Notes on Meetings of 2019-2015
| Our
Annual Auction Was Held at December 10, 2019 Meeting: Loads of Great
Rail Books |
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Every year the December meeting is given over to an auction of railroad items contributed by members. This year, we had a large haul of fine railroad books, contributed by a member who was "downsizing". Many boxes of books went under the auction hammer, and virtually nobody went away empty-handed. There were also some model items and other bits of rail ephemera. It was a good time in the upstairs conference room of The History Center. We also held our annual election of officers, with the entire slate of candidates re-elected for another term during 2020. |
| November
12, 2019 Meeting Heard About the "Official Guide" |
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The November meeting of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society was a presentation by our Secretary and Historian Gene Endres on the "Official Guide to the Railroads", covering its beginnings as a small book listing timetables of the then operating railroads in the 1840s, to the huge monthly tome issued by the National Railroad Publication Company, which reached a peak of about 1600 pages of timetables and lists of officers, maps and a vast amount of detailed information during the 1900s to 1972. The talk was illustrated with examples of some of the timetables and some quirks found in the books over time. |
| Autumn
on the D&H Arrived for October 8, 2019 Meeting |
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The October meeting of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society convened at The History Center, 410 Tioga Street in downtown Ithaca on October 8 at 7 PM. The program was another (!) video, this time featuring the Delaware and Hudson line from Schoharie Junction near Delanson, NY to Oneonta. This is home territory for many in central New York, so it was a good chance to see trains running in places we know well. The video clips were all shot during the fall foliage season,making for a colorful program. Perhaps this was also an inspiration to get our your camera, video camera or even your cell phone and make images out along the line. |
| September
2019 Meeting Showed Lehigh Valley Video |
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| Our September meeting was held on September 10 in the second floor conference room at The History Center in downtown Ithaca. We viewed a video from John Pechulis Productions on the Lehigh Valley in both early Kodachrome color and black&white, along the tracks from Bound Brook, New Jersey to Mountaintop, PA. The video featured views of the Black Diamond in both steam and diesel guises, as well as freight action all along the Lehigh River valley. | 
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| July
13, 2019 meeting featured our Annual
Picnic! |
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| Members of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society gathered on Saturday morning, July 13, beneath the Route 414 highway bridge in Clyde, NY. This was our annual picnic, trackside at the CSX main line across New York State. Beginning at 10:30 AM, members saw a steady stream of trains, including three Amtrak runs. During breaks in the action, we cooked hot dogs, hamburgers, had salads, drinks, chips and lots of good talk. The weather was magnificent, dry clear and cool, with some decent heat out in the sun, but cooling shade under the bridge. A couple of Amish carriages even made their usual appearances. It was a great time. | 
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Pictures
from Richard Horstman Collection Shown by Richard Palmer of Syracuse
Chapter |
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| The CRHS June meeting at The History Center in downtown Ithaca (our new meeting site) was informed by a collection of slides taken by Richard Horstman. Horstman was later owner of the Lehigh Valley private car No. 353, which was parked for some years at the one-time Amtrak East Syracuse station. The slides covered scenes in and around Syracuse, Binghamton, Sayre, PA, and other locations in central New York. The slide collection has been in the care of Dick Palmer, Historian and journalist, and he loaned them to Gene Endres of our chapter for digitization. |
A
History of the Pennsylvania Railroad from a Philadelphia Public TV
Station entertained the CRHS in May 2019 |
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| A video produced by station WHYY in Philadelphia encapsulated the history of the Pennsylvania Railroad, from its earliest days as part of the "Main Line of Public Works" canal and rail system, to its enlargement and improvement under railroad presidents like Thompson, Scott and Cassatt to become the Standard Railroad of the World was the May program of the CRHS. In just one hour, it told a story, the first half of which is related in detail by Albert J. Churella in his magisterial The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1, 1846-1917 that almost every railroad fan should know. The sad end of the PRR, after its merger with the New York Central is another story altogether, of the greatest corporate bankruptcy of its time. But it was great to see such pictures as operations over the Horseshoe Curve and rare locomotives like the T-1s and even a brief glimpse of a Baldwin "Centipede". Now we might hope for a similar treatment of the New York Central, rather than more railfan runbys. Let us know if such a film/video is available. |
