• B&M Passenger Connection with D&H

  • Discussion relating to the pre-1983 B&M and MEC railroads. For current operations, please see the Pan Am Railways Forum.
Discussion relating to the pre-1983 B&M and MEC railroads. For current operations, please see the Pan Am Railways Forum.

Moderator: MEC407

  by Engineer Spike
 
There was a recent post about passenger traffic to Troy, and former routes via Rotterdam Jct./ West Shore. Were there routes to the west via D&H to Binghamton, and DL&W or Erie west? I'm sure if it happened, it did not last. The Central is most direct.
  by TomNelligan
 
Never any through passenger service that I'm aware of, unless maybe it happened for two weeks in the 1920s or something. The B&M wasn't really a major Boston-to-Midwest passenger carrier, since it couldn't compete with the much faster direct service offered by the B&A and NYC. The through sleepers from Boston to NYC connections via Troy were about it.

B&M passengers who did want to get to the D&H could ride between Troy and Albany Union Station on the NYC, or take a local streetcar.

Through freight service did exist via Mechanicville, notably the Boston-Chicago piggyback service offered by the B&M-D&H-EL in the late 1960s that pooled power from all three lines.
  by Ocala Mike
 
Weren't there through trains from Boston to the races at Saratoga Springs, NY back in the day? I'm talking early 20th century here.
  by jaymac
 
Sometime in the 1950s, Railroad Magazine ran a photo of The Dude, a race-season special that ran from North Station to Saratoga on an all-B&M route. Just west of the Hudson River bridge, the special would use the Saratoga & Schuylerville Branch, sold post-WW II to the Pinslys and scrapped, ironically enough, in the 1950s.
If you use your search engine of choice, you should get a good number of hits for the Saratoga & Schuylerville. You may even get referred back to this site, because I posted somewhat the same info earlier, but given my just-caffeinated ADDness, I had neither the patience nor focus to go hunting.