Nostalgia & History > On the D&H 32 years ago OTD

Over the weekend of March 14 and 15 of 1987 a group of us headed up to Binghamton to check out the D&H. This was during the Guilford Era and the locomotive consists were as crazy as ever. Guilford picked up ATSF SD26s, Detroit Edison SD40s and U30Cs as well as a bunch of Conrail GP40s,U33Bs and U33Cs. These along with what was left on the D&H,B&M and MEC roster made for a motley if not colorful collection of power.  #1  POPY (Portland-Pot Yard) B&M 362, B&M333, D&H 456, B&M192 (GP39-2,GP40,C424m,U33B) coming into East Binghamton,NY. on 3/14/87.  #2  Springfield Terminal SD26  4657 working the south end of East Binghamton. It seemed out of place. A D&H RS11 or RS36 always worked this job.   #3  Later in the afternoon we caught TV-99 heading west to Buffalo on the Southern Tier at Smithboro,NY.  D&H 456, B&M 663, Springfield Terminal 629 (C424m,U30C,SD26) on a Sea-Land stack train. That's getting 3 builders the hard way.

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The next day we we chased EBMT (East Binghamton - Mt. Tom) unit coal train up Belden Hill with D&H 658, MEC 281, ST 641, D&H 650 (U33C,U23B,SD26,U33C) on the head end.  The Belden Helper was MEC 600 and D&H 654 (SD40,U33C). These two shots were taken at Fuller Rd. in Port Crane,NY.  We chased this train toward Oneonta until it made a meet with the southbound EDBU (East Deerfield - Buffalo).   I can't remember where that meet happened.  Anyway, we were happy with a southbound because the light was much better in that direction in the afternoon and we had to start thinking about heading back home. Last Shot is the EDBU coming out of Belden Tunnel at Tunnel,NY. The tunnel was in the process of a major clearance and rebuild project at the time. Another zany lash-up on this one. D&H 662, MEC 603, D&H 7319, ST 4650, ST 637, D&H 659 (U33C,SD40,GP38-2,SD26,SD26,U33C)  I for one was not a Guilford fan at the time. It was like Conrail deja-vu all over again. I will admit that the lash-ups during this time were very interesting to say the least.

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Great stuff! I missed most of the Guilford craziness because I stopped going up in the area right after the Belden Hill tunnel reopened. As a matter of fact, between 1985 and 90 I did virtually no railfanning anywhere.

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

Excellent series. You even caught ex-Detroit Edison units on Guilford!
Bob

You got a lot of vintage power there.  Good stuff!

Nice shots and memories.  Those were great times to railfan Binghamton in the mid to late 80's.  Here is another crazy consist in 1987 westbound crossing the Chenango River on the Erie heading to Buffalo.

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Nice one ! We could probably do a pretty good series that consisted of crazy lash-ups on the D&H over the years.