The Andersons Railcar Repair Shop - Romulus, NY

I suppose this could fall under the Finger Lakes Railway forum, but a friend of mine sent me a photo last week of a banner in Romulus, NY, reading "The Andersons, Railcar Repair Shop". I checked the website http://www.andersonsrail.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and they show a location in Romulus now as a rail shop, though I heard that it looked like they were building a facility rather than using existing structures? Anyone have any info, or know how big of a place this is going to be?

That is inside what was formerly the Seneca Army Depot. I don't have any details on how big a facility it is, or will be. The last I heard it was going to be reached by a switch off the engine house lead, but that may (or may not) have changed. There are several tracks and several buildings in the area they selected and maybe someone will provide specifics on which one(s) they finally rehabed.

The address on Rt 96 in Romulus is on the east side of the base, whereas the active Finger Lakes tracks are on the west side of the base. How would the cars get to the repair shop?

Here is a simple map in PDF form. Tracks extends all over.

Charles

FGLK operates the base trackage. To oversimplify, the trackage is somewhat like a giant "U" with the open end generally north. FGLK comes into the base about "7 O'clock" on the U and can easily go to the east side to serve the facility.

I happened to stumble upon this place while driving up to Geneva today... glad to finally see an actual rail customer in the depot after all these years.

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Otto-mandated fair-use snippet wrote:ROMULUS — The Andersons Inc. Rail Group, which leases, repairs and retrofits railcars at the former Seneca Army Depot, has been expanding its operations.

Andersons ships and receives railcars via the Finger Lakes Railway Corp. The railcar retrofit shop opened in May 2013 using one of the rail-served buildings on the east side of the Depot, in a section now owned by Flaum Management.

The business is located in building 317 on Ordinance Road inside warehouse area. There's a trackmobile to move cars around.

When does FGLK run to Romulus? Does the turn operate on a regular schedule or just as needed? I would love to see a train on this section of the former LV.

I understand that the former Army base itself might have restricted access.

Interesting picture of the repair facility, Nessman. I wonder if the cars being re-habbed at Romulus are some or all of those that had been stored by FGLK at Bellona and Himrod. The last string left Himrod a couple of weeks ago.

Poppyl

From personal experience as of 2012 there remained restricted areas within the former depot. These were in the portion of the depot where the ammunition storage and processing facilities were located. Reason for the restriction was account contamination that the Army was in the process of cleaning up.

Do not know if the restrictions have now been lifted, or not.

Most folks know there are numerous white deer in the facility, and often some can be seen from the adjacent public highway (96-A I think?). Also while the military would "neither confirm nor deny" that nuclear weapons were stored there, we pretty much know they were.

I've thought it would be quite amusing if someone were to tranquilize a couple of those deer, apply some sort of luminous glow-in-the-dark coating to their fur, then release them near the perimeter fence. (Actually there was idle consideration of doing it to a railcar, but the amount of paint would be considerable, and the stored rail cars are not easily visible from public view.)

During the fall of 2006 my wife and me went on what was referred to as the "White Deer Tour" which took place via a elderly school bus in the restricted area of the Seneca Army Depot. One part of the tour was a run through what was called the ""Q Area". This, it was explained by the tour guide, was where nuclear weapons were both worked on and stored. This area was separated from the rest of the depot with a triple fence equipped with motion sensors. Some buildings had concrete guard positions with rifle or machine gun slits. What was once a top secret and very secure place now growing up to weeds and brush.

Building 317 is in a public accessible area of the depot. The ammo bunkers and "Q area" are still behind locked gates.

The "Q area" has been leased out - got a personal tour of it back in 2008 by the lessee I had a business relationship with at the time. Yes - there were nuclear weapons stored/serviced there - this was confirmed to my be several individuals with first-hand knowledge, and markings on the walls of every structure show that testing for radiation was done prior to handing the property off to the Seneca County IDA. The tour was a cold war enthusiast's wet dream:

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Many years ago a contractor was engaged to do some track work on ONCT. They began that work just after finishing a fairly large track repair job at the army base, which at that time was still in full swing militarily. One of their men shared an interesting story.

Most of their work was in the "normal" part of the base, and while they did have to go through tight security to get in, it was generally low key. But then there was a part of the job which was inside "Area Q". A special orientation meeting was held first. The men were cautioned to go NOWHERE without checking with one of several armed soldiers who were always overseeing them. They were told to keep the soldiers informed of everything they were doing and to stay right at the work site at all times. Failure to follow these orders could result in their being shot.

At one point while working in the secure area, they needed some tools or material which was in another truck out in the "regular" part of the base, and this guy drove the truck with a soldier riding next to him, to go to that other truck. He said the soldier was a nice young guy, friendly and low key. The contractor's employee asked the soldier if all the talk about not making false moves etc was just to keep them in line. The soldier took the clip off his weapon and showed the guy it was full, then immediately replaced it. Then he said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice "If you stop the truck and run, I will kill you." He did not say "shoot at you", he said "kill you" and the contractor's guy said the way the GI said it, he had absolutely NO doubt the soldier would do exactly what he said.

We are off the railroad topic, but I can shed just a bit of light on the "Q." It is true that nuclear weapons were stored there on their way to and from Europe. Shipments were by air via Sampson AFB both to and from Europe. Domestic shipments to and from the production agency began as rail, soon switched to air, and then secure over-the-road transportation when air was deemed too unsafe.

The army received full up weapons from the production agency. Most of the work at "Q" could be categorized as surveillance not involving nuclear components, although some replacement of limited life components did occur there as well as at forward deployment sites. Anything beyond that was sent back to the production agency for re-work or repair.

Since control of the nuclear weapons remained with the production agency for their duration, this agency also proscribed the security requirements for the "Q" area. And they ran frequent unannounced black hat exercises against the "Q" security force, including insider scenarios. I can say with some degree of confidence that the security at "Q" was always at least as good as Fort Knox.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Poppyl

Interesting, Poppy, thanks for posting that. Interesting to know some of the stuff that went on there.

I'd love to see a map of the rail operations in the base back in say 1950 or so. By more recent times some tracks had been removed. The construction of the prison claimed some trackage. And I am guessing - but not positive - that at one time the track in Area Q made a complete loop from the east side to the west side. Presently the area can be entered by rail from the west or the east but the track does not connect inside the secure area.