Hudson Division Operations

Hey Jack,
Not only cars of booze from Standard Brands, but car loads of
Fleischman's yeast. The place stunk of it!

Ed Byrnes

I was recently impressed by the thread on another NYC forum concerning passenger schedules, namely the Pacemaker. I began looking in the NYC ETT's to see when the Milk trains stopped running down the Hudson Division on their way to the Big Apple. The times posted here are for the engine changes at Harmon. ETT # 70 from the fall of 1950, train # 183 arrived at Harmon 7:15 am and left at 7:30 am. Train # 185 arrived at 10:32 and left at 10:42. Train# 184 arrived at 9:30 pm and departed at 9:38 pm. Train # 182 arrived at 10:03 and left at 10:11 pm. ETT #71 from April 1951 has both eastbound and westbounds arriving and departing at almost the same times with the exception of train # 183 arriving at 7:45am and leaving at 8:00am. ETT #72 from September 1951 is the same as ETT # 71. ETT # 72 from April 1952 has only one westbound and one eastbound. Train # 185 rolls into Harmon at 11:41 am and departs at 11:50 am. Train # 184 comes through at 10:32 pm and leaves at 10:36 pm. ETT # 74 from September 1952, and ETT # 74A from March 1953 is the same as the previous schedule with only trains # 184, and 185 running. ETT # 75 from April 1953 has only train # 185 running, passing through Harmon at 7:15 am and departing at 7:20. The ETT # 76 from September 1953 doesn't list the Milk train no more. This time consuming and highly dedicated service was going more and more to the trucks and the loss of service from the Vermont milk sheds didn't help matters any either. The old forum here had some nice threads about the NYC Milk trains with cars coming from far away communities near the Canada border. Both dedicated milk trains and mixed trains peddled about night and day either hauling the full cars on their way to the Big Apple or cycling the empties back to the milk sheds again. I know these special trains will live on in HO scale on my layout and others who model the Water Level Route in the hayday of American railroading! Anyone else care to add their thoughts on this topic?

Larry

...just to add some first hand freight handling info to the Peekskill area of the Hudson Div... I worked for Standard Coated Products, Sanitas and Wallclad Div. (later a division of American Cyanamid) from '63 to '70 and one of my positions was unloading raw materials for making plastic coated wall covering. We received 10K gal. tank cars of liquid latex and covered hoppers (P-Word RR H30's) of calcium carbonate chalk powder. When the trucks were on strike somewhere (every couple of months or so!) we got boxcar loads of the cotton scrim sheeting (2400yds to a roll, 75 rolls per load) used as backing for the wallcovering.

The siding curved along an embankment and ended in the weeds just short of what was then Rt. 9. There was a four hundred foot long belt conveyor to transfer the chalk to the North end of the building ending on the roof. If the chalk loads contained a bit too much moisture it was necessary to use the proverbial "Ten Foot Pole" to constantly keep the car emptying as well as the dreaded noisy car shaker on the hopper chute. Neighbors loved THAT
noise! Many an icy night spent up there to get a late arriving car started for the day shift production...

We had the option of emptying the tank cars with either a moyno type screw pump or pumping air into the top of the car and forcing the latex through a four inch pipe to the storage tanks in the building. My sucessor to the position fell asleep in the pump room and allowed a car to blow dry forming four feet of stinky latex foam to accumulate in much of the second floor storage area...

The engine crew's hated that siding as it had deteriorated quite a bit in the support and gauge department... The engineer used to spot the hopper over the first chute and gently back out making forehead wiping gestures and grinning...

This building later became a wire drawing plant (Tensolite?) and I hear that the whole property is now a "Superfund Cleanup Site" to be.

Once during a labor/management disagreement a member of the management staff was attempting the unloading of a tank car, yup, you guessed it, car rolled out and fouled the main...

Ah, some fond memories of my 1:1 scale railroading career...

ALSO, in reading Larry’s excellent list of customers along the division I wonder if anyone remembers the traprock quarry just north of Cold Spring and whether or not they used any NYC services. The plant had a tipple going over the tracks to serve barges but I wonder if any product was shipped by rail. The place is now part of the Hudson Highlands State Park system and just about all trace of the operation is gone…

In the days of steam, were the incoming locos 'turned' on one of the two turntables or were they just backed over the loop to pick up the next Westbound train after being serviced?

What, if anything, is left of the two roundhouses and turntables at Croton?