I visited the Sherburne station in the late 1970s, a local resident commented that there was a derailment on the main somewhere and long freights were diverted to this line, said one train had UP engines and sparks were shooting from the wheels as the train struggled up the northbound grade. That must have been a sight.
Commenting on several recent posts:
On March 17, 1970 a plow extra was called out of Utica to clean up the Richfield Springs branch. Power was two GP-7's.
Coming south on Schuyler Street Engineer Leo Kawa asked Jim Dundon of they were going to clear a car on Dundon's side. Jim looked down and saw the plow clip the door handles off a '63 Ford I think. he turned back to Leo and said "nope, but we are now".
Another time they came through with a plow or spreader, can't recall which at the moment and scooped up the Utica Club Brewery Trolley and threw it over the fence.
In February 1977 during the big blizzard the Utica Branch took all the main line trains due to the ex NYC line between Utica and Buffalo shut down. Trains were detoured Buffalo - Hornell-Utica-Selkirk. One D&H detour, due to a derailment on their line, had UP 2839 a U30C. Maybe this is what the poster is referring to. It was a northbound about 3pm at Sherburne. Not sure about sparks flying on a northbound grade. Possibly the grade up to Earlville which is where I saw it, but everything looked normal.
* - Also as a quick note, the passenger depot was torn down a few days after the Conrail takeover in April 1976. The freight office remained open for a while as a satellite of Norwich - manned by the Norwich agent a few hours / day. It was closed by 1978 but I recall being in there in late 1979 and the phone still worked to call the dispatcher although we used lanterns for light as there was no electric. Why we were inside instead of the phone box on the outside I do not recall. The building was slowly being dismantled at the end of Conrail in 1982 and gone in the early days of NYSW.