Reflections on the Newburgh
Branch
by Mike Joyce
Special Thanks to John Deserto for
assembling this article and continually supplying material for this website.
The
Newburgh Branch in later years, 1972-1977, was serviced by the DW (the
telegraph name for the Erie's yard in Middletown NY) Day Job. Usually the
local drew a 1200 series GP 7 but sometimes an SW substituted if traffic was
light. 1223, 1225 and 1248 were good engines but 1246 was a dog. Boy did the
crews moan when they had the 1246! One crew member even spray painted out
the EL logo on the nose out of embarrassment!
The largest local I ever saw was 22 cars westbound behind a
pair of Geeps. By the early 1970's the branch was already in serious decline
and was subject to a 15 mph limit. The Penn Central connection in Newburgh
was severed and all cars had to arrive via Greycourt. The crew had to run 13
miles with no customers with the exception of a fuel dealer in
Washingtonville who received one or two cars each year. The tank of home
heating oil would sit for three or four months until the car was finally
emptied. The oil tank car was quite
distinctive with three domes.
Washingtonville was at one time quite a busy place on the
railroad with a feed dealer, lumberyard, passenger depot, elevated freight
house, two creameries (Borden's and
Sheffield Farms) and a five track stub ended yard that had been used to
terminate passenger trains. Most of this is gone. The freight house burned
in a suspicious fire in 1979. The passenger depot survived abandonment only
to succumb to arson in the early 1980's after it had been converted to a
museum/gift shop owned by a private individual who maintained most of its
character. In 1975, I saw a rare inspection run eastbound through Salisbury
Mills. Four officials and a driver rode in a buff colored Pontiac Grand
Lemans with hi-rail gear on a cold, gray afternoon in November. I waited for
five hours to see their return but they did not come back.
Erie GP-7 1236 epitomized
the idea of General Purpose, seen here in a lash-up heading through
Middletown, next week it might be the lone power on the Newburgh Branch.
Photo by Ray Brown
In
November of 1973, Stauffer Chemicals announced its intention of pulling out
of Newburgh and by the following April they were gone and their trackage
removed. Stauffer had been the destination of 35% of the branch's inbound
traffic and so, their departure was another major setback for the branch
that only had two major customers left. When Stauffer pulled out on March
29, 1974, the service to the branch was reduced to Tuesday and Friday from
Monday Wednesday and Friday. Service would be cut back further by 1975 to
Friday or Saturday.
This
EL SW-9 is in front of the EL's Middletown NY freight house waiting for
its next chore. Local power out of the yard ranged far
and wide working the various branches in the area, switching EL
customers and interchanging with the M&NJ. Photo by Ray Brown.
Conrail
arrived on April 1, 1976, and in June of that year the Newburgh connection
was re-opened! Wow! Could this be a change for the better? A coal train was
run with GP 7's 1238 and 1224 with 22 loads for the power plant at Roseton.
Could King Coal save the branch? Unfortunately the answer was "no" as this
move was not repeated. In fact, the end was drawing near. Conrail's
restructuring continued and on December 28, 1977, the last train ran the
length of the branch from Greycourt to Newburgh and back. They made a pick
up at Washingtonville of an empty tank car to add to their train of three
box cars, a covered hopper and another tank car. Caboose C-159 trailed
former EL GP 7 1224. Two crew members wore black hats and the conductor told
me this was the last run. I boarded at Salisbury Mills and took my usual
perch in the caboose. I swung off just before Washingtonville, on "The
Flats", and stood in an icy cold wind as the train slowly departed, blowing
for the Main Street crossing (route 94) as the conductor waved. There was no
fanfare, no crowds, just the cold, icy wind and the distant squealing of
flanges rounding a curve out of sight.
This Erie SW-9 could very
easily find itself on the Newburgh Branch in the near future.
She is seen here working a siding off the Erie's east bound mainline in
Middletown NY. Photo by Ray Brown
Conrail's
new plan was to have the Kingston local service what freight business was
left on the segment from Newburgh to Vails Gate, MP 5. The remaining
customers were Georgia Pacific, Miron, Fryes and GAF plus a warehouse on
Newburgh Landing that received a rare load of paper (I recall seeing only
one boxcar for this industry, a BN box car in the winter of 1982) and
Consolidated Metals that occasionally originated a gondola of baled scrap.
The rest of the branch sat fallow for 4 years until early December of 1981
when a salvage outfit began to scrap out track starting at Vails Gate Jct..
Conrail installed a short run-around just north of the route 207 crossing at
the former station site. By December 18, they had already progressed past
Salisbury Mills and by February 1, 1982, they reached Greycourt to complete
the job.
Reflections on the Newburgh Branch Part
II
by Mike Joyce
When I was 13, I awoke before dawn one morning to the sound
of the fire whistle blowing. I looked out my back window and thought it odd
that the sun was rising at 4 AM and from a different angle than normal! As I
cleared the drowsiness from my head and looked again, I realized it was not
the sun but a fire that I was looking at. The fire was by the tracks and the
flames were shooting high into the sky. I dressed haphazardly and flew out
of the house with my pocket camera. I recorded the tragic end of the Erie's
freight house in Salisbury Mills, NY. The irony of it all was that this was
a benevolent ending for this structure of a past era that had stood
abandoned and neglected for years with its roof in tatters and its floors
rotting out. It had only been a matter of time before nature took its toll
or somebody was seriously injured. Unfortunately, the photos I snapped were
lost in a move some 20 years later. In 1974, the Cornwall Paper Company
purchased the land where the Salisbury Mills station was located and
completely bulldozed the site in expectation of building a rail/truck
warehouse, a plan that has never materialized. Today the site is an
overgrown forest.
An identical structure still stands today just east of Central Valley's
station. It has been modified and in the early 1980's was home to a plumbing
outfit.
