-hand running, so you ran a one-way plow in either direction to throw the snow to the right away from the middle. They work fine on single-track lines, but it's not what you would typically use them for.

Of course the big stick when it comes to snow removal is the Leslie Rotary Plow, designed by the Leslie brothers, who formed the Rotary Steam Shovel Manufacturing Company in Paterson, NJ, although they contracted with Cooke Locomotive & Machine Works in Paterson to do the actual construction. The Leslie brothers were from Toronto, and had actually built the first full-size prototype for Orange Jull and his Jull Centrifugal Snow Excavator, but Jull later sold his design rights to Leslie Brothers. The pinnacle of the Leslie Rotary Plow were the 1948-1949 Lima-Hamilton "duplex" rotaries designed at the request of UP.

Following the harsh winters of 1948-1949, Union Pacific approached the locomotive builders to design and purchase a modern rotary snow plow, since Alco had built the last domestic rotary snowplow in 1937. Apparently, only Lima-Hamilton Corp. responded with a proposal, since during the design process, Lima saw a potential market for a new design rotary snow plow. The all-new design was announced to the industry on December 19th, 1949, although two had already been sold to Union Pacific. Formal construction began in late spring 1949, working with Union Pacific on the design, and the first plow for Union Pacific was completed on December 30th, 1949. A total of four plows were built: one for Rock Island, one for Soo Line, and two for Union Pacific, numbered as UP 075 and 076. All four plows were completed in the late December 1949 to February 1950 time period.

The design was unique and modern in every way, using designs and processes that were as up-to-date as possible. For easier maintenance, the design used a boiler that was mounted with its smokebox toward the rear of the plow. The boiler burned fuel oil, as well as other types, including diesel fuel due to its increasing availability and use on the railroads. The plows were equipped with six 13x15 vertical cylinders, and they were basically two Lima Pacific Coast Shay engines mounted side by side. The engines were located, three on each side, in front of the boiler to allow better access for maintenance and better connection to the rotary wheel itself. This design allowed the combination of a horizontal drive shaft and spur gears to drive the wheel. The plows had a total of 1,500 horsepower each, fifty percent more powerful than previous rotary snow plow designs. The tenders assigned to the UP's two plows came from ex-C&O 2-8-8-2s, UP #3572 and #3592, respectively.

The big Lima-Hamilton "duplex" rotaries were never dieselized, and weren't a huge sales success because Lima's timing was poor. Diesel rotaries were just about to come into vogue, yet these were expensive and modern steam rotaries that had decades of life left in them. So far older sisters went to the front of the line for rebuilding and dieselization/electrification. UP retired one, UP 900075, in April 1977, after suffering freeze damage, and the other, UP 900076, in 1985, and both are preserved. The Lima rotaris that Rock Island and Soo bought are both long gone, although someone tells the tale of Dick Jensen robbing the smokebox door off the Rock Island one to give his ex-CB&Q 2-8-2, #4963, a makeover. Jensen reportedly loathed the CB&Q flat smokebox doors, and planned to change that, and Rock Island had retired the rotary by then. He never got around to doing that due to the illegal eviction from the C&WI roundhouse that landed the #4963 in a scrapyard. Historians have wondered what happened to that smokebox door, but it was likely scrapped.

So, I felt like I needed a really successful photo outing after the past couple trips weren't terribly great; the 470 Railroad Club photo runbys on Conway were middling, the SC&H Operation Toy Train event had horrendous lighting, and Adirondack scrubbed the Utica-Thendara "Christmas on Main Street" trip last weekend. Adirondack will be running more Christmas trips, but only Utica to Holland Patent and all at night. So I knew I had to head west, which was also advantageous becausee I knew the Buffalo area had a tone of snow. But I was on the fence about either Arcade & Attica (closer at 3 hours) or New York & Lake Erie (3 hours and 30 minutes) but decided on the NY&LE, somewhat hoping for that M636 to be in use. And if the M636 wasn't running, hey, matched MLW FPAs is a helluva consolation prize.

So, I made the 3 hour and 30 minute drive out there, and when I got to Gowanda, M636 #636 was sitting cold and covered in snow, making it seem unlikely they were running that. It was also front-coupled to some passenger cars, so it was hard to get a good shot. Hard to see, but next to the #636 is an old B&O S-1 switcher. The NY&LE, before acquiring the FPAs, ran with Alco S-series switchers, they still have a nicely-restored ex-Erie S-1 in fact, and so they still have a bunch of pretty rough parts donors floating around the yard at Gowanda. I have heard that they've cut up some of the ones that were really picked over in recent years. The M636 was also coupled to one passenger car in N&W paint with "Atlanta Railcar" lettering and a pretty scruffy open-platform observation car which seem to be new arrivals. NY&LE currently only has 3 active passenger cars, so maybe the plan is to expand the fleet with these.

