Eastern Railroad Discussion > "Branchline Thunder!" MA&N Remsen Hill NY

On October 23rd, Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern retrieved 104 tank cars north of Boonville NY and returned them to their Utica yard for eventual pick-up by CSX.

This video shows the 105-car train (a bulkhead flat carrying utility poles was added to the freight's consist in Boonville) southbound on Remsen Hill, 18.5 miles distant from the Utica yard. MA&N's 45-mile Utica-Boonville-Lyons Falls line is former NY Central territory, St. Lawrence Division.

A much longer version of this video appears on my YouTube channel, Railroading Rambler.

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Super cool video !

This line was built through here before the Civil War as the Black River & Utica, later Utica & Black River RR and became part of the RW&O (Rome Watertown & Ogdensburg) before assimilation into the New York Central and was originally part of a through route option between Utica and Canada.

This train looks like it could have come right out of Montreal ! Too bad nothing much is left except as a storage function for the truncated line. In Conrail days the paper mill at Lyons Falls at the end of the 46 mile line kept things busy. Nowadays most of the trains are Adirondack RR passenger trains. All Alco.

It is a pretty steep descending grade here and upbound with leaves on the tracks can be an experience in trying to haul a train up. Going down sometimes gets dicey too as I've tried to go into dynamics and immediately have gotten wheel slip the rails were so slick, just like glare ice.
 

Great location for a video, next to some joints in the rail and nice Fall foliage.  Those tanks stretched out forever!

Wyatt