Backtracking

Let me tell you a little about railfans. These people–who spend most of their spare time photographing, riding, and talking about trains–are a highly sentimental lot.

Growing up obsessed with all things vehicular, I quickly learned that not all trains are created equal. The old, obsolete, and rare are always more interesting to fans.

This makes a lot of sense: older fans are nostalgic about the trains of their youth, and everyone is nostalgic for a time when railroading was more romantic.

Just like classic car enthusiasts who love 1950s Chevys and Buicks, railfans love the streamlined E-Unit and F-Unit locomotives GM was producing around the same time. Their shape is easily as recognizable as a tail-finned Bel Air; it even adorns railroad station signs in the New York metropolitan area.

Rarity is also a factor. It’s just too easy to take a piece of railroad equipment for granted when it’s common, but as older things are retired, they become more of a catch.

Which brings me to the Metro North Railroad electric-mulitple unit (EMU) cars I found humming away in the caverns of Grand Central last week during rush hour.

These older cars are quickly being replaced with new M7 and M8 models, but will anyone miss them when they’re gone?

These cars never generated much enthusiasm among railfans when they were new, nor do they have much historical importance.

Younger generations also aren’t as prone to sentimentality when it comes to vintage machinery as their predecessors.

Still, they’re becoming increasingly hard to find on the commuter runs into and out of New York City. Will that rarity make them more attractive?

Manhattan car adventures

I spend a lot of time wandering around Manhattan, because I never know what I’m going to find. Last weekend, I headed to Alphabet City to check out the new (and slightly more spacious) Obscura, as seen on T.V.

On the way, I found plenty of other neat stuff, including a Hungarian bookstore and a few cool cars.

They’re not new, they’re not collectible and, out of context, they’re not even necessarily that interesting. It’s hard to say exactly what makes this random assortment of cars cool, but they definitely are. If you’re as obsessed with cars as I am, there’s something life-affirming about seeing an unusual model among the sea of beige Toyota Camrys.

Here are a few islands in that sea, in glamorous cellphone pic style.

Volvo Amazon

Plymouth Valiant

Ford F-Series

BMW M3 (E46)

Buick Skylark

Other People’s Cars: Oldsmobile Delta 88

This may not look like a very impressive car, but bear with me. You probably have a better chance of seeing a Porsche on today’s roads than seeing one of these babies.

This is a car from a brand that no longer exists and, fittingly, it represents a type of car that is on the verge of extinction.

Ask a kindergartener to draw a car and they’ll probably come up with something like this: a four-door sedan with no curved lines other than the wheels.

At one time, this Platonic automobile really was the most common sight on American roads. If it wasn’t an Olds Delta 88, it was a Chevy Caprice, or a Ford LTD, or a Dodge Monaco.

Today, however, the automotive landscape is much more diverse. Cars try to be all things for all people, which is why we have crossovers that look like tough 4x4s, but are actually based on front-wheel drive sedans, and “four-door coupes” that try to combine style and practicality.

In contrast, the big American sedan has become a niche item. There are still a few around (Dodge Charger, Chevy Impala, Chrysler 300, Ford Taurus) but they are the automotive equivalent of vinyl.

That’s not exactly a bad thing. Today’s cars are safer, faster, and better for the environment than this gas-guzzling Olds, although maybe not as old-school-cool.

Either way, this 88 is a noteworthy sighting. It’s both a historical reminder of a time when cars were expected to have the square footage of a small apartment, and a rare car in its own right.

Oldsmobile may have made legions of these things back in the ‘70s. but you’d be hard pressed to find one on the road today. That’s why I’m glad I did.

A little blue caboose in Grand Central

I love finding old things, so I was pleasantly surprised to see this caboose sitting on Track 14 at Grand Central Terminal as I was catching a rush hour commuter train out of New York.

It’s easy to recognize a caboose from children’s books and model train displays, but they’re actually quite rare. They were mobile offices and living quarters for freight train crews, but these days most trains run with two-person crews that can easily be accommodated in a locomotive cab.

Hauling around an extra car that doesn’t produce any money for the company may be romantic, but it doesn’t make business sense.

That makes this caboose a survivor. Perhaps it was forgotten in this dimly-lit corner of Grand Central, or left because it was too difficult to move it through the terminal’s web of tracks to a scrapyard. Maybe it’s been sitting for years, like a time capsule.