A closer look at that observation car really left me scratching my head. It's a bit hard to see, on account of the dull white paint, but it has a bay window grafted on over the rear truck, replete with a wiper blade and forward- and rearward-facing spot lamps. And then there's whatever this yellow mechanism is grafted onto the truck. I have no clue what it is. Some sort of track-detection equipment? It's really bizarre.

There's also this awesome old Penn Central two-bay hopper.

And a chalky blue St. Lawrence Railway boxcar that was part of the infamous Incentive Per Diem Boxcar craze of the '80s.

And at the end of this line of equipment, we have a couple flatcars and a caboose that still wears the LA&L/WNY&P joined coupler logo. This wasn't here last year, and I'm guessing the acquired it during the big LA&L/WNY&P/OMID cleanout that's going on, which was also when they got the M636. Boy, LA&L is really just getting rid of everything on all of their lines. Behind the caboose is their ex-N&W high hood C425, which has not run in decades. The rumor was that the #636 was acquired to get this thing running, but they decided that the #636 was in too good of condition to part out. This locomotive made a silver screen appearance, lettered for the fictitious ConTrack in Planes, Trains & Automobiles and the NY&LE was also filmed on for The Natural at the South Dayton depot, with GTW 2-8-2 #4070 shipped east for the film as well. 

I also drove the route to refamiliarize myself with the line. With all the recent snow, they had run the line that morning with the FPAs to clear the tracks and had shoved mountains of snow out into the grade crossings, literally blocking the entire right lane at every crossing. It made it easy to see that they had no intentions of running all the way to South Dayton though, since they had only cleared a little past downtown Dayton.

Arriving back in Gowanda, they were running the FPA pair around the train. The #6758 is an FPA-2u and the last remaining FPA-2. Originally built for Canadian National as a passenger-equipped version of an FA-2, with 1600hp 12-244, it was later rebuilt by MLW with an 1800hp 12-251, bringing to to FPA-4 specs. While being the last FPA-2 sounds impressive, it's really only special on paper. The FA-2 and FPA-2 used the same carbody as the FPA-4, so it's visually indistinguishable and you'd have to be a rivet counter of the highest order, and with the 251 swap it's also now mechanically identical to an FPA-4 as well. An odd historical footnote is that the 12-244s culled from the 2 FPA-2s and 2 FPB-2s that were upgraded were installed in those oddball MLW RSC-23s that CN used on lightly-railed branch lines and resembled an RSC-2 that ran into a wall at a high rate of speed.

The #6764 is a much more conventional FPA-4, but still a looker. There was another guy and his elderly father there and they were kind of bummed that NY&LE wasn't using the #636 (they had ridden in the #636 from Olean to Jamestown when it was on the WNY&P) which is pretty wild because I think the only other place running matched FPA sets is Cuyahoga Valley. I was much more baffled by the decision to hook the pair together and then shove the whole consist south and then pull north instead of putting an FPA at either end and running push-pull. Especially with the fact that nearly every crossing on the way to Dayton is unprotected and multiple are on a blind hill. Without an End-of-Train Device that technically does require a crew member to dismount and flag the crossing.

Hooked up to the front of the train, consisting of one ex-B&O coach and two of those old DL&W EMU cars converted to coaches, at the Gowanda depot, ready to make the shove south to Dayton. The paint scheme that the FPAs wear is based off of the Erie livery, since the NY&LE owns the southern half of the old Buffalo & Jamestown Railroad. The B&J was incorporated on March 23, 1872, to build a line between Buffalo and Jamestown. The road was opened in sections and was completed in July 1875 but was never financially successful and the Buffalo & Jamestown Railroad was sold on December 12, 1877, to the Buffalo & South Western Railroad. The Buffalo & South Western Railroad was short-lived and was leased by the New York, Lake Erie & Western, later and better known as "the Erie", on August 1, 1880. On November 19, 1895, the Erie officially merged the Buffalo & South Western by virtue of owning 100 percent of the B&SW stock and it became "the Buffalo and South Western Railroad Division" of the Erie Railroad, and later Erie-Lackawanna, before being cast off by Conrail. So the FPAs wear a blue and yellow version of the Erie livery, somewhat fitting since the Erie owned quite a few FA-1s and FA-2s, although none of them were setup or used in passenger service. FPAs in the US were exceedingly rare, with no FPA-4s  and only 38 FPA-2s and 13 FPB-2s built for US railroads (Missouri Pacific was the biggest buyer, surprisingly, with 19 FPA-2s and 6 FPB-2s). 

