(2) Fulton County Narrow Gage/ CB&Q …end of a coal branch near Fairview, IL…[Parrville]… that turntable is now the one you see at Colorado RR Museum - Golden Roundhouse (The one you are seeing RGS-20 ride on in Jim Wrinn’s latest blog)… It also spent time at St. Francis, KS (almost at the end of the line there)
(3) Elkhart, KS (DC&CV/ATSF) before the railroad built onwards to Boise City, OK (and the ill-fated Boise City Terminal complex)…Was there less than 20 years.
(4*) Grafton, IL (IT)
-cheap real estate and room to put a wye in would always trump the expense of a bridge steel fabricator designing and building one of those rascals.
UP seemed to have a thing for loops at some of their branch terminals. There was one at Cedar City, UT, gateway to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.
Ketchum, ID, started out with a wye, but eventually got a loop, some time after they built Sun Valley resort. I guess the loops facilitated turning the passenger trains to these tourist spots.
At the end of their service lives, and for the ones that survive, they may have only been mostly grain gathering lines. When they were built, the railroad was the only long distance transportation available for most. Just about everything needed that couldn’t be produced locally came in by rail.
Many lines, including main lines weren’t built to the standards of later years. Those that showed the economic justification would get improvements; like line changes, better bridges, upgraded depots, etc. Those that didn’t would not get such improvements and end their days just as they had orginally laid down.
Jeff
BaltACD
Murphy Siding
Thanks for the info and the links guys. I’m spending some quality time falling down ratholes chasing 100 year old rail lines.
Is it still OK to talk about trains and railroads on thsi forum?
I’ve noticed by looking at old maps, Google Earth images, photos and also by observation in the field that Rock Island built their lines to a lot lower standards in my area than the Milwaukee, CNW, Great Northern and even Illinois Central. Most times I can follow where an old line used to be. The Rock Island lines around here (SD, MN, IA area) were mostly grain gathering branch lines. They are the ones most likely to have reverted to farmland. It looks like they did minimal cut and fill, so the trains 100 years ago must have been roller coasters.
Railroads were built to the level of financing the companies building them had. If the company had a sound financial b
No issues with train length, or shoving rickety equipment with what might be rickety buffing arrangements on rickety track, or having to throw switches with the train stopped. If the loop were equipped with a spring switch no tinkering by the crew would be required.
IF the loop was big enough or the train was short enough.
(loops are big real estate hogs)
La Junta yard went from wye to turntable to bigger turntable (after Dec 1903 RH fire) to wye to loop (1986). There also is a main track wye there, unchanged in almost 120 years.
Don’t think the length of loop would be an issue for typical passenger train to a national park. The Gardiner MT loop looks to have been a 15 degree curvature, so overall loop length would have been 2,000’ feet or so.
A long defunct railroad in the Adirondacks had both a loop, and a wye, at opposite ends of the 17 mile line.
The Racquette Lake Railroad was built by the rich and famous (Collis Huntington was a founder) for the rich and famous (it’s said that Huntington’s wife said she wouldn’t go to their “camp” in the Adirondacks unless she could get their by train).
The connection with the NYC at Carter included a wye, but only one end connected to the NYC - the other end was simply the tail track.
The Racquette Lake station was on a loop.
NYC took huge amounts of ice out of the area for it’s icing facilities.
Carter’s and Clearwater are essentially the same thing (Renames 1912), right? Tree: this is supposedly 4 miles from Thendara, bit presumably along the line of Webb’s Adirondack railroad and not away from it. Obviously those folks who had ‘arrived’ would not be stopping on signal but would be on through Pullmans and private cars… where did these hold over after the Raclette loop?
Carter/Clearwater is at MP H64 on the Adirondack Division. Thendara is MP H58. As the crow flies, 4 miles sounds about right. Clearwater Pond is out of sight of the railroad just west of the station location.
The RLRR, like many similar short lines, fell victim to the automobile.
Racquette Lake is well east of the N-S Mohawk & Malone. Starting at Carter, you can trace much of the route of the railroad on satellite images.
Post RLRR, private cars may have laid over at Thendara, or may have remained in Utica. The road from Carter to Racquette Lake was likely far worse than the state road from Thendara to Racquette Lake. In fact, much of the road back into Carter from Eagle Bay today is the old ROW.
I believe there was track at RL for car storage. I’d have to dig into some books to be sure.
There was freight into Racquette Lake, plus the ice that got hauled out. Cars were floated on Racquette Lake (there’s at least one on the bottom), as well as to the Marion Carry Railroad (.7 miles) and thence to Utowana Lake and beyond.
For many years, kids arriving for summer camps in that area would ride the trains to Carter, where they and their luggage were unloaded onto flatbed trucks for the rest of the trip to the camp. I had one such camper from years ago on one of my trains a while back.
Old topo maps show a stub of track extending beyond the loop to Racquette Lake.
Speaking of Adirondack lines, the D&H had a turntable at the original end of the branch to North Creek, and then a wye at the end of the Tahawus extension. The TT was still there when I rode the tourist line in 2012. I checked the Tahawus wye on Google Earth and saw in the 2015 image that there were loaded hoppers. I thought that the S&NC couldn’t get a reasonable rate for CP to handle the connecting traffic.
Might be the lead to the ramp for putting cars on floats.
My copy of the definitive volume on Adirondack railroadsKudish’s "Where did the tracks go in the Central Adirondacks) isn’t accessible at the moment. I’ll dig it out in the morning.
The linked article also told of a loop at the Bayhead end of line of the NY&LB. That suprised me since I thought the CNJ bought the double-ender Baldwin cab units specifically so they would not need to turn the engins.
I checked my copy of the Fairy Tale Railroad about Webb’s Mohawk & Malone and connecting lines, including a chapter on the Raquette Lake Railway. They not only had a siding for private rail cars, but it was also covered with a roof. Photo of it on p. 95. The also have a photo of the transfer barge landing.