26-02-08 PHOTOS: Post Road Branch

 For my 2025 visit to New York Capital Region I turned my attention south of the city to Amtrak's Post Road Branch and the former Conrail Boston Line to revisit some infrastructure I had not kept up on for over 15 years. Unfortunately actual encounters with train movements was rather slim so I have included additional photos from SS72 DEVON junction on the New Haven Line plus some MARC Camden Line activity so I hope you all find this worth your while. 

Albany can be considered the Harrisburg of the New York Central. A major hub located in an eastern state capitol that has to coordinate multiple flows of freight and passenger rail traffic. Located at the junction of the old New York and Hudson River, Mohawk and Hudson, Boston and Albany and West Shore Railroads this created quite a bottleneck in the downtown Albany area where all of these rail lines met. Operations were further complicated by a pair of swing span drawbridges and "stiff" (for the New York Central) grades on both sides of the Hudson Valley. All of these problems were solved by the 1924 Castleton Cutoff that provided a low grade freight route that completely bypassed Albany and Schenectady. The signature work of engineering was the high level Alfred H. Newman Smith bridge over the Hudson River Valley. The entire mile long bridge recently underwent a renovation that cleared the right of way, repaired the steel supports and re-pointed the concrete footings.

You can see some of the specific work that was carried out with replacement beams and gusset plates painted a lighter shade of brown and the new concrete also readily apparent. The new steel also used high strength bolts instead of hot rivets. 

The Smith Bridge features two steel truss spans over the Hudson River navigation channels, one of 404 feet and the other 610 feet.

Despite the renovation work, CSX did not use the opportunity to demolish the old base of SM tower which stood at the eastern end of the bridge where the connecting track to the Hudson Line branched off. Today this branch typically sees a daily overnight freight round trip to and from New York City.

It was here I caught the sole freight train of the trip, the cars making a bit of noise as they pounded the frog on the #3 switch at CP-SM.