[Date Prev][Date Next] [Chronological] [Thread] [Top]

(erielack) Mahwah consists



Listers: I can't speak from any experiences in and around the plant area and the EL in the Suffern vacinity, but the trains to and from Mahwah did occasionally travel over the original main line through my hometown of Wellsville.  They primary took the River Line to get from Cuba Jct. to Hornell and vice versa, but were detoured from time to time over the original Erie main (my guess would be due to MOW windows, track conditions and congestion). The rolling stock I observed was, as other list members have mentioned, very heavily populated with 86' auto parts boxcars and bi / tri-level auto racks from a myriad of roads (actually, if my memory serves me right from 27 - 30 years ago or so, you could encounter rolling stock from just about every major Class 1 in existence at the time).   I would say that the NE / Eastern / Midwestern roads were most prominent.  There was also a healthy dose (particularly racks) of ATSF / UP / SP / CNW / MP etc. If you couldn't be trackside to see the train as it came through town, you could tell when the auto parts boxcars and the autoracks were in town by the click / click of the trucks on the segmented rail vrs. the piggy backs of NY 100 / 99 etc. and even that of regular manifests.  The manifests had a quick cadence to the click / click as the rear truck would hit a joint then quickly the front truck of the next car with a somewhat longer delay until the rear truck of that car made contact with the joint.  The piggybacks were, understandably, spaced longer between clicks, and the auto trains had the longest and also the loudest (actually it was more of a thud due to the greater amount of weight bearing down on the rail).   Also, the less-than-desirable track conditions at the time amplified the sound of the heavier cars. The piggybacks had a very rapid, staccato-like, cadence to their truck wheels rolling over the joints.  Actually, this was due to their greater speed, as my guess is that safety took a back seat to their priority schedue, as you could pace them by car on Railroad Ave. or Loder St., which both paralleled the line to the east and west, repectively and there was no way the piggybacks were under the 30 mph limit outlined in the EL employee timetables of the time. Chris


- ---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more

------------------------------