Beacon Line Maintenance / Current Status / Background

I guess the most important thing is that the track is still in place.
Actually I think the State of New York put up a considerable sum of money a few years back to upgrade railroad crossing protection on every crossing that was on a school bus route.
Much of the crossing protection between Hopewell Junction and Beacon
was upgraded by Penn Central when they started running through freight
trains over the line in the early 1970's.
Noel Weaver

From '67 to '70 I lived near Lake Walton in Hopewell Jct. and commuted to Buchannan via Rt. 9. About 1968 a notice was posted in the Poughkeepsie Journal and everyone received a form letter in the mail outlining the upcoming rail upgrade for the Beacon Line and Maybrook line. They mentioned that the upgrade would allow 100+ car trains and that residents "might" be inconvienenced at grade crossings.

They weren't kidding. By late 1969 I had to make sure of my time leaving home so as to not get caught at the Rt 82 or Rt 9 crossings. I worked 11pm/7am and when I would walk out to the truck to leave and could hear a train I'd go back in for another cup of coffee! My biggest car count at Rt 9 was 126 cars going toward Beacon. When the track upgrades were near complete it wasn't long before the first of the "letters of inconvience" began appearing in the paper, folks crabbing about the delays at the crossings. I guess you could say that the "economy" and the bridge fire ended that.

(It was funny though to be at Rt 9 during a heavy traffic period to hear the automobile horns blowing at the train going slowly by the crossing! Some people see themselves as oh so important...)

Weekends TLW and I would listen to a single train for 45 min. or more coming and going... Sadly, folks will never enjoy that sound around there anymore.

Harold,

I'm assuming those days of 100+ long car freights came to an end with the fire on the Poughkeepsie bridge?

Why hasn't that bridge been put back into service for freight? Is the State afraid someone will come up with the idea of running (dare I say) "Light Rail" with people aboard, over it? That would be a great way to get people from a West Hudson Park and Ride over to Metro North.

Dieter.

This might be getting a bit off of topic, but I didn't think the Poughkeepsie RR bridge saw that much traffic around the time of the fire. I'd think if it was useful, they would have replaced it. From my understanding, at the time, the damage was that major that it couldn't have been repaired pretty easily (and from what I know about freight RR's, if it's hurting business, they'll repair it as fast as they can).

Definitely off-topic, so maybe after this we should start a new thread somewhere else, but here goes anyway:

The reason traffic fell as much as it did before the fire is that the bridge was primarily a way to get from the NHRR to the Erie/EL, for New England traffic. Once PC got in the picture, they didn't want to give the traffic to EL, so they tried to route everything through Selkirk. The fire was very convenient for PC - repair was absolutely an option, but they stalled and stalled, and the traffic dried up. EL went belly up, Conrail came in, and you're left with an abandoned bridge.

Jim

Up to end of Conrail on the line and take over by Housatonic.
There were to trains traveling tis line from Selkkirk to Cedar Hill and Back.
SEOP and OPSE, both were usualy around 80 to 100 cars long.
Part of those trains was dropped at Danbury for local service rest went on to Cedar Hill.
I qualified the line for MNCR during last few years of Conrail and ran a few of these big trains on the branch with John Maseck(eng) and Tom Sherwood a.k.a Chipmunck (condr) it was fun for a Pasenger guy like me to play with big choo choo's like they ran then.

The trains from Selkirk,NY to Cedar Hill,CT were SENH and NHSE...Not SEOP and NSOP. Those were Selkirk,NY to Oak Point,NY (aka trash trains)...

ASD

SEOP and OPSE....sorry

ASD

you are correct my mistake SEOP OPSE are the former oak point trains over Hudson Line.

Folks, you are really talking here about APPLES (Maybrook) and ORANGES (Beacon). They are not the same.

At the time of the Poughkeepsie Bridge fire in 1974, there was only one round trip left between Maybrook and Cedar Hill with cars off both the Erie Lackawanna and the Lehigh and Hudson River.

The Beacon Branch on the other hand was repaired in 1970 or thereabouts so the line could be used as a connector between the Hudson Line and the Maybrook Line and provide a route for through freight between Selkirk and Cedar Hill. It was also need for cars between Selkirk and Oak Point that were too big to clear on the lower portion of the Hudson but could clear as far as Beacon.