Actually, there’s just no point in throwing away something that you still have a use for. Metro North, the commuter rail agency that serves points north and east of New York City, keeps this caboose for physical plant maintenance.

The letters MNCW on the side of the car are the “reporting marks,” basically official initials, used for Metro North’s maintenance equipment. That explains why this caboose isn’t in a museum, and why this freight car is sitting on the platform of one of America’s most famous passenger rail terminals.

It was coupled to some flatcars with garbage dumpsters on them. Apparently, it’s part of a train that hauls trash out of Grand Central.

This old caboose won’t become a subject for moody urban explorer photos just yet, and that’s fine with me. There’s nothing wrong with admiring historic objects for their oldness, but they were designed to serve a purpose, not to be gawked at.

Countless buildings, railroad cars, and other artifacts have outlived their usefulness, but this caboose hasn’t.

A visit to Governors Island

When I found out that there was a secret military base within a mile of downtown Manhattan, I couldn’t wait to check it out. Governors Island served as a Revolutionary War fort, a prison, and the headquarters of the U.S. First Army and the regional Coast Guard command. For over 200 years, the Island was closed to the public. A few weeks ago, I finally got a chance to visit. It was not what I expected.

Governors Island became a part of American history on April 9, 1776, when soldiers from the Continental Army arrived to fortify the Island (located at a strategic choke point in New York Harbor) to retard the British attack on New York. Those fortifications evolved into Fort Jay (later renamed Fort Columbus), which still stands today.

The Army also stayed. Governors Island remained a military base from the end of the Revolution through the 19th century. Elihu Root, Secretary of War under President (and native New Yorker) Theodore Roosevelt, ordered the expansion of the Island using fill from the IRT subway system, and it eventually became the headquarters of the United States First Army.

The First Army left in 1966 for Ford Meade, Maryland and Governors Island was taken over by the Coast Guard. The Captain of the Port of New York and command staff for the Coast Guard’s Third District called Governors Island home until 1996, when budget cuts forced the government to leave.

Since it had been continuously occupied by the military since the Revolutionary War, Governors Island was off limits to civilians for over 200 years. That changed in the early 2000s, when the National Park Service rechristened the former base Governors Island National Monument.

It seemed like a great opportunity: a chance to explore a virtually unknown patch of land in the middle of America’s busiest city. I was expecting a combination of earthworks and Cold War-style military buildings, all left just as they were when Governors Island was an active base 16 years ago.

Indeed, Fort Jay and the fort/prison Castle Williams still stand. Many of the old buildings from the Coast Guard era are still there too, but are in the process of being torn down. Some had scorch marks on the windows, and were apparently being used in UL testing.

What was surprising was the crowd. I had underestimated New York’s art and hipster cultures’ ability to rapidly colonize. A unicycle festival and a graphic design exhibit were being held the day I went. People lounged in droves on former parade grounds, in the shadow of Fort Jay’s guns and some contemporary sculptures.

One wouldn’t expect tourists to be that interested in military history, and there are other parks in New York that don’t require a ferry ride to visit. There’s a good reason for that, though: the views.

Governors Island is practically in the middle of New York Harbor, and paved trails encircle it. Walking around the Island, you can see all of Manhattan, along with Brooklyn and the Statue of Liberty. That alone makes Governors Island worth a visit.

Anyone who isn’t interested in great views of Manhattan had better hurry. Most of the buildings are being demolished to add more park space, so Governors Island will soon lose its military feel. Historic buildings like Fort Jay and Castle Williams will remain, of course.

A prime urban exploration site might be lost, but the unique vantage point of Governors Island is the real story, even if it does attract hordes of unicycle-riding tourists and hipsters. It’s also free, so if you’re in New York and evenly mildly curious, you don’t have much to lose.

The ferry (about a 10-minute ride) leaves from the Battery Marine Terminal, the old building next to the depressingly modern Staten Island Ferry terminal. The latter might be more famous, but Governors Island is much more pleasant.

Poughkeepsie’s lost railroad

The Maybrook Line (future Dutchess County Rail Trail) used to cross the Hospital Branch (below, foreground) on this bridge.

