D&H train to Fresh Pond abolished?

[Otto Vondrak]

I heard through the grapevine that the formerly tri-weekly D&H round trip between Saratoga (or is it Kenwood?) and Fresh Pond in Queens has been abolished as a scheduled job, and will now only operate "as needed," possibly once a week under the cover of darkness. Didn't realize business was down so much- looks like New York loses another unique operation if this is true. Anyone else hear anything about this?

-otto-

[thebigham]

This happened months ago. I read about it somewhere.

[K4Pacific]

Yucky 3rd Quarter for CPR. Operating ratio increased. Income down. Yikes.

[Otto Vondrak]

This happened months ago. I read about it somewhere.

No, this did not. It was a scheduled tri-weekly round trip until this past summer. Just this week did they abolish any scheduled trips at all... now it is down to an "as needed" extra train.

[District D RTC]

I don't know the exact dates of anything but it was still technically a 3-times a week job well into 2008.

Don't believe everything you read - as certain publication have earned the nicknames they have received like rumorpace. Heck, according to one mag the jobs "last run" was published in 2006. Thats just plain BS. I can't entirely blame the editors as the captions supplied sometimes come from people who heard through a grapevine of misinformation that something might happen and they take it as fact. That said, however, I can tell you I have had submitted my photos for publication with correct captions attached, and more than once had one printed with a grossly incorrect caption as changed by the editor who thought he knew......

That said, the job went to once a week scheduled and extra as needed on the other days during the later part of the summer of this year.

Just THIS PAST WEEK was the 416/417 officially abolished as a regular job. No sooner was it abolished then they had to run an "extra" section Thurs/Fri this week with 37 SB and 16(+/-) NB...... Listen, NYC service still isn't dead yet for CP, but it aint far from becoming nothing more than the "D&H Stone Train" or the equivalent of P&W's CHFP but with engines that are completely red and come from a different home terminal.......

[Tommy Meehan]

I have a feeling there's a lot more to this than Railpace simply printing rumors.

Oddly enough, I heard from someone at the time (a retired senior railway executive) who knew some of the people involved and he was under the strong impression that CP was defintely pulling out last summer (2007). That CP Rail was saying the traffic levels were just too low. That there was an ongoing issue with CSX refusing to grant them direct access to their customers and this issue seemed unresolvable. Obviously something was going on.

I guess we all saw the photos that purported to be of the last run. I'm sure a lot of the photographers were under the honest impression it was the last run. In at least one case I'm positive Railpace was supplied with caption information from a very reliable source that this was the last run. There were also photos and comments circulating on the Internet -- again from people who were involved in the industry for many years -- to the effect that CP Rail was pulling out. None of the Monday morning quarterbacks said at the time, it wasn't true, that CP/D&H was going to keep running. Including a certain Yahoo List where I found absolutely NO INFORMATION to the contrary (and I even went through their archives).

Prior to this CP Rail put out a press release (I read it) stating that the Oak Point service was a disappointment and that they were hoping a planned intermodal hub in Brooklyn would provide a lot more traffic. If not, CP Rail stated, the service would have to end. At the time the Oak Point service was supposed to be coming off, CP was also making noise about pulling out of the Oak Island service and downgrading Philadelphia, were they not?

In the case of 416/417, NYDOT is publicly committed to growing freight service on the Hudson Line and to Oak Point. They are also committed to maintaining some competition for CSX. Perhaps -- behind the scenes --some armtwisting was going on to keep the service running?

I got interested in this because I kept seeing the trains running on the Hudson Line and people asked me if I knew what was going on. However, I found hard information very difficult to find. In fact, I still find solid information hard to find, as do other people (see the message that began this thread). It's probably a sensitive subject among CP/D&H-CSX-NYSDOT.

[edited for clarity]