A map of the Erie's line in NY, with the B&SW highlighted in red, the segment of the B&SW owned by NY&LE in blue (the northern portion is owned by Buffalo Southern), and the Dunkirk Branch (more on that later) in yellow. Also, note the strange routing of the Erie, which missed Utica, Syracuse and Albany entirely and only accessed Rochester and Buffalo via the ends of branches. The only major city the mainline directly hit on it's way across the Southern Tier of New York was Binghamton. This routing continued as the line marched west as well, missing most major cities in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois as well. It made for a hell of an express routing for hotshot freight but meant there were few on-line customers.

Bob Dingman, owner of NY&LE and the Oil Creek & Titusville, has always tried to push this plan of the state and counties funding the reopening the NY&LE south of South Dayton all the way down to Jamestown and then getting trackage rights on the Buffalo Southern north to Buffalo to run Buffalo-Jamestown excursions. It seems a pipe-dream that really wouldn't have the ridership to support it, and there are said to be some immense washouts south of Cherry Creek to deal with, and the public mostly screams about wasteful spending and moneygrabs and pork-barrel projects any time it comes up. The line has been rehabilitated south to Cherry Creek, but they don't run regular excursions below South Dayton.

Shoving south out of Gowanda on the first trip. Lots of snow out here, in fact, up over the hill in Perrysburg they had over 4 feet. While still able to get good shots with them leading south, there were a few locations where I would have loved them to have been leading on the south end of the train. There is a runaround at Gowanda and Dayton, but I'm sure they didn't want to wrestle with a frozen-up switch buried under 4 feet of snow at Dayton.

Continuing south at Maltbie Road. One downside to this chase is that it's a lot of narrow country roads with no shoulder with minimal shoulder, compounded with high snow banks in the winter. Oh, and most of them are on blind hills. So I was awaiting someone to come flying over one of those hills at Mach Thirteen and just annihilate my Impala. I normally wouldn't miss the Impala but I was three and a half hours from home in the winter. 

Nearing the end of the trip at Dayton. A regular winter wonderland out there.

Stopped just past NY-62 in Dayton before continuing north. There's actually a pretty jury-rigged connection down there to access a remnant of the Dunkirk Branch (Dunkirk-Salamanca) that goes down to Cattaraugus. When NY&LE got it, it was still intact down to Salamanca, where it connected with the Southern Tier Line there, but in 1990 the portion south of Cattaraugus was torn out and eventually replaced with the Pat Mcgee Trail in the early 2000s, while the portion north of Cattaraugus was retained and had a freight customer. It was damaged by floods and landslides in the 2010s and is also no longer operation, and I remember hearing that there were NS cars trapped on that segment that NS basically just wrote off.

Heading north again, that is the "Dayton Loops" the train is passing through. Overhead would have been the right of way for the northern stretch of the Dunkirk Branch, which went up to Lake Erie ports at Dunkirk. That was the end of original mainline of the New York, Lake Erie & Western, but demoted to a branch when the Erie decided to continue west to Chicago. It's hard to find much information on the Dunkirk Branch, but I believe this line was abandoned in 1972. That would track with the proclivity for washouts in the area, Hurricane Agnes shredding the E-L (and PC) in western NY, and E-L's financial health at the time.

When I was here last summer, I actually got closer to the northern portal, but that was by walking a camp road up from the south side and walking through the Loops. That camp road was buried with at least 4 feet of snow, so I tried to hike alongside the rails from James Road. Farther walk than I thought, and the snow was literally up to my waist, so this was as close as I got.

Rounding the curve headed back into Gowanda. More hiking in snow, knee-deep this time. But here were some old felled trees and a snapped off telegram pole or two that made for terrific footing. I really like the second photo.

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Back at Gowanda. They were running three trips a day, at 11am, 1pm and 3pm. There was a real glut of Christmas specials going on that day. Arcade & Attica was running sometehing like 6 trips, Buffalo Southern was running three trips out of Hamburg under their Buffalo, Cattaraugus & Jamestown non-profit, Falls Road Railroad was running a trip, and Finger Lakes Railway was also doing a Christmas excursion. I thought about trying to go up to thee BSOR/BC&J, since Hamburg was only 30 minutes north, but, their trips were at 10am, 12pm and 2pm, and I would basically only catch one trip of the NY&LE and one of the BSOR/BC&J. Instead, I decided to hang around for all three on NY&LE.