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106-430: The Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad ( reporting mark TCKR ) was a short line freight railroad that operated in western Pennsylvania between the boroughs of Export and Trafford , where it connected to the Pittsburgh Line . The TCKR was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dura-Bond Corporation, a steel products company headquartered in Export. The company purchased the railroad from Conrail (the successor to

212-674: A 2-digit code indicating the vehicle's register country . The registered keeper of a vehicle is now indicated by a separate Vehicle Keeper Marking (VKM), usually the name of the owning company or an abbreviation thereof, which must be registered with the Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail (OTIF) and the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) and which is unique throughout Europe and parts of Asia and Northern Africa. The VKM must be between two and five letters in length and can use any of

318-479: A bypass around Rochester. The Terminal Railway 's Gardenville Cutoff, allowing through traffic to bypass Buffalo to the southeast, opened in 1898. The Schenectady Detour consisted of two connections to the West Shore Railroad, allowing through trains to bypass downtown Schenectady. The full project opened in 1902. The Cleveland Short Line Railway built a bypass of Cleveland, Ohio, completed in 1912. In 1924,

424-485: A caboose in tow. By 1999, the caboose was spending most of its days parked near Old William Penn Highway in Export, serving as "a symbol of days gone by". Dura-Bond maintained the caboose in rail-worthy condition for the special occasions on which it would see use, such as transporting Santa Claus during Export's Christmas celebrations. Once service on the line ended, the caboose was thoroughly restored by Dura-Bond and donated to

530-640: A competitor since 1883 with trackage along the west shore of the Hudson River and on to Buffalo closely paralleling the NYC, was taken over by the NYC as the West Shore Railroad and developed passenger, freight, and car float operations at Weehawken Terminal . The NYC assumed control of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie and Boston and Albany Railroads in 1887 and 1900, respectively, with both roads remaining as independently-operating subsidiaries. William H. Newman, president of

636-597: A cupola caboose, which the seller insisted had to be taken along with the locomotive as part of a two-for-one deal. The company originally discussed using this car to serve as a lookout at the end of its trains. But during the 1980s freight operators in the US were phasing out this traditional role of the caboose , and a documentary video of the Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad produced just after this decade showed many of its freight trains in operation, but none with

742-461: A hyphen. Some examples: When a vehicle is sold it will not normally be transferred to another register. The Czech railways bought large numbers of coaches from ÖBB. The number remained the same but the VKM changed from A-ÖBB to A-ČD. The UIC introduced a uniform numbering system for their members based on a 12-digit number, largely known as UIC number . The third and fourth digit of the number indicated

848-559: A network of commuter lines in New York and Massachusetts. Westchester County, New York had the railroad's Hudson, Harlem, and Putnam lines into Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan (Putnam Division trains required a change at High Bridge, New York), while New Jersey and Rockland County, New York were serviced by the West Shore Line between Weehawken and Kingston, New York, on the west side of

954-685: A predecessor of the CNW, from which the UP inherited it. Similarly, during the breakup of Conrail , the long-retired marks of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and New York Central Railroad (NYC) were temporarily brought back and applied to much of Conrail's fleet to signify which cars and locomotives were to go to CSX (all cars labeled NYC) and which to Norfolk Southern (all cars labeled PRR). Some of these cars still retain their temporary NYC marks. Because of its size, this list has been split into subpages based on

1060-524: A rail-trail along the path of the TCKR, though initially the railroad's owners did not share this interest. Sensing that the flood may have changed this, in 2011 the RTC and Westmoreland County put together an extensive plan to convert the railroad to a greenway. In 2013 the TCKR officially filed for a discontinuation of service, having previously acknowledged that service actually ended in 2009. Soon thereafter, an agreement

1166-570: A southern extension opened to the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad and the line was leased to the railroad. The Canandaigua and Niagara Falls Railroad was chartered in 1851. The first stage opened in 1853 from Canandaigua on the Auburn Road west to Batavia on the main line. A continuation west to North Tonawanda opened later that year and, in 1854, a section opened in Niagara Falls connecting it to

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1272-474: A through route to Erie, Pennsylvania . The Rochester and Lake Ontario Railroad was organized in 1852 and opened in fall 1853; it was leased to the Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls Railroad , which became part of New York Central Railroad, before opening. In 1855, it was merged into the railroad, providing a branch from Rochester north to Charlotte on Lake Ontario . The Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad

1378-528: A train in Trafford. Next Conrail would pick up a train of empty cars to be returned that had been previously left there by the TCKR. Later that day a TCKR locomotive would pick up the loaded train that had been left by Conrail and take it to Murrysville and/or Export for distribution to customers. Cargo could include steel products, lumber, aluminum and rubber, and a single train could contain cars destined for multiple different locations. Sidings positioned along

1484-487: A two-man crew. The railroad was in service until 2009, when flash flooding of Turtle Creek severely damaged the TCKR's tracks which ran adjacent to the stream. After cessation of service, most of the right-of-way was sold to Westmoreland County to become part of the Westmoreland Heritage Trail . The Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad traces its origins back to 1886, when George Westinghouse chartered what

