I
NEVER EXPECTED TO SEE MUCH FREIGHT in the city. New York seemed too dense, too many highways, too many
trucks. I had been away from the area for a number of years, only to discover the entire railroading landscape of the New York metropolitan area had changed. By the time I had returned in 2002 Conrail had
already given way to CSX. Local freight customers had dropped off to the point where one nighttime local could service them all, and many sidings were only switched “as needed.”
In an effort to help preserve compe- tition, Canadian Pacific’s Delaware & Hudson subsidiary was granted track- age rights to operate a through train between Saratoga Springs, N.Y., down the Hudson Line all the way to Oak Point Yard in The Bronx. Rights were also granted over Hell Gate Bridge so D&H could interchange directly with the New York & Atlantic (who had acquired the old Long Island Rail Road freight rights) at Fresh Pond. The service was scheduled to operate three times a week, with the northbound trip making the mad dash for Saratoga at the height of rush hour over Metro-North rails. It seemed like an improbable railfan dream as I patiently waited at subur- ban Scarborough station for the arriv- al of a D&H freight. Electric commuter trains came and went, along with a few GE diesel-powered expresses. Soon, the unmistakable chant of EMD freight en- gines could be heard in the distance. A headlight appeared, the wrong configu- ration to be a passenger unit. I put my camera up to my eye and focused on a brace of CP “Action Red” SD40-2’s that were hustling through the station. There were no freight cars trailing on this day, which was common in the early years of the operation. I shot the engines coming and going, still not quite sure what I had witnessed. Was this a fluke?
Over the next few years, most summer evenings were spent with friends track- side along Metro-North’s Hudson Line, trying to capture the D&H freight in as many different locations as possible. As I grew tired of some of the suburban loca- tions, I began to explore deeper into The Bronx, looking for unusual locations to capture freight action in the city limits. By 2010, D&H had canceled their ser- vice to New York City, which was a mar- ginal operation at best. Whatever traffic remained would be picked up by CSX and forwarded to the D&H at Albany. The status quo returned, and a colorful era of urban railroading had ended. Was it all a dream?
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