April
2019 CRHS Meeting Viewed Operations During Last Days of Lehigh Valley
Railroad |
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| The April meeting of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society was the second one held at The History Center for Tompkins County in their new location just off the Commons in Ithaca. We viewed a video supplied by Bob Travis on operations in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Commentary on the video was by a former employee of this division and included numerous facets of how the employees went about their business, including which diner they may have stopped at and when and where the trackage was good or bad. |
March
2019Meeting of the CRHS Viewed Video on the discovery of a Long-Hidden
Tunnel Under the Streets of Brooklyn, New York |
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| Back in the early 1980s, Brooklyn resident Bob Diamond heard rumors of what was perhaps the first subway in the world that was placed in a tunnel built under some of the streets of Brooklyn. He kept investigating, though most people he asked said, "I looked for the tunnel and didn't find it. Therefore, it doesn't exist." Eventually, Diamond did find the tunnel, built to bring what became the Long Island Railroad from the shore of New York harbor to it's line that went on to Greenport, Long Island, making a connection shortcut for bringing freight to New England. Our member, Andrew Diamond (no relation) brought the video to our March meeting. |
| February
Meeting of the CRHS was Postponed by the threat of a snow and ice
storm. Though the weather relented somewhat at the last minute, the
Directors of the CRHS felt that having members traveling late in the
evening under bad road conditions meant a postponement was all for
the best. |
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January
2019 Meeting: Riding the ExtremeTrains: Fast Produce Freight from
Washington State to Upstate New York and The Circus Train on a Tight
Schedule |
| For Our January
Meeting, we heard sad news that member Greg Dickinson, scheduled to
bring a program on freight cars, had suffered a "minor" stroke. [Fortunately,
Greg was back for our April meeting.] President Steve Peck was away
on family business. But, member Andrew Diamond, hero of the moment,
arrived with some great videos. We watched two: one on the refrigerated
freight that makes it from a Washington State cooled warehouse to
another one in upstate New York at Schenectady in less than three
days. All the cars are refrigerated and time is of the essence. Then,
in another time-limited episode, we watched how the Ringling Brothers
manages to break down its show, load it on their train and make it
to the next city in just two days. Sadly, as of 2018, the Circus and
its Train are no more. |
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| December
Meeting Was Our Annual Auction |
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| Members brought items to sell at the annual auction of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society. It was held on December 11 at The History Center, Ithaca. This was possibly the last meeting to be held at our long-time location at The History Center of Tompkins County. Turnout was a bit disappointing, but there was plenty of fun and some interesting pieces were sold. |  |
| November
13 Meeting at The History Center: Greg Dickinson on Freight Cars and
a Video on Nickel Plate Berkshire Locomotive No. 765 |
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| The Cornell Railroad Historical Society met at The History Center in downtown Ithaca on Tuesday November 13. Our program this month feature a video from member Bill Hinderliter on the renewal and renewed operation of the NKP 765 steam locomotive. The program was well photographed and showed a lot of detail as the special excursion arrived at Harrisburg, PA, after traveling over the eastern portion of the now-Norfolk Southern line over Horseshoe Curve. |  |
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| October
9 Meeting at The History Center Featured the Deluxe Super Chief |
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| The meeting of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society on October 9, 2018, showed a video: The Super Chief of the Santa Fe, known as "The Train of the Stars" which carried celebrities from Los Angeles and Hollywood to Chicago. It included interviews with people who had traveled on the train, railroad executives, and some of the crew members who made the train a deluxe way to travel. The video even included a recipe for the famous Super Chief french toast, recalled by many as the best version of that traditional breakfast they had ever eaten. |  |
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On a sunny Saturday, July 14, 2018, a smattering of Cornell Railroad Historical Society members gathered under the Route 414 underpass in Clyde, New York, for our annual picnic. Despite getting there in time for the proposed 11 AM start, some members arived earlier, and were able to tell the members who were prompt that they had already missed four trains! Traffic was good on the CSX main line, with some oil tank trains, autorack trains, container trains and plenty of CSX diesel power. Amtrak also contributed three more passenger runs to the show. About 30 minutes after the picnic folded its tables, chairs and barbeque, roughly 100 cars of a westbound "garbage train" also passed the site.
