I ran trains on the River Line from early 1974 until mid 1982. During the
Penn Central period, the railroad had been allowed to go "to hell" and we
had mostly 30 with almost half of the line under 10 MPH slow orders at
times. I had a reputation of being too slow to suit some of the troops.
After Conrail took over and fixed up the track with welded rail, new ties
and much just plain work, the speeds were raised to mostly 50 MPH.
I don't remember whether I was on the extra list at the time or whether I
had the job regular but I was on TV-53 or whatever the symbol was on
the van train out of North Bergen that went on duty around 3:00 AM. At
the time this train had three or four brand new GP-40-2's for power and
at Selkirk, the whole thing went through intact. I was going north and
much track work had been done on the whole line but the line between
Coxsackie and Ravena was especially good. Going north at CP-121 it was
generally upgrade after a sag so I wound up those engines and got that
thing really moving. I guess I can tell you today that I was going well
over 60 and the engines rode like a "baby carriage". Came around a
curve in the area where the track goes under the NYS Thruway (I-87) and
there were some workers working under traffic. I laid on the horn and
they went in all directions as far as they could get from the track but we
got through there without any problems and the conductor did not say
anything about our speed in the area but did say, great trip. I didn't get
much static after that one from the troops about my speed.
I thought about doing it at Highland but we had some reverse curves in
that area and I did not want to scare anybody, especially myself.
Noel Weaver