What happened to the yard at Mechanicville?

What happened to the yard at Mechanicville?

-otto-

I was wondering the same thing. I tried to find it by car, with a
Delorme Atlas, but only saw a sea of weeds off to the south side of
the 2-lane highway leaving Mechanicville in a NW direction.
I especially wonder if there is even one track left, apart from the
(single-track?) Guilford main.

It's actually easy to find where the yard was- XO tower is still standing, across the street from the abandoned Mechanicville station... the junction of the B&M and the D&H is still there... some shop buildings still exist, but for the most part, the property that was the yard is a glorified industrial park...

-otto-

The Yard was slowly phased out

Otto Vondrak wrote:What happened to the yard at Mechanicville?

-otto-

There was an F3 tornado that demolished much of the remaining yard in 1997. After that, things never got any better.

http://gcdranet.homelinux.com/gcdra/htm ... ornado.htm

I wish I could have seen Mechanicville in action, but I was bitten by the railfan bug too late

mick wrote:Meanwhile, ghosts of the old place still linger at the west end of the yard, the hump area is still visible, and there is a switching signal standing at the top of the hump which some railroaders say displays a dim red signal late at night, even though there is no power to the signal.

Indeed it does, in theory.

I saw it a year or two back, and it happens at sundown. I hiked in, and had to see it up close.

It turned out that the back door to the high-red light was open, and with the setting sun shining in, it reflected itself into the red lense, and BOOM! "Lit Signal".

The door might have been closed by the wind since then, but it might not have. Sunset is the only time to see this, and it dosent last for long. It's VERY cool to witness, albeit sad at the same time.

Thank you all for the information!

-otto-

This yard would have been downgraded even if Guilford did not put the D&H into bankruptsy. The D&H trains from Oneonta yarded in the B&M yard, and the B&M Fitchburg trains yarded in the D&H yard. There the cars were classified for points on the respective railroads. When D&H and B&M were under the same ownership, they could preblock trains. This is still done. D&H blocks Guilford cars for E. Deerfield, Fitchburg, and Rigby.

Just as a side note, I was working for a contractor at the time of the tornado, taking ties out of the yard; in the morning that the tornado, the guys that I was working with left at noon to see a little league game (it was a sunday), and the tornado came thru around 2 pm. One of the buildings was being used by a signal maintainer and he had a stray cat living there; the building was demolished and the cat perished. Also, the contractor had a bulldozer on site that he used to load ties, and although it suffered no damage from the twister, it looked like somebody steam cleaned it- all dirt and grease was taken off by the twister!!!

Makes me believe in divine intervention!!

Work safe

Derail