Fans Give Thanks as Vintage Equipment and Domes Return to Amtrak Adirondack
THIS YEAR, AMTRAK BORROWED THE MOST UNUSUAL equipment in years to supplement its Thanksgiving week peak travel services: A dozen Budd coaches and two dome-observation cars from VIA Rail Canada. The vintage equipment was assigned to the Montréal- Albany segment of the Adirondack, which had been terminating in the
mile branch in the Labrador Trough which will serve a new iron mine being built by Tata Steel Minerals near Schefferville, Québec. The line will be built and operated by a new GWI sub- sidiary, KeRail, and will connect with Tshi- uetin Rail Transportation (former Québec, North Shore & Labrador) at Schefferville; TRT will forward the ore south to Emeril Junction, Newfoundland/Labrador, where QNSL will move the trains to the St. Lawrence River docks at Sept-Iles for transshipment by water to Tata Steel mills in Europe.
Grafton & Upton
TRACK REOPENS TO HOPEDALE: After resurrecting its long-dormant trackage between the CSX interchange in North Grafton, Mass., and West Upton in 2009, short line Grafton & Upton has been rehabilitated as far south as Hopedale, where the first train arrived at the new G&U Logistix facility on October 1. The road’s traffic is primarily lumber and bulk mate- rials moved to transload facilities in North Grafton, West Upton, and now Hopedale. The road operates with ex-Santa Fe CF7 No. 1500, ex- Adirondack (née Bessemer & Lake Erie) F7 No. 1501, ex-Bay Colony (née-PRR) GP9 No. 1750, and ex-Canadian National (née-Grand Trunk Western) GP9u No. 1751; and a mother/slug set of ex-Santa Fe GP7s Nos. 2210 and 2167 arrived in September. Unfortunately, the company un- ceremoniously scrapped low-mileage Alco S4 No. 1001 in 2008, along with ex-Manufacturers Rail- way S4 No. 212 and 44-tonner No. 9.
26 DECEMBER 2012 ¥
RAILFAN.COM
New York capital city since Hurricane Sandy worked her “magic” on the Hudson Line at the end of October. The good times only lasted about a week as the equipment deadheaded south from Canada on November 18 and the Adirondack returned to its usual Amfleet equipment on Novem- ber 27. The equipment went back north in mid-December.
Iowa Pacific Holdings
MOVES INTO NEW ENGLAND: Iowa Pacif- ic Holdings and its Permian Basin Railways subsidiary have acquired an 80 per cent inter- est in Cape Rail, Inc., and its subsidiary Mas- sachusetts Coastal and Cape Cod Central rail- roads. Mass Coastal provides freight service on former New Haven trackage between Middle- boro, Buzzards Bay, and Hyannis and between Taunton, Fall River, and New Bedford. An array of dinner trains and seasonal scenic ex- cursions, and other passenger services are run by CCC between Buzzards Bay and Hyannis.
SANDY BOOSTS SARATOGA FREIGHT: High demand for aggregate material for use in reconstruction projects related to Hurricane Sandy will result in the accelerated startup of freight service on Saratoga & North Creek’s recently acquired Tahawus Line. Mine tailings made up of high-friction granite will be shipped out of the former National Lead Tahawus plant to contractors and concrete plants in the area affected by the hurricane as soon as January 2013, at least two months ear- lier than originally anticipated.
Jersey Central 113
MAKES BREAK-IN TEST RUN: On Novem- ber 23, 2012 Railway Preservation Project 113’s ex-Jersey Central 0-6-0 No. 113 made its first test run over about a mile of Reading & Northern’s Minersville Branch in Minersville,
Penn. The only glitch was a balky air compres- sor. On September 8 the beefy switcher had been steamed up in front of the Minersville station and moved a few feet, but this was the first time it had moved a significant distance under its own power since 1960. The event was a testament to the dedication of the team of shade tree mechanics, led by Robert E. Kim- mel Jr., who restored it over a period of years with nothing more than a blue tarp for a shop. While the locomotive is in excellent running condition, presently there are no plans for its operation on a regular basis. Jeff Terry chroni- cled the locomotive’s restoration in the Febru- ary 2009 LINESIDE LEGACY column.
NJ Transit
STORM RESPONSE IS QUESTIONED: Lawmakers are demanding answers as to why NJ Transit decided to move equipment to the low-lying Meadows Maintenance Center be- fore Hurricane Sandy struck on October 29, 2012. Fearing the possibility of the Raritan River’s flooding the tracks in Bound Brook and stranding equipment stored at the Raritan yard, and remembering how Irene flooded the Trenton Tranportation Center on the NEC and stranded equipment stored at the Morrisville (Penn.) Yard, NJT officials decided to vacate those facilities and move equipment to the Meadows. They claim that when the decision was made on Saturday October 27, the storm surge was not forecast to submerge the MMC. However, by the time the storm arrived on
JOHN SESONSKE
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