06-09-04 PHOTOS: Albany Circle

Over Labour Day I drove with a friend in a circle around the Albany Area exploring various interlockings with a stop off at Super Steel to view the stored Turboliner trainsets.

The trip included XO tower in Mechanicsville, CP-RJ in Rotterdam Junction and CP-VO in Vhoorheesville.

You can find all the photos at:

http://acm.jhu.edu/~sthurmovik/Railpics/06-09-04_ALBANY_CIRCLE/-Thumbnails.html


Here is a short narrated tour of what I saw.

Not too much Turbo in these Turboliners as they sit parked at Super Steel.

 Many were still shrink wrapped to keep out the rain.

 

Dual position third rail shoe that works on the under-running NYC rail or the overrunning PRR rail.

XO tower in Mechanicsville. Former D&H tower at the throat of a large yard which has also been ripped out. Now a simple interlocking (CP-467) where the former D&H line now operated by Canadian Pacific links with the Guilford Rail System freight main line.











Searchlights at CPF-467.

 This guy is refueling on the way to Mexico.

The Sun came out for the trip to CP-RJ. This is where the D&H interchanges cars with with the NYC/Conrail/CSX on the Selkirk Branch.

Dwarf signal coming off the former D&H connection. I have found that every SA searchlight dwarf has a wasp nest under the visor.

Here we see the Selkirk Branch looking west. It crosses the Mohawk river and joins the former Passenger main line, and current Amtrak connector, at CP-169.

Fuller's Flyover is where the tracks of the Selkirk branch cross over each other. Under NYC operations on their 4-track line freight trains ran left handed so trains coming out of the yard were in the opposite flow than they needed to be as lines running into Selkirk from the east are in the right handed configuration.  This flyover was built to solve the problem. The tracks cross right where the US 20 bridge is, so the result is this nice triple crossing.

CP-VO was the crossing of the D&H Albany branch with the NYC Selkirk branch, but for whatever reason the D&H does not need to go through Albany anymore and the diamonds were removed. The CP-VO now lacks any sort of interlocking appliance, but is still an interlocking.

There are also two non-interlocked hand crossovers at CP-VO each with an electrically locked hand throw switch.

 The old D&H signals still stand where the tracks are cut.

Check out this heritage hopper car belonging to the L&N railroad. 

Finally, we stopped off at the Empire State Aerosciences Museum at the Schenectady County Airport. Here's an M42 Duster  self-propelled 40mm AA gun dating from the 1950's.  It was built on an M41 Walker Bulldog chassis and replaced an earlier model built on an M24 Chaffee chassis.