Program Director Bob Travis obtained several videos of the huge model railroad theme park in Hamburg, Germany, clamed to be the world's largest. Few would doubt the claim, when all it takes is to view a few of the sampler videos available on the "Miniatur Wunderland" [the name in German] website. So we put on your conductor's hats, avoided the €15 (Euro) entry fee and settled in for a remarkable program. The meeting was held at The History Center, downtown Ithaca, on June 12, 2018.
- The May meeting of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society on May 8, 2018, was a presentation by VP Tim Lynch on the Allegheny Portage Railroad, a very early historical railroad located near Johnstown, PA and run as a National Historic Site by the National Park Service.
As Tim described the Allegheny Portage: [It] was a critical piece of the Pennsylvania Main Line of Public Works - the Philadelphia to Pittsburgh transportation link that opened in 1834. The Main Line cut travel time between the two key cities from over three weeks to just three days. Most of the Main Line was canal, but the 40 miles over Cresson Mountain, the backbone of the Alleghenies and the eastern continental divide, was managed by an ingenious collection of rail and incline planes: the Allegheny Portage Railroad.
Our February 2018 meeting showed Guy Wicksall's complete collection of movies of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, shot between Sayre , Pennsylvania and Manchester, New York. These movies showed the LV from 1964 to the Conrail takeover on April 1st, 1976, and some of the transition, with the last seenes shot in 1978.
He had no means to record sound, so there was no sound except a little commentary, based on memories going back over 40 years. The video may still be available from:
Guy J. Wicksall
21 Maple Street Geneva, NY 14456
gwicksall@rochester.rr.com
Frank Barry to Show His Historic Steam Photos at January Meeting
The January, 2018 meeting of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society will have Frank Barry, noted photographer and honoree of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art in Illinois, showing his historic and recent prints of his quest for steam locomotives in the US, Canada and Mexico during the 1950s and 1960s. The meeting will be held at the History Center, foot of State Street in downtown Ithaca. The date is January 9, 2018 and the doors of the Center will be open at 7 PM with the meeting beginning promptly at 7:15 PM. We will also hold the election of officers and Board members during the meeting. Voting is only for members of the National Railway Historical Society, but all are welcome for the meeting.
The December 2017 meeting of our Cornell Railroad Historical Society had a large number of rare books from the collection of William (Bill) Caloroso, who has been ill. In addition, a number of interesting models wer placed on the block, though few sold, since times have been tight and fewer members are working in the fields of HO railroading. It was a successful evening for the chapter, with several hundred dollars raised.
The November 2017 meeting of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society had our president, Steve Peck, returned from one of his adventures in Alaska to show a non-rail but terrifying video of a unique trip up the Newhalen River from Lake Illimani. This stream, flowing out of rugged mountains near the Alaskan Coast, has a whole series of "Class 5" rapids and has never been paddled or kayaked successfully (read: fatalities). Steve remarked that he was grateful to be alive. The vessel used in this stream is a powerful motorboat run by a man whom Steve has gotten to know while working on building structures in far northern Alaska.
While Steve felt imperiled during the first trip, he actually agreed to do it again, but still felt that death lurked around every corner of the stream.. The video made it clear that what are called "rapids, are more like waterfalls, and the fact that the boat could make it either up or down this thundering cascade was something like a miracle of daring and skill.
Armed with new photos discovered during his research and from aerial drone shots along the long-abandoned right-of-way, Bruce Tracy gave a talk on September, 2017, on the remnants of the Auburn Short Line (otherwise known as the Central New York Southern) at the CRHS September meeting. The line was known for operating one of the first McKeen motor cars in this part of the world, but their deficiencies helped the line to its demise in the 1920s.
