• Adirondack Division Customers

  • Discussion relating to the NYC and subsidiaries, up to 1968. Visit the NYCS Historical Society for more information.
Discussion relating to the NYC and subsidiaries, up to 1968. Visit the NYCS Historical Society for more information.

Moderator: Otto Vondrak

  by ffmike9
 
Looking for a little help here. I was wondering if anyone could provide a customer list for the Adirondack Division in 1967 or 1968 just before the formation of Penn Central. I would like to compare to a list of customers at the time of abandonment in 1972.
Thanks in advance.
Mike

  by RussNelson
 
Mike Kudish's 2nd volume of "Where did the Tracks Go?" is now out, and it covers the Adirondack Division, including customers. Don't know if it precisely names the exact time period you're looking for, but if the information exists, and Mike had it at the time of publication, he put it into the book.

  by ffmike9
 
I have 3 of Kudish's books but I am looking for specific customers. If someone had some old switchlists or something of the sort that would be a great help.

Mike

  by greenwichlirr
 
The new series of books do indeed list customers along the lines.
  by Tom Curtin
 
Where can you get Kudish's books? These are new ones on me

  by traingeek8223
 
I have them in stock. Mohawk Valley Railroad in Schenectady. I also read them cover to cover.
  by skeeda
 
I would love to see a listing of the Adirondack Division customers for 1972. I photographed the wayfreight up in Lake Placid back on 17 Oct. 70 and in the consist was a PC boxcar that was carrying a horse!
  by Partlow P.O.
 
Here`s what I`ve been able find in the way of customers that received freight for the year 1967.

Thendara - Foley Lumber ( lumber ) received 7 carloads

Old Forge Hardware ( lumber ) received 8 carloads

Beaver River - Mr. Stanley Thompson received 1 carload of cement building blocks

Tupper Lake - Adirondack Plywood ( logs - veneer ) received 4 cars and forwarded 96 cars

International Paper ( pulpwood ) forwarded 452 cars

Draper Corp ( bobbins ) forwarded 53 cars

State School ( coal ) received 105 cars

Tupper Lake Supply ( coal - lumber ) received 13 cars

Lake Clear Jct. - Fletcher Murname received 9 cars of brick tile

Saranac Lake - Adirondack Bottled Gas ( liquid gas ) received 59 cars

Swift & Company ( meat ) received 56 cars

Boyce & Robertson ( coal ) received 18 cars

Saranac Lake Coal ( coal ) received 14 cars

Cohen Hardware ( salt - galv. roofing ) received 24 cars

Raybrook - Raybrook State Hospital ( coal ) received 33 cars

Lake Placid - Hurley Brothers Coal ( coal ) received 4 cars

Lamb Lumber ( lumber ) received 11 cars
  by umtrr-author
 
Interesting information! Thanks for sharing.

Other than International Paper, which averages out to one car a day, not exactly high volume customers, and a long way from Utica. I guess it's relatively easy to see why the division didn't last.

Now I want to check Kudish's books (I have all of them) to see where that car of cement blocks might have been spotted at Beaver River.
  by kinlock
 
So when the railroad closed, so did these businesses? Nope: just added more trucks on roads unfit to handle them
  by Sir Ray
 
kinlock wrote:So when the railroad closed, so did these businesses? Nope: just added more trucks on roads unfit to handle them
Well, excluding the big client International Paper, and those clients recieving coal shipments (I would presume they switched to Gas or Oil by the 1970s, coal was rapidly falling out of favor for heating by then), we have 341 carloads over a year.
Even assuming 4 trucks/carload, that's about 3.7 TRUCKS per day - nobody probably even noticed that.

Looks like about 174 carloads of coal - the change-over from coal to oil/gas heating really did take a big whack out of rail freight in the North East - those business accounted for an average of 2 additional trucks per day.

And IP was the winner - 452 car loads, which does work out to be about 5 additional truck-loads per day - now that could be noticible, since it was all going to the same business I guess.
  by umtrr-author
 
And that's all assuming that the businesses stated were still in operation at the time that the Adirondack Division was taken out of service. I don't know when International Paper closed down (I'm planning to see if that's in Kudish's books) but that would have been a good reason to quit the line.
  by greenwichlirr
 
With the way the NYC/PC was operating by the last few years of the division, would YOU have stayed with them or gone to truck?