Last night (Thursday, April 19, 2007) we attended a monthly meeting of the
Rochester-Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, almost
all men (Linda was the only female, at first), with an average age of 70+.
I have been a member of the Rochester-Chapter of the NRHS for eons. I joined to get their newsletter, but other than that have been inactive.
Over that time I have attended
one monthly meeting. The Rochester-Chapter meetings were the same night as the union-meeting, which we eventually changed to a 3 o’clock meeting, for us early-run guys, but by then we were out in West Bloomfield, which would have meant a yo-yo into Rochester.
The Rochester-Chapter of the NRHS has a real-life Lionel-set: a museum with a small standard-gauge railroad they built over hill-and-dale.
Their museum is the old Rush railroad-depot on the old Erie Rochester branch. That branch is still active, although now owned and operated by shortline Livonia, Avon (Ah-von) & Lakeville.
That Erie branch is long abandoned south of Livonia; in fact, the LA&L doesn’t even reach Livonia any more.
Years ago LA&L was a tourist-line, and even had a steam-engine; but now it delivers only freight — mainly tankcars of corn-syrup.
They also have a short stub-ended section of the old Lehigh-Valley Rochester branch to a lumber-yard.
From Livonia the Erie Rochester branch traveled south to Corning, N.Y. where it connected with the Erie main.
A tiny railroad-yard is next to the depot, where they store rusting hulks of the various pieces of rail-equipment they have collected.
This includes locomotives, including an ex Lehigh-Valley GM-powered Alco road-switcher, and various strange critters — including a small side-rod diesel that shunted hopper-cars at a Rochester Gas & Electric power-station.
The depot sits in a narrow valley, hard by a hillside, but the Chapter laid track up the hill to a large pasture atop the hillside, where they could build a yard and restoration-shed.
They extended their full-size Lionel-set to the nearby
New York Museum of Transportation, and we rode it once — up-and-down over hill-and-dale, hardly any cuts or fills, about a mile at 10 mph.
We rode in a restored Erie wooden caboose.
The meeting started placidly enough; a boring business-meeting conducted under Roberts Rules of Order; the same gig the union-meetings were held under, and the Boughton Park Board — although union-meetings were much noisier; yelling and screaming and threatened fisticuffs.
But then a youngish guy got up to report on the fact Rochester city-planners were considering reinstituting trolley-service to revitalize downtown.
This is of course silly pie-in-the-sky. Trolley-track, and the messenger-wire, and the associated infrastructure,
all have to be maintained. The whole reason trolley-service was begun was because it was better than horse-and-buggy on dirt. All the streets now are paved. —Trolley-service is wishful-thinking; attachment to a past practice that no longer has viable economic pretense — although individual highway-use is silly too.
Young-guy said the planners wanted to visit the Rochester-Chapter trolley-“system;” the Rochester-Chapter has apparently built a small section of track, and wire, where it can exercise their trolleys.
“System?” one wag commented. “Since when do six poles and two switches constitute a system?”
And so the follies began.......
The reason we attended this meeting was that a member was going to give a short PowerPoint presentation on the buildings remaining from the Rochester, Syracuse & Eastern interurban.
An interurban is a railroad, but more a trolley-line between cities. It wasn’t much like a Pennsy or New York Central, and had individual self-powered cars operating over the railroad from an overhead wire.
The Rochester, Syracuse & Eastern even had to use third-rail in one town, because the town wouldn’t allow overhead trolley-wire.
(But the interurban-cars were bigger and heavier than trolley-cars.)
The RS&E (which apparently went bankrupt a few times, and was reorganized under different names: like SR&E — and it never went east of Syracuse; kind of like the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & Pacific) was apparently more than the norm for interurban construction, being all double-track, with expensive trestles and bridges.
Most interurbans were single-track.
Quite a few stations still remain, as well as many of the power substation buildings.
As well they should; those substations were brick — and were converted to other uses. The substations bought AC-power and converted it to DC with rotary-converters
(CUE BLUSTER-KING!) I.e. the converters were removed, but the buildings remained.
First the presenter showed a depiction of the power substation remaining in Easta Rocha. An old geezer rose to his feet, started wagging his cane and bopping people on the head, and yelled “I was there when they built that railroad.”
“Your parents weren’t even born yet,” he bellowed at the presenter.
“Watch it,” the presenter said; “I got the light-saber,” waving his laser-pointer.
“Them things cause cancer!” geezer bellowed.
It got more outrageous.
The picture of the East Rochester substation had the legs of a nearby water-tower in it. “Oh yeah,” somebody said. “There’s the water-tower.....”
“Which one?” I asked. There were two; an original water-tower, and its replacement, the infamous Brown Bombers water-tower that still stands. (Water-tower #1 may have been taken down.)
“Where’s the Wendy’s?” some guy asked. (The Wendy’s was built in the ‘80s.)
“So orientate us here,” a guy said. “Does that bridge go over the Thruway?”
“Are you kidding?” someone shrieked. “That picture is 1918 horse-and-buggy. The Thruway wasn’t built until 1951, and they had to close Route 31 to build it. The detour was (insert lucid street-by-street description of detour here). How could that bridge ever have crossed the Thruway?”
