ALL TOO OFTEN, WE TEND TO IGNORE the local rail sights until it’s too late; I did this with the old Lehigh Valley around my hometown of Auburn, New York. But one day in June 1968 I traveled the dozen or so miles from my home to a wide spot in the road known locally as Skaneateles Junction.


Hart Lot, its original name, is just a fly speck on the map of New York State. Its raison d’être was the junction of New York Central’s Auburn Branch with the Skaneateles (pronounced “skinny-atlas”) Shortline Railroad. “The Shortline,” as we referred to it in jest, comparing it to the railroad in the game of Monopoly, was a five-mile line built as the Skaneateles Railroad in 1838. The track left the Auburn & Syracuse Railroad (one of the oldest segments of the New York Central) and ran southward to the tiny community


36 JULY 2013 • RAILFAN.COM


at the foot of the Finger Lake from which it took its name. Horse-drawn cars plied the strap-iron rails until the 1850s when steam locomotion finally appeared. Over the years, Hart Lot be- came better known as Skaneateles Junction and, much later, the New York Central became the Penn Central. The Shortline was known for its ca- sual operations and for its collection of unusual locomotives and rolling stock. In fact, the line rostered an 1870-vin- tage center door baggage car of about 25 feet in length, two or three archbar trucked truss rod flat cars, and an old steam locomotive tender right up until the 1970s. Motive power consisted of General Electric 44-tonner No. 6 and GE 45-ton side-rod No. 7, both in a handsome deep blue paint scheme. Operations were erratic in later years and when, prompted by a


washout, the southerly 2.5 miles of track to Skaneateles were abandoned in early 1967, movements were depend- ent on the needs of sole customer Stauf- fer Chemical Company (they would lat- er purchase the struggling railroad to ensure a reliable connection to the out- side world). That was why, on this prime summer’s day, it was indeed good fortune to witness the events de- picted here that brought the sleepy lit- tle hamlet of Hart Lot back to life, if on- ly for an hour.


Penn Central ran a local, officially designated DQ-1, from Dewitt Yard in East Syracuse to Auburn and back. This slow freight wound its leisurely course westward five days a week, usu- ally with one RS-3 and a vintage wood- en, offset cupola caboose spliced by an assortment of freight cars. Though the abandoned depot remained at the


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62