Looking for D&H Chateaugay Branch photos

Does anyone know of a website that contains picture of the D&H Chateaugay Branch in it`s later years (1950`s - 1981)?I have searched the web many times and nothing has popped up.

The only picture I recall seeing is of a diesel mixed train on the branch which is in Ed Crist and John Krause' book "D&H Challengers and Northerns." I think there was a picture for sale recntly on eBay of a mixed and its combine parked in Plattsburgh Yard.

BTW, it was no longer called the Chateaugay Branch after 1947 when it was torn up from Plumador to Lyon Mt. It was called the "Lyon Mt. Branch" after that. Maybe that might be a better word search.

Rick -

The D&H never renamed the Chateaugay Branch. It showed in the time-table as simply "Bluff Point to Lyon Mountain," or later "Salmon River Jct to Lyon Mountain," but it was called the Chateaugay Branch officially and unofficially for as long as any of it existed.

There were notations on the time-table special instructions referring to the Chateaugay Branch, and track charts and other engineering records showed it as the Chateaugay Branch even after it was cut back to Dannemora in 1971, and further in later years. When I was the Track Supervisor at Plattsburgh it was all in my territory, and it was never called the Lyon Mountain Branch.

Gordon Davids

Gordon,

I said it was "called" the Lyon Mt Branch. I meant that the local populace always referred to it that way. I know it's official name. I never even knew it once went all the way to Lake Placid while I lived there from '57 to '67. (Everybody I knew referred to it that way.)

As a matter of fact, everyone around me knew of my extreme interest in trains and the D&H. Unfortunately, it was officially and socially discouraged among my "folks" at home and at school. They also admonished me never to bother or even talk to a railroad employee so I would not have known the "official" name of the branch back then.

Its also very interesting how people's memories up there changed to match current reality. The coming of the Air Force to Plattsburgh changed everybody's perception of history. It's as if nothing before 1957 was worth remembering.

I had to grow up, become enamoured and then discouraged with aviation and fall back on my first love, trains and the D&H, to find out what was in the past before then. I never knew until then that the big building on the hill overlooking Lake Champlain to the east of the base was once the storied D&H owned Hotel Champlain. It was always "Bellarmine College" to everyone I knew. Also, as far as anyone I knew or personally experienced, the D&H ended in Binghamton.

It was tough growing up around people who didn't care anything about trains. But that's another story I may someday submit to the Bulletin for publishing.

Is that book still in print? Also,what were the numbers of the units that ran the "Hog Job"?