Putnam Division & Branches: Getty Square, Mohansic, Saw Mill

Last remnant of Getty Square? http://riverdalepress.com/stories/Train ... nt_source=

I've never heard of Van Cortland Park called "vannie".

What might come as a surprise is that another passenger line ran from 1898 to 1943, but closed because it wasn’t making any money, Mr. LeStrange said.

The passenger train split from the Putnam Line near the 13 Grand Central weathering stones and ran along the Parade Ground and north out of the park towards Getty Square in Yonkers.

The line was scrapped and the iron was used for the war effort. No remnants exist; the path that the line once ran on is either woods or the Parade Ground. The only thing marking the area are little red flags in the woods, placed there by Mr. LeStrange.

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There is one particular spot he said he is interested in preserving: the site of the JS Tower.

The two-story switching tower is located on the Putnam Trail across from where the 13 weathering stones now sit. The Putnam Line and Getty Square lines split at that site for the first four decades of the 20th Century. Today, remains of a stone foundation protrude from the earth. For the most part, nature has covered up the physical historical record.

“It’s a treasure right under our feet,” Mr. LeStrange said on a recent walk through Van Cortlandt Park, where he said has found and picked up railroad spikes and other train remains.

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“Revealing the concrete skeleton of the switching tower and light towers is a part of the life that was once there: memories of hard working men, steam engines, passenger and freight trains, phantoms of the past that need to be acknowledged,” Mr. LeStrange wrote in a letter to The Riverdale Press.

CSX Remnant: http://riverdalepress.com/stories/Rail- ... n-up,61959" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Environmental activists in the northwest Bronx want the city’s Parks Department to buy the land and turn it into a hiking and biking trail, or greenway. It would pick up where the trails of Van Cortlandt Park leave off, and would lead southward, passing close to Broadway, with its shops and restaurants.

The trail “would be a real economic boom,” said Laura Spalter, the chairwoman of the environment and sanitation committee of Community Board 8. “You could bike or hike and then go have lunch at a restaurant on Broadway.”

The land is owned by CSX Transportation, a major railroad. While talks on buying the land have stalled, CSX agreed last week to clean up the trash by the end of April, Spalter told The Press last week.

CSX has been willing to sell, but for a price that the Parks Department says it cannot afford. CSX had been asking $10 million for the land, although a spokesman recently said it would review the price.

Update: http://www.riverdalepress.com/stories/a ... anup,63184" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Bulldozers, jackhammers and cranes are officially in full effect underneath the Major Deegan Expressway on the Old Putnam Line as contractors work to clean up a hotly negotiated-for strip of land.

A little more than three months after promising to clean up a mile-long stretch that used to be part of the Putnam Railroad, CSX Corp. — one of the nation’s largest freight rail companies — has started work clearing the site.

The overgrown brush and trees — beset at various points by years worth of graffiti — covers the tracks of the Old Putnam Line, which has not been used commercially since the 1980s.

The cause for the delay, according to a CSX representative, was getting permission from adjacent property owners to allow CSX access to the largely isolated parcel through their properties.
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If a deal to finally transfer the land is close, neither side is talking.

However, there has been some unverified chatter that a purchase agreement has been reached. CSX, however, has declined to comment on the status of the negotiation.

That's very interesting. What location are they talking about? The former location of old Segwick Ave. station, or farther north?

(When I am riding on the Hudson Div. into GCT and sitting on the "non-river" side I often look up when we pass that location)

North of Sedgewick Avenue, the JS Tower location appears to be about one-third of the way into Van Cortlandt Park on the Putnam Division coming up from the south.

The CSX ownership raises the question of MNRR's use of the tracks north of BN for equipment storage. Does MNRR lease or own that portion? Could CSX conceivably use the piece north of what MNRR uses, or what MNRR uses?

Who owns the portion in Van Cortland Park? That's already a trail, right, owned by NYC? I presume they're talking about the portion north of 193rd up through 225th to the Park border.

Jeff Smith wrote:The CSX ownership raises the question of MNRR's use of the tracks north of BN for equipment storage. Does MNRR lease or own that portion? Could CSX conceivably use the piece north of what MNRR uses, or what MNRR uses?

Who owns the portion in Van Cortland Park? That's already a trail, right, owned by NYC? I presume they're talking about the portion north of 193rd up through 225th to the Park border.

I suspect that Metro-North probably owns BN Yard and has for a long time. It has been used as a M of W base in the past.
Noel Weaver

Would anyone by chance have a photo of the Mahopac Falls Branch station? I've pretty much seen photos of all the others that were in the area, but this one eludes me.

I just re-read this whole lengthy and fascinating Put thread. I live in northern Westchester and often have to go through Millwood, Briarcliff, Yorktown, etc.

I notice the lack of mention of the obscure branches to Mohansic and Mahopac

Falls

. I never attempted to trace the Mahopac br. so I don't know the route except that it diverged at Baldwin Pl.

However, I quite accidentally discovered that at least a piece of the Mohansic Br. is quite visible in Yorktown --- beginning where it crossed Rt. 118, then further on crossing Baldwin Road. I dont know where it's traceable further west.

I am extremely disappointed at what has been done to the once-gorgeous HO scale diorama of the Put in the Yorktown area that's in the Yorktown Museum. In recent years someone has got hold of it who has absolutely no knowledge or appreciation of the fine points of model railroading, and in my opinion it's no longer worth a visit.