For a while, there were two separate freight trains running each way on this route: CH-4 and CH-3 between Selkirk and Cedar Hill and LI-2 and LI-1 running between Selkirk and Oak Point via Danbury. Eventually the clearances were improved on the lower Hudson to the extant that the cars that had to operate via Danbury could finally operate via the Hudson and
MO to Oak Point.

The line went through a number of "ups and downs" through Penn Central and Conrail until finally the remaining cars using this route dwindled down to the cars for Danbury and point rediating out of Danbury. The job was a two sided job running six days a week between Selkirk and Danbury. When the Housatonic Railroad bought the Danbury cluster from Conrail,
they routed all of the Danbury cars from Pittsfield and received and delivered Conrail cars at Pittsfield.

After the last Conrail trains ran, the signal maintainer at Danbury was kept on the payroll long enough to disconnect the crossing protection on all of the crossings between Danbury and Beacon.
Noel Weaver

I have some very fond memories of the Beacon line. My father and I chased trains from Hopewell Jct to Beacon more times than I can count, both before and after the bridge fire. They ran some pretty long trains then. The average as I remember was about 125. They usually had 5 engines both directions. The trains as a rule were longer selkirk bound. I remember one that had over 180 cars. They had cabooses then too! Lots of good memories.

Made two trips past Hopewell yard on Friday (15th) and that work train was not in sight. What kind of railroad service does that train perform?

Regarding the bridge fire, I always thought that any business, even a major railroad, would have had in place a way to get fire protection out onto that bridge. Reading the accounts of the fire it is incredible that the fire departments had tried to fight the fire from under the bridge. For whatever reason there was no way to get any equipment out to the location of the fire. The departments wound up mostly protecting structures under the bridge from falling embers and firey creosote.

Even back in the "Olden Days" fire protection was prominant on trestles and bridges if nothing more than barrels of water. If it had been possible to get proper pumping/tanker equipment, even a small unit, out to the fire it would have been put out before any significant damage occured. Reading further in the sad story it seems to this reader that the fire and lack of preparedness was very "convienient" to the abandonment of this line. Another "slash and burn" business tactic ending in massive waste.

Even though a visually pleasing and historic example of cutting edge engineering and construction of the late 1800's, saving the rest of the bridge has become a heel dragging tooth pulling nightmare of financing. A current actual user of the bridge (river crossing power cables) Central Hudson Power appears mostly uninterested in maintenance or restoration financing.

My recolection is that there was a water system on the bridge, but it was out of service at the time of the fire.

hoharold wrote:Regarding the bridge fire, I always thought that any business, even a major railroad, would have had in place a way to get fire protection out onto that bridge. Reading the accounts of the fire it is incredible that the fire departments had tried to fight the fire from under the bridge. For whatever reason there was no way to get any equipment out to the location of the fire. The departments wound up mostly protecting structures under the bridge from falling embers and firey creosote.

Even back in the "Olden Days" fire protection was prominant on trestles and bridges if nothing more than barrels of water. If it had been possible to get proper pumping/tanker equipment, even a small unit, out to the fire it would have been put out before any significant damage occured. Reading further in the sad story it seems to this reader that the fire and lack of preparedness was very "convienient" to the abandonment of this line. Another "slash and burn" business tactic ending in massive waste.

There WAS a fire suppression system on the bridge, along with a fire watch at one time. Allegedly, the standpipes were never drained during the winter of 1973-74 and they froze and burst, totally disabling the fire system. As there were previous fires on the POK bridge, the May fire was an "accident" waiting to happen, or no accident at all depending on who you ask.

Anyway, I digress to the original topic.....I lived in the condo's alongside the Beacon branch at Route 9 in Fishkill in 1983 and 84. At that time, the only scheduled run was a normally noctural turn job. During the summer months, it would often return just after sunrise. It's sad to see this line further downgraded, I can just imagine how much fun they'll have flagging that Rt 9 crossing.

Well the crossing arms have been gone from the Rt 9 crossing for some time now, and I wouldn't have tried to go across that crossing with just the lights flashing, since most people wouldn't expect to see a train.