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Saratoga railroad service stopped by derailment
A lot of money has actually been put into the track by both Iowa Pacific and the line’s owners Warren County and the Town of Corinth.
This is just great. I tried to ride their train in May, but it was annulled 20 minutes out of Saratoga Springs when the train hit a truck parked on the track, and we had to wait in the stopped train for almost 4 hours before it returned to the station. I had gotten an exchange and had tickets for this Saturday. Now I’ll have to reschedule for a second time.
This sounds like a mess. The owner doesn’t have incentive to maintain the track if the operator pays for repairs less than $50,000. The operator doesn’t have incentive to maintain the track in hopes of more than $50,000 repairs.
I have been a guest on the S&NC fairly recently and I can attest that Iowa Pacific is running a first class operation and that the track condition is really quite good.
As with anything, the unexpected events do happen. Any passengers on board at the time should be thankful they were not a guest aboard one of those cruise ships that were dead in the waters of the Gulf fairly recently.
We shouldn’t be too anxious to blame the recent derailment on the track until they’ve had time to investigate and announce the cause. Any suggestions that the owners or Iowa Pacific would deliberately neglect the condition of the line’s track is just completely ludicrous and unfounded and an insult to everyone involved.
Hope to see everyone enjoying some of the most beautiful scenery in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State !!
For the record, the S&NC returned to service on August 9th.
I had an opportunity to ride the cab of an E-unit between Saratoga Springs and North Creek during the fall of 2012. While I’d normally have been able to sit in the fireman’s seat, I stood most of the way as there was a maintenance-of-way supervisor occupying the seat and taking careful notes on track condition for future repair. I suspect the railroad takes this responsibility a lot more seriously than some people might think.
S&NC doesn’t operate push-pull mode AKAIK. It operates pull-pull . The trailing locomotive is always in idle as a backup for hotel/HEP power. IINM, FRA prohibits operating both units “in phase” where the trailing unit is effectively a pusher.