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  • State Line Railroad on NY/MA line in Berkshires?

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Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New England

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 #1616023  by S1f3432
 
Earlier today I was thumbing through some old issues of Railfan looking for somethng unrelated and found an article in the July 2001 issue titled " A locomotive for all seasons " which detailed the dieselization and operations of the New Haven's Berkshire Branch in the 50's and 60's. The first RS2's came in 1947-8, followed by the RS3's in 1950. Three units were typically operated on a heavy freight at night ( RI-2 northbound, IR-1 southbound ) between Danbury and State Line, the primary NYC interchange. During the day the consist of RI-2 would be broken up and used on two local turns which operated from State Line south to Rising ( the junction with the Berkshire Branch mainline) and then one south to Great Barrington and the other north to Pittsfield. Returning to State Line the units would be recombined to forward IR-1 south that night. Declining business lead to change in 1956 with RI-2/IR-1 changed to daytime and an RS3 assigned to Pittsfield to cover the north end switcher NX-12. In 1960 State Line was closed with the NYC interchange moved to Pittsfield with the thru trains changed to QR-1/RQ-2. With traffic continuing to decline in 1961 a single train NX-13 operated from Danbury north to Rising where it swapped cars with NX-12 then returned to Danbury with this pattern apparently continuing until the Penn Central merger.