Many of the interurban-stations were converted to gas-stations, and the presenter displayed an ancient picture of such a gas-station (Texaco) with a 1958 Ford station-wagon in front.
“Now what year is that?” he asked.
“1958!” I said. (Toy not with the master!)
He showed another slide of where the RS&E crossed New York Central’s Auburn-Road near Rochester on a long trestle.
“So are we in the Can-of-Worms?” someone asked.
“No,” the presenter said.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “If that’s the Auburn we’re in the Can-of-Worms.”
(The “Can-of-Worms” is the world-famous intersection of I-490 and I-590 that was built in the late ‘50s where the original Erie-Canal turned south, east of Rochester.
East of the Can, I-490 uses the RS&E right-of-way, and west of the Can, 490 uses the original right-of-way of the Erie Canal through Rochester — the canal was later rebuilt south of Rochester as the state Barge-Canal.
590 south of the Can followed the right-of-way of the original Erie Canal; although the Auburn was parallel.
The Can has since been rebuilt; I think Jack negotiated the original Can. The original Can had the challenge of also crossing the Auburn, and busy East Avenue (State Route 96).
When the Can was recently rebuilt, the Auburn was removed, but East Ave. is still there.
The original Can was a monster: lanes merging all over in tight confines. I think part of the reason the Can was rebuilt was also that the highway bridges were falling apart. One main overpass the abutments had spread about six inches.
I remember shooting the original Can with a Park-and-Ride bus. David Jones, who eventually became Union-president, told me how to do it.
“Just enter in the passing-lane, put on your right-turn signal, and put the hammer down!”
“Utter insanity,” I thought.
But it worked. Charging in from the passing-lane, you didn’t have to monitor the left side.
And when the four-wheelers saw a bus changing lanes, they backed off.)
Other insanities were:
-A) A picture was displayed of the main-drag through Easta Rocha with the RS&E tracks (and cars) still intact, from atop a building in the center of town.
“Oh yeah,” some guy said. “Debbie-Supply would be right up in that corner.”
“
It would not!” someone screamed. “That’s St. Jerome’s church, but Debbie-Supply would be outta the picture. It’s way up the street!”
-B) And then there was the picture that was used for 89 bazilyun postcards, and in 89 bazilyun different ways.
Toward the end of the presentation was a photograph allegedly of the Clyde station after a blizzard.
Earlier in the presentation was a postcard of the same picture, but identified as the Weedsport station, and the snow had been removed.
Presenter was thereby loudly excoriated by all-and-sundry for allowing the obvious manipulation of a photograph to pass for the Clyde station, even though the Clyde station was not parallel to the tracks (but a station was parallel in the photograph).
Obviously artists had removed the snow, but the same pik was being used. Artists were also painting out the trolley-wires: “Where were the cars getting their power?” someone asked.
There also was the advice that perhaps that presenter could get that motorman into another pik; like with PhotoShop.
“He’s in that window, I tell ya,” some guy bellowed, referring to a recent photo of a still-standing station — shades drawn.
Here they were complaining that the wires weren’t in the picture.
My wife wanted to go, probably to make sure I’d get there without crashing mightily in flames — which may impinge on my driving to the mighty Curve
myself.
But she’s glad she went, despite it meaning we had to leave the poor dog
alone in the house.
We were returning with 89-bazilyun tons of material.
SWORD ALERT! (The pen is mightier than the sword.)
Imagine 40+ experts instead of just seven.
“Linda” is my wife.
The “union” was my bus-drivers union, Local 282 of the Amalgamated Transit-Union.
“Boughton Park” is the nearby park where we walk our dog. A few years ago I was a member of the volunteer board that administered it.
My younger brother-in-Boston, “Jack,” and the “almighty Bluster-King;” tells me his employer, the mighty Exelon, still converts 60-cycle AC into 25-cycle AC for use on Amtrak’s Northeast-Corridor. This is despite my hearing that the Corridor was switched over to 60-cycle AC — but it may be that the locomotives used on the Corridor can use either 25-cycle or 60-cycle. The switch to 60-cycle was prompted by a desire to buy power from the outside, instead of generate their own. The Corridor uses electric power supplied by overhead wire.
The vaunted “Brown Bombers” are the East Rochester high-school sports-teams. Water-tower #2 is painted brown-and-white, the colors of the Brown Bombers.
For 16&1/2 years I drove bus for Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (Regional Transit Service). Many of the runs I drove were “Park-and-Rides;” runs from the suburbs to the city. We had special “Park-and-Ride” buses; more of a suburban-bus.
“Easta Rocha” is East Rochester; very Italian.
Both “Clyde” and “Weedsport” are between Rochester and Syracuse; stops on the Erie Canal.
“Wires weren’t in the picture” refers to my once advising my all-knowing macho brother-in-Boston that he should be more careful about where his camera is aimed — he had posted pictures with wires in them, phonepoles coming out of people’s heads, distracting water-towers, mostly sky, blue snow, and pictures aimed at people’s faces cutting off their legs. And so began a mighty tirade that I was entirely clueless about photography, despite long ago having pictures published nationally.
“The mighty Curve” (Horseshoe Curve, in Altoona, Pennsylvania), is by far the BEST railfan spot on the entire planet. My siblings are considering holding a family-reunion there.
