Can the NYS&W revival of the 1980s happen in 2010s?

riffian wrote:

Steve F45 wrote:go under? business has been picking up and they are now back up to 3 round trips during the week and locals are always busy. Plus they are doing a lot of track upgrades on the NJ side.

Are you sure they started running three times a week?? I saw the SU99 the last two Mondays and neither train was longer than 45 cars. Train is reported to be still running only twice a week.

Yes, they are still only running twice per week, however there were "talks" that it would go back to 3 days a week! I don't know if anything came out of it though!

Last week, two round trips. This week, three round trips- waiting for the Friday SU-99 to pass through my backyard in about two hours.

2 or 3 round trips a week can't possibly come close to supporting the costs of maintaining the 180 miles or so of railroad between Little Ferry and Binghamton, and I'm not trying to sound pesamistic. There were years when the stack trains were running everyday that the railroad didn't make money. There's nothing I would like to see more than the railroad to succeed and stay alive as it is.

Because the NYS&W is in private hands there's no way to know who owns what percentages.

lvrr325 wrote:Because the NYS&W is in private hands there's no way to know who owns what percentages.

I'm told on good authority that CSX and NS each own 40% (Conrail bought 80% and then split it in half when Conrail made the spit). Traffic on the NYSW could pick up some day. It did recently for the SU-99/SU-100 to run three times a week now. They don't have enough crews and enough power to keep up with the traffic in the last few weeks (which I guess is a good problem to have if you are to have any). Ballast trains didn't run for a few weeks since they needed the WS-2 crew to do yard work and local work. The track gangs are putting the super elevation back into the curves that was taken out so the stacks wouldn't be so tippy and I believe track speed is going to be brought up too, up to an additional 10 mph (don't quote me on it). The track already looks better even though they're not nearly done with it.

I'm on to think that anything is possible, and I wouldn't completely rule out that a "revival" wouldn't happen again. My father was a reporter for the Suburban Trends when they were still on Main Street in Butler and was the railroad's biggest cheer leader during the rebuild in '86, and was the first reporter to break the news about freight trains coming through Butler again, and everyone then said "Yeah, okay, and monkey's will fly." A revival happened once, who's one to say that it wont happen again? NYSW has been the test bed for a lot of things like the RDC's, MU'ing locomotives and the intermodal business so I wouldn't be surprised if they were the test bed for another thing in the future.

I'm not a business man on the grand scale of a regional railroad, but once my father's good friend, Walter Rich passed away, the railroad seems it constantly wants to down size while Mr. Rich's business vision was to constantly expand and grow their fleet bigger. Unfortunately, the new management sees it a slightly different way apparently--I'm not criticizing them, they know more about this than any of us do. I hear a lot of railfans complain about putting leased power all over the place instead of NYSW units, but it makes sense to use another road's locomotives and put more miles on them than their own and send them out to their home road when they need to be serviced instead of pouring money into their own locomotives.

I think in the future that there will be another big come back of some sort, just keep hoping for it to be soon.

I thank you for that well thought out diatribe, however, I don't see any more trains coming to the NYSW anytime soon! Call me a pessimist, or more fittingly a realist, but the only way you might see more trains on the NYSW is if CSX/NS gain full control, and traffic levels warrant it... I don't think NYSW is hiring conductors/engineers at the present and any more traffic would be too much to handle for the current crew base.

I believe the last Detour over the NYSW was in late 2006, early 2007 and I don't recall CSX being too happy with their trains sitting for hours waiting for a crew call, so it put an end to that!

The only way the NYSW will gain business is if they can generate local traffic on their own rails from North Bergen, NJ to Warwick, NY or between Binghamton and Syracuse. Overhead traffic is not existent anymore... and there is no chance of it coming back. If some person wanted to build a trash transfer facility or ethanol plant along the NYSW right of way, then you might see a daily train. But any great revival on the railroad is not possible.

The 40-40-20 thing is a rumor just as much as the story that it's 10-10-80 but CSX and NS provided Walter Rich the backing to purchase back to 80%. Further complicating that is his death, as the will apparently was not made public and disposition of his share of the stock is unknown. Only the parties involved know for sure. The only thing that is clear is that since he died CSX/NS have been able to exert more control over the road, evident in the leasing of newer units and ceasing to use units that would have long since been retired on CSX or NS. (This has always been a sticking point, back to the 1980s when Walter wanted C636s and CSX said they needed something more reliable, resulting in them getting SD45s).

It's too bad the railroad was too incompetent to run the CSX trains between Syracuse and Little Ferry. They were fun to watch. I think in the earlier 2000's decade, CSX would have given them a daily autorack west and a daily intermodal eastbound if they could have figured out how to run them in a timely manner. Unfortunately these trains took probably 24 hours extra to get between LF and Syracuse than if they ran the River Line...

SecaucusJunction wrote:But any great revival on the railroad is not possible.

Not to start trouble, but then how do you explain the stack business and rebuild?

Secaucus Junction (above) is correct about overhead traffic and no chance of its coming back. The big difference between the first time and now is that the first time, Conrail had no effective competition for mini-landbridge traffic to the New York market, and at least one major steamship line earnestly desired to see some, so the NYS&W had a ready-made customer if they could cobble together a route to Buffalo to connect with CSX (or Chessie, if that's what it was at the time). Now, since the Conrail breakup, CSX and NS both serve the New York market directly, and there is no need to find a different route to Buffalo to reach CSX.

Yes, and CP as well has rights into the New York area, although I'd want to research to be confident in the details.

CN is the only road that's close enough to make sense to try and crack into that market, and there's just not enough traffic right now to warrant it.

One thing I think a lot of people forget, myself included, is that the NYSW was always a SHORT line. NEVER intended to become a long haul freight railroad. I wouldn't call the '86 rebuild a revival so much as I would a rebirth. I am impressed that they are able to have the customers they have now, and have the necessity to run three round trips weekly for one with only a handful of connecting routes. As far as I'm concerned, business is booming for them compared to their business back in the day where they would only run locals. Any regional railroad that requires a set of five 6-axle locomotives to pull their train is doing great business in my eyes!

ErieLimited2914 wrote:

SecaucusJunction wrote:But any great revival on the railroad is not possible.

Not to start trouble, but then how do you explain the stack business and rebuild?

Conrail tried to squeze both SeaLand and the NYSW. The NYSW didnt back down to Conrail and rebuilt its railroad to compete with Conrail with backing from SeaLand and CSX. Todays dynamics just do not allow the NYSW to be a competing route. The NYSW has done a good job in growing its local business as a Short Line.

ErieLimited2914 wrote:One thing I think a lot of people forget, myself included, is that the NYSW was always a SHORT line. NEVER intended to become a long haul freight railroad.

Not intentionally a shortline. Upon completion of the Wilkes Barre & Eastern in 1893 the NYS&W was a successful coal road - direct access to anthracite to the coal dumpers on the Hudson River in Edgewater. Once the Erie took control in 1898 it was reduced to the role of a shortline but it didn't start out that way.