Nostalgia & History > We're trying but the train gods keep spitting on us.

Here we are in the winter of 1976. February to be exact. I am becoming more and more convinced that this government takeover is going to go off on time. Feeling the sense of impending doom, it was a mission to spend as much time on the Erie Lackawanna as I could muster up. I drove to Marion and followed the line all the way east to Port Jervis. Then it was down to Portland Pa to catch that operation, back to Stroudsburg Pa, then west to Scranton. It was a four day whirlwind that I actually did a second time before C day. For this trip though I hooked back up with my Scranton regulars on the EL for what I knew was soon to be the end of my "engine service" days. I was fortunate because my favorite engineer, Frank Sturman had come in the evening I arrived, on NY98, and via the telephone told me he expected to be called early the following morning. I met him for dinner, and got a room, as I always did, at the hotel where the EL crews stayed. At 4 AM Frank called me and said that "we" {I always liked that part} were called for NY99 at 5:30. I met the crew in the lobby and we headed to a diner for breakfast. After marking up we proceeded to a shanty on the west end of the yard. Frank walked up to Bridge 60 tower and checked on NY99s exact location. Coming back, he said that it was just coming into town. After exchanging pleasantries with the inbound crew, we were off and running. As I mentioned in a previous thread, NY99 was prone to get a string of boxcars on the head end of the otherwise all piggyback context. No one much gave a rats butt at this point about any speed restriction, so Frank said we were doing 50mph. wherever we could. Trip was routine up Clark Summit, through Binghamton, until we got to Owego NY. All red ahead! This was not a usual occurence because the pig trains were not to be delayed...period! Thank God they didn't record crew conversations back in those days. The collective sentiment was that the railroad had gone to Hell and they were getting [expletive deleted] again. The conductor radioed his version of WTF and Frank said "exactly right." There was an agent at the Owego station that told us that there was a broken rail ten miles west of Owego, and they were sending a crew from Hornell! The maintenance crew out of Binghamton, which was much closer, was tied up east of that town.
There were no crossovers between us and the break,so there we sat,with the crew hours of service piling up. SIX hours later we were moving again. I guess I can say it now, we were at points well over the 50mph speed limit. Frank had been careful to remove the speed tape that was used in those days to record the train velocity. It was a thrilling ride to say the least. At points, I literally thought that we would bounce right off of the tracks. Hornell was the home terminal for these guys and they wanted to get home. It was not to be. We just about ran out of time at Gang Millls New York, so we were ordered to stop there for a recrew. The dispatcher didn't want us tying up the line because there were now four westbounds stacked behind us, including the hottest of the hot Advance Croxton 99 and Croxton 99. Both pig trains with heavy UPS content. The unhappy crew went onto Hornell. I was fortunate to get a ride back to Scranton on an eastbound that was working Gang Mills yard. It was the lasttime I got to ride with Frank, as I spent the final weeks of the ELs existance on the ground shooting everything I could. I actually only rode a train one more time. That was March 31st 1976 on the last day of my favorite railroad of all time.

top...rear end of DN90 sailing by.

bottom...Thats what NY99 looked like for six hours!

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/19 06:26 by Roadjob.

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I don't know but those are nice photos!

Cheers, Jim

Rough day for the EL but great pictures.
Gary

These photos and your back story certainly capture the humanity of both the railroaders and you.
Bob

Thanks Bill, great photos, interesting story.
Tim Costello

Nice story and pics....Imagine them going over the speed limit today....I miss the good ole days....

Great story, and very believable! In my years in train service I found that for any given trip over the road there was always a potential for unknown/unplanned factors to wreck a good trip. And it's doubly worse when the trip is homeward bound...

Lance/199

Too bad deregulation came along so late. Goes to show the EL was no willing victim. If you tried running a train like that on some of the other bankrupt carriers you would have ended up in the ditch for sure!

Great pix and story.  Thanks for sharing.  On my return to Chicago from New England last fall, I was seeking out depots to photograph and stopped at Owego.  My second shot is near where your platform view was taken. Wish it looked like it did then.

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Thanks for the photos. I haven't been to Owego since the very beginning of Conrail in 1976. What got me laughing was that they have put a crossover in just east of where we sat. Wherever my crew is now, they would have loved to have been able to back up a few hundred feet and get those six hours of waiting back.

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD