Saratoga & North Creek (S&NC) Discussion

Safetee wrote:i'm sorry, but the guys pictured on rail bikes do not conjure up the image of macho upscale mountain bikers. in fact, the bikers pictured are the type who live off the land in this case harvesting flora and fauna.

Once harvested, can the flora and fauna be shipped by rail? Maybe there's some freight to be had after all.

(Gee, now you did it - after reading your post, I can't get that Beatles song out of my head!)

when i was a kid the family had a place in riparius that allowed me a view to observe what the D&H was up to. two or three times a week they would have twenty car unit freights of yellow hoppers/gondolas of stuff that i assume today is magnetite ore or related.

many years later, i found myself looking at projects that could provide freight besides flowers and leaves. you never want to say never but this pretty little line along the hudson that carried teddy roosevelt to the presidency has virtually no prospects for freight today. even if they could come up with something they are blessed with cp for a connection, and cp does not seem to like anything in new york state except unit trains of commodities that deal in things like gasoline, crude oil, and ethanol.

BR&P wrote:Once harvested, can the flora and fauna be shipped by rail? Maybe there's some freight to be had after all.

(Gee, now you did it - after reading your post, I can't get that Beatles song out of my head!)

Tough crowd here, nobody wants to be the straight man! Guess I'll have to do it myself.

"WHAT Beatles song do you mean?"

"I Fauna Hold Your Hand!"

!

With the paper industry on life support, garnet surviving as a low volume business, and titanium mining a distant memory there really is little else to do with the rails apart from tourist runs.

Perhaps, though I know we are a winner take all, all or nothing type of people, a future railroad could try a model like the railroad in the Lehigh Gorge. Haul the bicycles upgrade and have people ride bikes downgrade. I don't know if there is room enough everywhere for rail and trail, but I would truly hate to see the rails disappear. I remember fondly catching site of D&H trains of hoppers somewhere up by North Creek or North River when I was young.

well i, being a beatles afficinado, was tempted to ask what beatles song, but i'd already exceeded my quota for non serious rail commentary.

BR&P wrote:

BR&P wrote:Once harvested, can the flora and fauna be shipped by rail? Maybe there's some freight to be had after all.

(Gee, now you did it - after reading your post, I can't get that Beatles song out of my head!)

Tough crowd here, nobody wants to be the straight man! Guess I'll have to do it myself.

"WHAT Beatles song do you mean?"

"I Fauna Hold Your Hand!"

I'll admit that I looked through the list of recorded Beatles songs and wracked my brain trying to
think. Now when I hear "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", I'm sure I'll think about this!

One factor which should at least be factored into abandonment decisions is the status of the mineral reserves. Are they worked out, used up and gone? Or is there still material there, and either demand is less, economy has changed, or environmental factors have come up?

If, for example, we ever found ourself in another war and needed the stuff for defense, the environmental crap would (hopefully) take a back seat and maybe trains would be needed once again.

There's still plenty of iron and, I would imagine, plenty of the associated material that, when properly refined, results in titanium. I would imagine it's an economics thing, though. Titanium is always in high demand for defense and a million other purposes (anything requiring high strength, ultra low weight materials).

Only people who follow crazy fake news websites and whatnot believe that environmentalism would stand in the way of dire national emergencies. If the situation were bad enough (World War 3 us vs. the rest of the world kinda bad) to warrant reopening the mines and refining the material, only the craziest amongst us would be against it...and no one would care about thier opinion in such a case anyway!

I hope an economic case can be made for renewed mining but, if it hasn't happened in the past 30 years, I can't see it happening anytime in the near future.

BR&P wrote:

BandA wrote:Assuming the IP falls over into a liquidation, you could have the local managers of the S&NC organize a new railroad, perhaps buy the IP rolling stock that is onsite from the bankruptcy trustee or at auction.

If Iowa Pacific thought this line was a proven money-maker, they would be finding a way to preserve operations there while divesting other properties which were not making a contribution. Instead, this was one of the first to be shut down. That should be a red flag.

