Railroads in Athens New York

I was told there is an old turntable at a site just North of Athens, NY at an old brickyard site. It is on the West shore side of the Hudson.

Does anyone have any info on this. I checked the University of New Hampshire web page with the old topo maps and saw nothing on it showing a railroad in that area.

Any help is appreciated.

John Valachovic

Athens was the end point for the Saratoga & Hudson River Railroad, a line that was nicknamed the "White Elephant Line" because it did very little business before folding and being absorbed by Vanderbilt's New York Central. New York Central called it their Athens Branch, until it was leased to the West Shore (or their predecessor, New York, West Shore & Buffalo) in the early 1880s. NYWS&B built their double track line along most of the S&HR right-of-way between Fullers and Coxsackie. I've seen maps from around the turn of the century that still showed the portion between Athens & Coxsackie intact.

I'd like to see that turntable!

http://rutlandtrail.org/list.cgi?coxsac ... g.ny.track

Of course, I now know that it wasn't just a siding.

You can still see the ROW off NYS route 146 in Guilderland. It now carries power lines.

Can you find the location on this map?
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=42.69821,-73.96348&z=14&t=T
You can double-click on the location, which will center the crosshairs on it.
Then you can right-click on "Link to this page" and reply here and paste it in.

Here it is. http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=42.74994,-73.94232&z=16&t=T

If you're heading north towards I-90 the ROW comes in from the left and crosses 146. You can see it for some distance on either side before it crosses.

DOH! Of course! I even had it marked as such in my database. Silly me. Thanks, though, for taking a look. As a ROW it's in pretty good shape. Even the houses haven't been built on it. I expect that somebody still owns it mostly intact.

It makes sense that there would have been a turntable there, because it was the end of the line for a year, steam trains needed to be turned, and there was no room for a wye. I have no idea where it would have been, though. I can't even see where they crossed Murderer's Creek, if they even did. The purpose of the line was to collect the steamboat traffic coming up the Hudson.

Did the Westshore main go through Athens too? I was doing research on my family, and found out that a great-great.....uncle was killed in a railroad accident there. The wreck was likely in the mid 1800s.

Engineer Spike wrote:Did the Westshore main go through Athens too? I was doing research on my family, and found out that a great-great.....uncle was killed in a railroad accident there. The wreck was likely in the mid 1800s.

No, it went further away from the shore, up on the hill on Athens Flat. Athens was the end of the line.