08-02-17 PHOTOS: State Line Tunnel

High up in the Berkshire Mountains along the old Boston and Albany main line, is the famous Stateline Tunnel. Well, its famous for fans of the New York Central because no book on the NYC or Boston and Albany would be complete without a picture of a J-2 Hudson blasting out of one of the tunnel portals.

The tunnel is actually two, roughly bored into the tough Berkshire rock without any sort of lining or facing. Around 1990 Conrail single tracked the line and abandoned one of the tubes. Today this tunnel hosts some fantastic ice formations in the winter time instead of freight trains. I had traveled to the tunnel once before via the Lake Shore Limited after a snowstorm.

Also in this set are some pics of some hydro electric plants in the Albany area. It's quite amazing how much clean energy is produced in the Hudson River watershed from small hydro plants of between 5 and 30MW capacity.

You can see all of the pics here.

Now for the usual pick of the litter.

First I stopped by a popular railfan location at the southern end of the old D&H Mohawk Yard and caught a pair of NS engines, including C40-9W #8939, idling. There's going to be a lot more NS traffic through here as this is part of their new Patriot Corridor. 

Next is the notable Cohoes Falls where the Mohawk meets the Hudson. The snow was melting so there was actually a fair amount of water moving over the falls. Come summer these falls will be bare with all of the water diverted into the hydro plant.

Here's the powerhouse.

 And a photogenic steel lattice high voltage transmission tower.

And the old Delaware and Hudson Colonie Sub bridge on the line to Albany.

Active track at the tunnel. It was above freezing and the snow was melting.

I guess the rock isn't very stable due to the high density of tie bolts.

East portal of the tunnels showing some impressive icicles.

I was using a different camera which refused to take good photos inside the tunnel so I went to the video function.


 
Switching gears again, here's another small dam on the Hoosic River in Johnsonville, NY.

Here is a video at the same location.  The dam was built in 1909 and has a 4MW capacity.



A little bonus, not far from the dam on the old Boston and Maine line was this classic B&M tower, gutted but still standing.

Anyone know what the real name of this tower is?

Anyway, that's it for this batch, hope you find it informative.