The line is not shut down yet. They simply dropped the plan to run the ski trains. My guess is that IP did not have the cash to start this up. Or maybe demand really was low. The only things made public so far is that IP is getting out of the Hoosier deal because they were in a bad deal that did not cover their cost and saw Amtrak getting the majority of the subsidy and that IP has a bad situation in Texas. The SNC website implies there will be trains this Summer. That may or may not happen but the SNC is not shut down at this point.

SemperFidelis wrote:With the paper industry on life support, garnet surviving as a low volume business, and titanium mining a distant memory there really is little else to do with the rails apart from tourist runs.

The tailings, Barton, forest products and the old IP site all have potential for freight activity. Out of all those, Barton seems to be the most realistic shipper but they likely could not generate significant revenues for SNC. The NIMBY's make any development at the IP site unlikely but you never know.

SNC has not been completely without freight success during the short time they have run the Adirondack Branch. While insignificant, they did haul 3 loads out of Barton. They also hauled close to 100 loads out of Tahawus and stored loaded coal cars.

While the CP connection is unfriendly right now, that could easily change. Oil shipments on the D&H North End have stopped and EHH is gone. So maybe the future CP will be more open to other freight or maybe CP will eventually sell the D&H North End.

Who would have thought that the Strasburg would haul the freight they currently have.

Fair point about Strasburg, but the economic activity, in particular farming, of the Lancaster area is much more likely to be of benefit to a very small shortline when compared to the highly protected, low economic activity that a 70 or 80 mile (just a guess) railroad is trying to support itself on.

I wish them nothing but good fortunes.

Does anyone know the status of the shuttered paper mill along the line? Was it a newsprint facility? Consumer tissues? Was it gutted, ripped down? Any info would be interesting.

there's lots of info on line about this corinth mill. bottom line, part of international paper, used to produce coated papers as in magazines. plant closed down in early 2000s. some portions of mill have been torn down but not all. assume that all production machinery long gone. plant is up for sale but a variety of problems including environmental issues cloud the scene. there have been a few offers but so far nothing that has come close to fruition. it's just another reminder that the paper industry in the northeast is almost totally dead. with the one brief exception being sappi papers in skowhegan maine are going to spend over 150 mill to redo/enhance one of their machines. i never heard it at corinth, but at the ip mill in ticonderoga, cps unwillingness to provide cars to ship product created major problems in their ability to be competitive. wouldnt be unusual to conclude that there was a strong possibility that cp wasnt exactly losing sleep to help ip at corinth either.

The old IP mill site is located on a short branch that comes off the SNC Adirondack Branch at the small yard in Corinth. This was called the Palmer Falls Branch or spur. This track is still in place but would need some brush clearing and maintenance to be used. There was talk of establishing a log loading facility along this branch where it crosses Rt 9N. But unfortunately nothing ever materialized and it is not clear why. But the mill property is still rail served. The property is along the Hudson River and when the mill was open there were switchbacks within the site to get down to the river level. Not sure what trackage still remains within the mill site but the tracks do still go to the site. When CP shut down the Adirondack Branch they kept the track to Hadley Bridge so they could serve the IP Mill. They ran a local at least 5 days a week to work the mill. This was SC-4 which used a caboose right up until the end. Part of the issue that hurt the Upper Hudson was that when the mill shut down CP held on to the south end for awhile before selling tracks to Town of Corinth and they also pulled the switch off the main preventing the Upper Hudson from getting to Saratoga. When SNC took over the switch was restored and SNC negotiated trackage rights with CP to Saratoga Station and all the way down to CPC-35 on the CP Canadian Sub. This was before the SNC-CP relationship took a turn for the worse.

So the current situation is that SNC can run into Saratoga Yard where NS crews also run into with NS 31T but NS and SNC are not allowed to interchange. CP's letter to the STB stating why they opposed SNC interchanging with NS at Saratoga seemed to exaggerate how busy Saratoga Yard really is but on the other hand it is CP's property. All SNC freight moves to date have involved SNC running directly into Saratoga Yard. Unfortunately there are about 17 miles of CP trackage between where the SNC rights end and NS/Amtrak/CSX interchange could occur at NS CP-485- Amtrak/CSX CP-160 in Schenectady.

interesting commentary on things upstate new york and snc.
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