People like to talk about the downfall of American industry, but few of them realize that the remains of its glorious past are still among us. Poughkeepsie, New York used to be a major railroad hub; today it’s a hub for urban decay. While trains still roll north and south along both banks of the Hudson River, there used to be more going on.

The most obvious relic is the Poughkeepsie Bridge, now Walkway Over the Hudson State Park. It used to carry the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad’s “Maybrook Line” from New England across the Hudson to points west and it’s a pretty spectacular hike. However, the Maybrook is not is not the only abandoned railroad in Poughkeepsie.

Poughkeepsie was a meeting point for two mainline railroads, but there was a third, much smaller line sharing the city. The “Hospital Branch” wound its way from the river, up a switchback and through city streets, to the Hudson River State Hospital. The hospital’s power plant received coal by rail, giving the branch its nickname.

The line was constructed around 1873 to connect the Poughkeepsie & Eastern Railroad with the Hudson River Railroad. It ultimately served their successors, the Central New England Railway (later New York, New Haven & Hartford) and New York Central, respectively.

With the Poughkeepsie Bridge, the New Haven already had a heavy east-west freight line, with a lucrative connection to Pennsylvania coal-hauling railroads at Maybrook, New York. The Central New England’s connection with the New York Central at the small riverside yard (still known as “CNE Yard” today) couldn’t compete, and was gradually marginalized.

Nonetheless, Hudson River State Hospital still needed coal, and local industries kept shipping small amounts of freight. The line hung on after its namesake hospital closed, surviving into the 1990s under Conrail.

When Conrail’s New York state lines were taken over by CSX in 1999, the new management wanted to divest itself of the Hospital Branch. There was a short-lived attempt to revive the line as the New York & Eastern Railroad, but political opposition killed it before any trains could run.

The Maybrook Line roadbed crosses over the Hospital Branch just east of the Poughkeepsie Bridge.

CSX received permission to abandon the Hospital Branch in 2005, and the rails were lifted. The City of Poughkeepsie is currently seeking funds to turn the four-mile line into a rail trail.

Downtown Poughkeepsie isn’t the most scenic place to ride a bike, but the Hospital Branch should attract plenty of ghost train hunters. No visible work on the branch has been done, but the roadbed is still intact and walkable.

The Hospital Branch forms a large “T,” running north-south from Smith Street to the Hudson River State Hospital. It crosses under the former New Haven Maybrook Line (soon to be Dutchess County Rail Trail) just east of the parking lot for the Poughkeepsie Bridge/Walkway Over the Hudson.

At the Hospital, the line goes down a switchback to reach the river. The spot where the roadbed diverges from the active Metro North/Amtrak line just north of Poughkeepsie station can be seen clearly from the bridge.

An Amtrak Empire Service train heading southbound into Poughkeepsie. The Hospital Branch curves to the right just above the locomotive.

The last mile or so of roadbed between the bridge and the current end of the rail trail is being paved, and when it’s finished it will cross over the Hospital Branch just as the Maybrook Line freight trains once did. For now, the roadbed is still passable, and the former connection with the Hospital Branch is only a short hike from the Walkway parking area. A wye track used to connect the two lines, but modern explorers will have to climb down the embankment from the former Maybrook Line and walk under the bridge to reach the Hospital Branch.

Those willing to make the trek will find a forgotten piece of history. It’s still an overgrown railroad right-of-way running through some seedy neighborhoods, so if you go, keep your wits about you. Also, watch out for broken glass: teenagers and homeless people like to use this secluded site for late night drinking.

Local police probably won’t appreciate trespassing, but the former railroad is pretty well hidden. Hudson River State Hospital is a historic site in its own right, but it is heavily surveilled.

A visit to Nuclear Lake

Chernobyl is now a tourist destination. Tour groups escorted by Geiger counter-wielding guides can explore the ghost city of Pripyat, which has been empty since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. However, you don’t need to fly to Ukraine to see the site of a nuclear accident (albeit, a much smaller one). All you have to do is walk the Appalachian Trail in upstate New York.

Nuclear Lake in Pawling, NY was the site of a small laboratory run by the United Nuclear Corporation (UNC). The facility was built in 1958; it was privately run but licensed by the government to work with weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. It included a “Critical Building,” which housed a reactor, and a “Plutonium Building” where tests were conducted.

