Pan Am Railways (Guilford/B&M) in Mechanicville

I was recently in that town and noticed that the Guilford tracks seem to run parallel to the D&H/NS tracks by an abandoned tower.
How does Guilford get to Rotterdam Jct. from there? Is there a track map of the area of Mechanicville and are there any good rail fan sites to view at action?

The east end of the Pan Am Rotterdam Jct. Yard is easily accessed for photos from the Main Street crossing. Any eastbound trains ready to depart will be waiting right there. Often there are Pan Am diesels parked awaiting their next assignment.

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The "abandoned tower" in Mechanicville seems to be an on-again, off-again restoration project sponsored by the town. "XO" tower was historically where the D&H and B&M met, and they each had large classifications yards opposite each other. This largely went away after 1984 when Guilford no longer needed the duplicate facility. Thirty years later, Norfolk Southern built a new intermodal terminal on the site in partnership with Pan Am. There's no real access to the yard, but hang around XO tower and you won't miss a thing. I heard the old passenger station was purchased by the town to be restored, but I haven't heard any progress on that front.

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Used to be you could go into any Stewart's and get a copy of Jimapco's Capital District Map, which also included railroads, but now everyone has maps on their phone, so...

-otto-

I pass by Rotterdam Jct. yard returning from the GTE show, if not also enroute; last year I also passed by once in March. While there usually is an engine there, it tends to be down past the trailer you can see on the right in the first link.

I suspect you could grab a pic and go without issue, but it requires some fairly blatant trespassing to do so.

My dad grew up in Mechanicville in the 1920's and 1930's, and said that it was a very busy place back then. It was not uncommon to have to wait for 2 or even 3 trains to pass before being able to cross a public crossing. He also told of watching yard brakemen riding cars being humped, on deck to apply brakes. He said it was fun to watch sometimes when the guy would be standing still on deck, just before the car coupled he would jump in the air, and would come back down running because the cars had stopped but his body was still traveling. (quite possibly the guy was hamming it up for the watching kids )

pardon the errors if you can find them

You're missing the Trolley and Yard/CS crossovers in Mechanicville, the interchange track at Crescent, CPF481 and 483 and the Glenville Stub in MX. Also the Rotterdam branch crosses Waite Road.

Sorry I had to haha. Great map.

I see they stub ended Mohawk #4 since I was there, weird.

Yeah, CP took out about a good chunk of the north end of SMR4. Not really sure why, but it's mostly used to store flats for GE.

That's where we always kicked out the plate steel or cripples prior to the ST car department inspecting.

I don't think I ever had less than 120 cars leaving Mohawk on MOED. Used to ask the dispatcher to get a light at the south end and back whatever was on the CSE down onto the switching lead then pull tracks out of the yard and build on top of that. Power was usually right up to Aplaus by the time the train was made up.

biggest I ever had was a 132 car 11r. had 22 to set out at riverside, but 3 were missing. put 19 into smr2, power back to the train, 20feet west of the 483 signal, and the hind car hanging out halfway into alplaus... still better than the 11r where after the bk and vtr set offs was 4 omya tanks and 3 units...