Couple of questions about Adirondack Div.

1. Is there an book (or books) with photos of latter-day, i.e., 1960's NYC operations on this line?
2. I am aware passenger serice ended in something like early 1965, and since it was a "nocturnal" operation photos of it are probably extremely rare --- unless of course somebody caught the train laying over at Lake Placid during the day. However, i will ask anyway: are there any sources of photos of passenger runs?
3. Forgive me for having the nerve to ask a Penn Central question on the NYC forum, but how long did PC run a local freight up there? (I was up in that territory in the summer of 1971, compliments of the US Army assigning me TDY to Camp Drum for the summer; and i recall bering told it was running weekly then.)

To try to answer this in reverse order; I have the GO when the line was taken out of service and abandoned but I will have to dig for that and it will need to wait a while to do that.
The last passenger train was taken off with the time change in April, 1965. I have a movie of that train going in to Lake Placid one morning with an RS-3, a couple of head end cars, a 2600 class LW coach and a smooth side LW sleeper. That particular day there were no other trains scheduled in that area except for the SB trip that evening and I did not stay there for that. Two books will interest you: Fairy Tale Railroad by Henry A. Harter, published by North Country Books in 1979 and the other is Railroads of the Adirondacks, a History by Michael Kudish, published by Purple Mountain Press in 1996. I suspect you might be able to find these books, maybe at Ron's Books in Harrison who is a good source for stuff like this. Both books are worth having if you have an interest in the Adirondacks and their railroads. The photos in Fairy Tale Railroad are B & W and this book has lots of decent photos while the Kudish book has fewer photos also B & W but with a lot of diagrams and maps. I hope this helps.
Noel Weaver

Thanks Noel....... i have a different Kudish book, one of an evident 3-book series, called Where Did the Tracks Go in the Central Adirondacks? I forgot i had that until you reminded me! I' know Ron and I'll check him for other titles.

I seem to recall there was a fantrip went up there just before the end of scheduled service in the spring of 65, with E-8's for pwer. That must have been something to see

The fantrip was after regular passenger service had ended. The fantrip was on Sept 25th, 1965. It ran from Syracuse To Tupper Lake and back. Power was provided by 3 E-8`s.Two A units and a B unit in between, there were 16 coaches, 2 baggage cars and tacked on the end were 2 open air gondola`s. The trip hauled approx 950 passengers. Passengers were rewarded with two photo- run by`s. One was at Beaver River out on the causeway and the other was at MP 104. Mt Arab.There was an article in the Syracuse Herald-American newspaper back on Nov 7, 1965 that had two full pages of photos from the trip. The article was written by Richard Palmer.

That's some train. I wonder why it only went to Tupper Lake? Perhaps because that is the farthest location that has a runaround siding long enough to handle such a long train. I see there a a photo of that trip --- apparently it's that trip, the photo caption does not have a date --- in March 1966 Trains.

My understanding is that Kudish's three-volume set is an expansion of "Railroads of the Adirondacks" which is itself a major expansion of Kudish's "Where Did The Tracks Go" (a single volume). I have all three of the "generations" of Kudish's work.

Engr 9-26-65 on Psgr Xtra was Gene Gadway an M & M man...great engineer and a real mountain man. Wife always said he didn't learn about eating beef until he was married. Thought deer was only meat in the world. Gene ran engine left handed and had rifle cradled on arm rest with right hand; at 40MPH on a bouncing RS-3 he seldom missed his target. The fan room was the place to hang is trophy until we got back to Utica. All was well until the unit hit the Dewitt Diesel Terminal and then the General Foreman called me to raise sand because they had to steam out the fan room on another 8200 that had come from Utica.