In 1972, a chemical explosion released plutonium dust into the air, ultimately spelling the end for research at the site.

With the whole area contaminated with radioactive dust, the facility closed in 1973. Inspections of UNC’s records also raised fears that the corporation was dumping radioactive waste into the lake. A 1975 cleanup effort rendered the site safe, according to federal inspectors.

In 1979, the National Park Service bought Nuclear Lake and 1,100 surrounding acres for $1 million, with the intention of rerouting the Appalachian Trail through the site and away from local roads. Tests of the site in 1984 indicated only background levels of radiation.

Today, Nuclear Lake doesn’t look like a mini Chernobyl. In fact, the lake is one of the most beautiful sites on the Trail in New York. I saw plenty of flora and fauna, and none of it appeared to be mutated.

Urban explorers looking for an abandoned nuclear plant will be disappointed; the buildings were demolished during the 1980s trail construction. The only indication that this beauty spot was anything other than a placid lake is a small patch of concrete where the “Plutonium Building” once stood, and a clearing.

Nuclear Lake is a short roundtrip from the small parking area where the Appalachian Trail crosses Route 55 in Pawling (follow the trail from the parking lot side of the road). The undulating terrain makes for an interesting but manageable hike. Just watch out for mutants.

Cape Cod oddities: Jenny Lind Tower and North Truro Air Force Base

Visitors to Truro, one of the towns on the outer edge of Cape Cod, are in for an unusual sight, if they know where to look. If they’re not too distracted by the view of the Atlantic Ocean, they might notice what looks like a giant chess rook and golf ball standing in a field near the Highland lighthouse.

The stone tower, which stands 70 feet tall and looks like it was taken from a European castle, is actually part of a train station. It was one of two towers from the Fitchburg Railroad depot in Boston, and is known to Cape Codders as the Jenny Lind Tower.

Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale,” gave a concert in the auditorium above the station in 1850. Legend has it that Lind sang from the top of the tower to quell an angry mob of people who couldn’t get tickets.

The story may be fake, but it was enough to convince one of Jenny’s fans, Henry M. Aldrich, to save the tower when the station was demolished in 1927. The tower was transported stone by stone and reassembled in Truro.

The land the tower sits on later became part of the North Truro Air Force Station. Constructed shortly after World War II, the site was part of the Air Defense Command (ADC). North Truro’s radar units (including the large golf ball-shaped array next to the Jenny Lind Tower) scanned the skies for incoming Soviet bombers, an important task during the paranoid Cold War years.

With the Cold War over, most of the base was decommissioned in 1994. However, the radar installation still functions was part of the Federal Aviation Administration/NORAD Joint Surveillance System, routing information to FAA and Air Force control centers.

The radar unit is unmanned, so the rest of the base has been abandoned since 1994. It sits on the Cape Cod National Seashore, and the National Park Service is trying to develop it for community use as the Highlands Center. Until then, the old buildings will be a great spot for urban exploring.

To get a closer look at these architectural oddities, take Route 6 to North Truro and look for the Highland Light exit. Turn right onto Highland Road, make another right onto South Highland Road, and then make a left onto Old Dewline Road.

The Jenny Lind Tower and North Truro Air Base radar can also be seen from the Highland Lighthouse, especially if you climb to the top of the 66 foot tall tower!

A (railroad) bridge to nowhere

You never know where you’re going to find industrial ruins. A narrow road winding along the Housatonic River in picturesque Southbury, Connecticut seems like the last place to look, yet some man-made construction still mingles with the scenery. If you drive down the appropriately named River Road, you’ll find two stone piers rising from the water. These towers hold a phantom railroad bridge.

This is where the New York & New England Railroad once made its way from Providence, Rhode Island to the Hudson River.

Today, I-84 is the most direct way to get from New York to points east, because it cuts diagonally across Connecticut. In the 19th century, railroad builders sought an east-west route across the Nutmeg State for the same reason. However, Connecticut’s topography got in the way. The state is full of rivers that run north-south, creating hills and valleys that are difficult to cross.

