Antiques Roadshow: Amtrak & Old Wayside Equipment

[gokeefe]

It is stunning to see how much infrastructure is neglected or out of use but sitting in place. Imagine the worst years of 1970-1985 where we had thousands of miles of yards, spurs, sidings, stations, etc... totally unused. It's like that but twice as bad. They certainly still use token-rings as there are many lines with one train per day. Many trains run on dark areas, again 1/day or even 1/week.

I'll never forget killing time at Viedma station and nosing around plenty of armstrong switch levers that were torched but in place. Or the Escalada backshops with one hundred years of old equipment rotting in place. An entire empty shop building storing equipment well beyond repair.

If it weren't for Conrail and Amtrak I think this is exactly what our system would look like. One thing this thread has taught me (ephemera aside) is how well maintained our Class I and II railroads are. I was certain that somewhere along the lines through Thurmond and Prince, WV or Dawson, PA there would be some amazing find of junk very similar to what you described in Argentina.

It simply isn't the case. I was actually surprised the other day when looking at some grade crossings on the north side of Memphis that I found some ties in the mud and a really rough looking set of timbers in the track panel. This was truly an unusual find which in many other parts of the world would be the rule.

Amtrak has cleared out or scrapped most of their dead equipment and often doesn't hang on to surplus very long either.

[Arborwayfan]

When I compare what I see today with my memories from when I was a kid, I see the contrast that Tadman and gokeefe are talking about. I remember driving over the Prison Point Bridge in Boston and Cambridge, and the I-95 bridge over the railroad yards in Providence, and seeing a fair number of freight cars, yes, but also a lot of weedy tracks with dirty ballast. On those spots today there are fewer tracks but the tracks are in good shape. I remember walking along next to (and sometimes on, I'm afraid) the Needham line in the Arboretum in Boston and seeing ratty ties in minimal ballast; they built that line back much better in the mid 80s and have kept it up since. Etc., etc. So I guess it makes sense that there's not that much old stuff left.

[Tadman]

For a long time our culture had a mentality where we didn't throw things away, even when far past their useful life. My grandfather kept a few of their family cars out in the back 40, long after the floorpans were rotted and the entire car was far beyond repair. I remember the Illinois Central had hundreds of boxcars on surplus trackage in downtown Chicago, the South Shore kept the wires in place over Burnham yard, and Conrail left a few spurs around my hometown that had long lost their customers. Upon visiting the Cleveland RTA around 1991, we found an entire fleet of retired Pullman subway cars sitting around, never to turn a wheel again. It sure made for interesting railfanning, but in the early 1990's, management wised up and properties were cleaned up. Hundreds of miles of surplus branches and track were pulled, no more old rolling stock laying around.

In 1990, the properties looked like 1940. In 1995, the properties looked like 2000.