What railroads are in you hometown

Albany NY area? CSX, of course. Also CP (former Delaware & Hudson) and Guilford (ex Boston & Maine.) Amtrak runs through here, and even has a stretch of its own dedicated track West of Schenectady (ex-NYC). Not that many trains use it, or travel very fast. . .

Sad to see the wide signal bridges where the overloaded 2 track ex-NYC "water level route" used to have four tracks. The 2 inner tracks were dedicated high-speed tracks with banked (superelevated) curves and track pans.

Amazing that we could have true high-speed rail in 1905 with NYC 999 able to run over 100 mph on stick rail, day in and day out.

Edit: Duuh- "home" town is out in Western NY. We had the Erie Lackawanna until they shut down. The old main line never got torn up (except for the former low-grade "cutoff" and the huge trestle across the Genesee Valley in Oramel, NY) and has been restored to operation. Government owned I think and operated by Western New York & Pennsylvania (WNY&P.) Around the area, I remenber seeing pre-merger Pennsy trains when I was a lad, and Penn Central "bankruptcy black" paint schemes later on.
Oh, and can't forget the Pittsburgh, Shawmut & Northern which also ran through my hometown 'til after WWII.
 
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I live in the west of Ireland house overlooks line from Athenry to Claremorris. No trains at the moment line reopening in next year (hopefully)
 
There have been no trains in Hawick for 40 years.

I live 20 yards from where the North British Railways "Waverley line" used to be. It's a lot quieter now.
 
Out here its strange.

UP owns the line from Castle Rock to Publeo but you only see there trains once in a blue moon.

Otherwise its BNSF coal trains that roar through at speeds ranging from 15-30MPH (slow ain't it?). We have one Northbound and One Southbound mixed fright a day that drop off a few cars at kelker yard and continue south. We used to have a patched D&RGW GP30 doing switching dutys but it left to be repainted into full UP paint (YUK!!!!!!) and now we have a Leased GATX switcher. BNSF has a GP-38 to handle its switching/local dutys. (D&RGW/GATX switchers where limited to Kelker yard).

Those tracks are about 30 minutes from my house. UP has the habit of running 844 or other excursions down through here so I'm not steamless!

Let's see, about an hour east of us is Limon and UP is the ONLY railroad that runs through there (it was the terminous of the Rock Islands Colorado Springs "rocket" at one time, if that Colorado Springs-Limon line was still open [or still had track for that matter] I would only be about 5-6 minutes from the track.).
 
Well here in Reading Pa we have Norfolk Southern. There is also the Reading & Nothern which hauls coal from Pottsville-Tamaqua-Scranton down to Temple (trackage rights into Reading yard). Then there are various tourist lines (WK&S, the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society, and you may include the East Penn Railroad). Since the 1980s theres been talk of reviving passenger service from Reading to Philadelphia (SEPTA) but the last proposal was so ridiculous ($2+ billion) that the Federal funding was naturally denied.

Of course before Norfolk Southern and before Conrail there was the Reading Company (Take a ride on the Reading) which was founded and had its shops here, and yes that other Pennsylvania Railroad (the PRR Schuylkill Division)!
 
THey changed it around again...........

NOw we're being flooded with BNSF/UP manifests and the coal trains are fewer in number.

Our GATX GP30 has been replaced with a, UP SD75 (Lots of get up and go for those switching jobs.

We've been seeing more diverse engines on our trains (sd40's, a SD90 on a up mixed, and warbonnet bnsf stuff.)
 
Well, here in Plymouth we got the major junction of the CSX lines in Michigan. From the south you have the "Michigan Funnel" of trains from Toledo, Ohio and a Wye connecting in every direction. North-south is the CSX Saginaw Sub from Toledo, Ohio to the LSRC Interchange/ McGrew Yard in Flint. West of the diamond starts the CSX Plymouth Sub to Grand Rapids and on-ward to Chicago. East of the diamond starts the CSX Detroit Sub to Detroit. The east-west see's 2-3 CP trains from Canada - Chicago everyday. There is also 2 daily Union Pacific Pacer Stactrains from Mexico/ Texas to Detroit. We also have 2 W&LE coke trains from the W&LE in Ohio to Detroit. They do about 10 unscheduled movements a week. Plus many grain and coal extras. This area also has 3 yards and many industries so between the schedueled and unschueled trains there is many CSX locals and yard jobs around. Of course you can all see this on the CSX Saginaw Sub at the DLS! :D
 
today its the onion pathetic (union pacific). for most of my life, i grew up on and arround the sufferin pathetic (southern pacific), in several of the small towns along what was then the sacramento devision, between roseville (ca) and sparks (nv).

i'm living in roseville now, and when i first moved back down here from oregon it was still owned by the southern pacific transportation company. then santafe took over for a while and sort of screwed things up, then it spun off and riogrande industries was running it, i thought pretty good for a while, then something happened to them and the up ended up taking over, all in the last less then 20 years. before that it had been the sp ever since they chainged the name from central pacific, which is what it was built as. thoedore judah, c.p.huntington and all that.