That didn’t stop the builders of the Hartford, Providence & Fishkill Railroad from trying it. Construction began in 1847, but the extension from Waterbury, CT to the Hudson wasn’t finished until 1881. By that time, the HP&F had been taken over by the more impressive-sounding New York & New England.

The hilly route, including a very steep grade out of Waterbury, was never profitable. The NY&NE was absorbed by its arch rival, the New Haven, in 1895. The latter controlled most of the rails in Connecticut, and almost immediately bypassed the Waterbury-Southbury portion. The New Haven only used the westernmost portion (Danbury-Hopewell Junction and Beacon, New York) of its former competitor, so it could reach the massive bridge over the Hudson at Poughkeepsie, NY.

The rails from Southbury to Waterbury were lifted in 1937; the rest, including this bridge, went in 1948. Today, that’s not very surprising. Even with I-84 less than a mile away, this site is pretty rural. The road that runs underneath the bridge’s east abutment is so narrow that there’s hardly room to pull over. It’s hard to imagine a freight train sailing over people’s houses and disturbing the peace in this neighborhood.

The stone bridge piers probably couldn’t support a modern freight train anyway, but they have weathered time pretty well. The fact that they are so out-of-the-way is probably the only reason that no one has tried to take them down. Sixty-four years after the trains stopped running, the bridge is still here (sort of). Sometimes it’s good to keep things hidden.

USS Olympia: A flagship in need of a port

There are many historic warships that survive as “floating museums,” but none of them has the pedigree of the USS Olympia. The Age of Fighting Sail and World War II are well represented in this museum fleet, but what about the Spanish-American War?

The U.S. fought Spain over 110 years ago, ostensibly over the USS Maine explosion, but really for a desire to seize territory and expand America’s influence overseas. It was also a complete cakewalk; more soldiers died from malaria than from enemy fire. The Spanish-American War was like the Guilded Age version of Desert Storm.

The only difference was that, instead of cruise missiles, the high-tech showpieces were armored battleships and cruisers like the Olympia. She was the flagship of Commodore George Dewey at the Battle of Manila Bay, where the U.S. fleet sank or captured its Spanish counterpart without any loss of life. Six days later, when news of the battle reached the U.S., Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt headed down to Texas to join a cavalry regiment. That is a battle worth remembering.

Today, the Olympia is moored at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, along with the submarine USS Becuna. Olympia is the only vessel from the Spanish-American War still afloat, and consequently you’ll never see another ship quite like her.

She may have been the most powerful ship in the U.S. fleet in 1898, but Olympia looks like a toy compared to modern warships, or even the WWII-era USS New Jersey, which is moored across the river in Camden. Olympia wears white paint (in wartime she would have worn gray) with a U.S. shield on the bow, a scheme meant to impress foreign dignitaries.

Also meant to impress foreign dignitaries are the six-pounder guns sticking out of Olympia’s flanks. There is no gun deck; several of the guns are mounted in the wood-lined officer’s mess, where diplomatic negotiations would take place. In fact, the Olympia looks like a child’s drawing of a battleship, with guns coming out of everywhere. It’s much cooler looking than the sleek and stealthy look of modern warships.

Unfortunately, like many historic artifacts, the Olympia needs help. She was stewarded by the Independence Seaport Museum and Cruiser Olympia Association for decades, but the cost of maintaining a 100-year-old construct of steel and wood that floats on water were too much. I visited the Olympia several years ago and, while she was a beautiful ship, she was also in need of some repairs. Now, she is also in need of a new home.

After failing to come up with $10 million needed for stabilization work, the Independence Seaport Museum decided to give up the Olympia, and is currently trying to transfer Dewey’s flagship to another museum. As of November 2011, four groups were in the running: one wants to keep the ship at its current location, another wants to move her to Beaufort, South Carolina, and a third group wants to set up a museum in Washington, D.C. Mare Island Historic Park, located at the old Mare Island Navy yard in Vallejo, California, also wants the Olympia.

Regardless of where she ends up, the Olympia deserves some attention. The USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”) and USS Missouri (the ship where Gen. MacArthur accepted the Japanese surrender) have become national shrines, but we wouldn’t have gotten from one to the other without the Olympia. That ship and the war it fought in brought America onto the world stage as a military power. History is important because it tells us where we have been, but we need the whole story.

For updates on the Olympia preservation effort, click here.