once upon a time, there had been a nevada county narrow gauge railroad, that connected with the standard gauge souther pacific in the little town of colfax california i grew up in. unfortunately i was born six years to late, and in buffalo new york, ever to have seen it run.

but when my folks first moved out here, my dad worked for the railroad most of his life, and i even did myself for a little while, they were still running cab forwards (4-8-8-2's, oil fired, with the cab ahead of the boiler and tender to avoid the smoke in the tunnels and snow sheds, a unique and impressive bit of steam iron) in helper service on the hill and an assortment of smaller steam elsewhere, but it was mostly diesel, and by 54 steam had virtually dissappeared from regular mainline assignements. (there were a lot of them 'stored servicable' for a number of years before they actually scrapped them, but other then a couple of railfan specials during those years, they never saw mainline service again).

we also had a lot more passinger service in the early 50s. we still had 3 each way a day between oakland and ogden, up until just a few years before amtrak. 27/28 the old overland, which was the local service nonreserved seat day train, 101/102 the city of san francisco, all reserverd seat and pullman oakland to chicago via up and milw east of ogden, and 21/22 which were the mail train that ran in the middle of the night, with a couple of old harriman coaches for rider cars.

then they combined 27/28 with 101/102 and dropped the mail train so we only had the one anyway, and then amtrak came along and rescued passinger service or we wouldn't have had any.

now though, we've got 5 or six scendules a day between auburn, roseville, sacramento, and san jose, as the capitol coridor service, but no local service over the hill to colfax or truckee and reno/sparks, in addition to 5/6, which are amtrak's replacement of 101/102.

the nearest other railroad, goes/went over donner summit, was the western pacific, now owned by u.p. also, up the feather river cannion.

up the valley before i was born there also used to be the sacramento northern interurban.

and the first few times we rode down to the bay area on my dad's pass, the key system was still running accross the lower deck of the bay bridge.

i always wanted to ride the key system but never got to because my dad's pass was good on the s.p. ferry boats and he too much liked to ride them to give that up even once to let me ride the key system.

by the time i was old enough to go on my own, the key system had been torn up and bart hadn't yet been built.

muni, of course, was there all along in san francisco itself, with its pcc cars and even a couple of older wooden door ones back in the mid 50s, but that was all down in the bay area and we were living up in the hills, on the hill, were he worked in all the little stations that there were at that time along there.

there also used to be something called pacific fruit express, that owned and maintaind the refrigerater cars, first ice and later mechanical, that was owned jointly by the s.p. and u.p.

so any more its just the u.p., but we do see equipment from connecting lines, amtrak and amtrak california joint powers agency show up at the shops here in roseville from time to time.

=^^=
.../\...
 
Here in South Florida there is CSX with it's Miami and Homestead Subs and the Florida East Coast Railway. Tri-Rail and Amtrak use CSX tracks owned by the Florida Department of Transportation.

On the South Florida Rail Corridor which houses CSX, Tri-Rail, and Amtrak, you can see about 65-70 trains a day on Weekdays consisting of 50 Tri-Rail, 4 Amtrak (Silver Star and Silver Meteor; 2 of each), and all of CSX's manifest and rock trains. FEC is the primary intermodal carrier here on a high volume stretch of track near US1 and houses 20 or so trains per day, however on weekends it looks like about 10-15 trains though...
 
psycho_aussie said:
Up here in the "wonderful" land of Redcliffe (40 mins drive north of Brisbane - on a good day), we have ..... ..... ..... ..... No one...

To get anywhere close to a train line, I have to drive 15 mins south to a QR CityTrain line which only has EMUs or SMUs running on it, or 25 mins south-west where I can see the EMUs, SMUs, maybe an IMU sometimes, ICEs (QR InterCity Express), the Tilt Train or the freight services either handled by QR or PacNat QLD.

Chris
Click to expand...

Amen to that, mate. When will Redcliffe get its railway?
________
RA107
 
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Three months ago it was Illinois Central, Union Pacific, and CSX. Oh, and Amtrak on the IC. Now here in Tennessee, none. Except back in the 1920's a logging railroad came thru my property.
 
I have Union Pacific tracks less than a mile away from my house. I can ride my bike over to the tracks from my house in 15 minutes.

Matt
 
Hmm... Haven't posted here yet...

Right now the New Jersey Transit (Or is it Metro North) Port Jervis Line runs through my town. Before that it was the Erie Railroad.
I've lived in NYS&W and LIRR Territory too.
~TTT100~
 
Hi Themnax,

It sounds all too familiar. Darn the 1980s. Everything went down the tubes then. Now US railroads seem little more than steel railed truck routes. Where's the character, the something that would tell you it's Espee or Katy or whatever at a glance?

Don't take this too seriously, just reminiscent. :wave:

Bernie
 
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