1590-437: Is 0.9 miles (1.4 km) of track at the beginning of the line in Trafford; this portion of track was not owned by Dura-Bond but was retained by Conrail, which handed it down to one of its successors, Norfolk Southern . Westmoreland County has expressed interest in acquiring a portion of this track to extend the rail-trail to the Trafford business district. Dura-Bond is reported to have owned and operated four locomotives during

1696-663: The Dewitt Clinton running on its tracks. It would later change its name to the Albany and Schenectady (A&S) on April 19, 1847. Until the 1840s, it used an inclined planes at either end of the line to pull passenger cars up and down A&S' steep hills. As locomotive technology progressed, the mainline was extended to the Mohawk River in downtown Schenectady and the Hudson River waterfront in Albany. The Utica and Schenectady Railroad

1802-601: The Alfred H. Smith Memorial Bridge was constructed as part of the Hudson River Connecting Railroad's Castleton Cut-Off, a 27.5-mile-long freight bypass of the congested West Albany terminal area and West Albany Hill. An unrelated realignment was made in the 1910s at Rome, when the Erie Canal was realigned and widened onto a new alignment south of downtown Rome. The NYC main line was shifted south out of downtown to

1908-503: The Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad , opened in 1837, for the rest of the way to Buffalo. The Mohawk Valley Railroad was chartered on January 21, 1851, and reorganized on December 28, 1852, to build a railroad on the south side of the Mohawk River from Schenectady to Utica, next to the Erie Canal and opposite the Utica and Schenectady. The company didn't build a line before it was absorbed, though

2014-529: The Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge . New York Central Railroad bought the company at bankruptcy in 1858 and reorganized it as the Niagara Bridge and Canandaigua Railroad, merging it into itself in 1890. The Saratoga and Hudson River Railroad was chartered in 1864 and opened in 1866 as a branch of the railroad from Athens Junction, southeast of Schenectady, southeast and south to Athens on

2120-456: The Pennsylvania Railroad ) in 1982. For the next 27 years, three to five trains per week made the round trip along just over ten miles (16 km) of track, delivering materials such as steel pipe to the shortline's parent company in Export and lumber to lumber yards in neighboring Murrysville . In the shortline's heyday, trains of typically about four cars in length were hauled by one of the railroad's two 1940s era switch engines , operated by

2226-590: The "Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad" and would own and operate it themselves as a privately owned subsidiary company. To defray some of the startup costs, Dura-Bond received a $ 313,240 grant from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Governor Dick Thornburgh , who traveled to Export for the newly acquired railroad's opening ceremony, justified the grant, remarking that the rail service would preserve more than 700 industrial jobs in Westmoreland County. The Westmoreland County Industrial Development Authority also backed

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2332-512: The 1950s that began to deprive NYC of its long-distance passenger trade. The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 helped create a network of government subsidized highways for motor vehicle travel throughout the country, enticing more people to travel by car, as well as haul freight by truck. The 1959 opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway also adversely affected NYC freight business: container shipments could now be directly shipped to ports along

2438-504: The 26 letters of the Latin alphabet . Diacritical marks may also be used, but they are ignored in data processing (for example, Ö is treated as though it is O ). The VKM is preceded by the code for the country (according to the alphabetical coding system described in Appendix 4 to the 1949 convention and Article 45(4) of the 1968 convention on road traffic), where the vehicle is registered and

2544-506: The Boston and Albany. This influenced a great deal about the line, from advertising to locomotive design, built around its flagship New York-Chicago Water Level Route. A number of bypasses and cutoffs were built around congested areas. The Junction Railroad's Buffalo Belt Line opened in 1871, providing a bypass of Buffalo to the northeast as well as a loop route for passenger trains via downtown. The West Shore Railroad, acquired in 1885, provided

2650-473: The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec . At the end of 1925, New York Central Railroad operated 11,584 miles (18,643 km) of road and 26,395 miles (42,479 km) of track; at the end of 1967, the mileages were 9,696 miles (15,604 km) and 18,454 miles (29,699 km). The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad (M&H) was the oldest segment of the railroad's merger and was the first permanent railroad in

2756-550: The Export Historical Society, to remain on display on what remains of the TCKR track in downtown Export, Pennsylvania. Data logged with the Federal Railroad Administration showed that service on the Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad was steady from 1987 through 2008. (Data prior to 1987 are incomplete.) Given that the track distance between Trafford and Export is 10 miles (16 km) in each direction,

2862-565: The Great Lakes, eliminating the railroads' freight hauls between the east and the Midwest. The NYC also carried a substantial tax burden from governments that saw rail infrastructure as a source of property tax revenues – taxes that were not imposed upon interstate highways. To make matters worse, most railroads, including the NYC, were saddled with a World War II-era tax of 15% on passenger fares, which remained until 1962: 17 years after

2968-607: The Hudson River. The New York Central, like many U.S. railroads, declined after the Second World War. Problems resurfaced that had plagued the railroad industry before the war, such as over-regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which severely regulated the rates charged by the railroad, along with continuing competition from automobiles and trucks. These problems were coupled with even more-formidable forms of competition, such as airline service in

3074-1020: The Indianapolis and St. Louis Railway. The following year, the company gained control of the former Indiana Bloomington and Western Railway . By 1906, the Big Four was itself acquired by the New York Central Railroad. It operated independently until 1930; it was then referred to as the Big Four Route. In 1930, New York Central Railroad acquired a 99-year lease of both Michigan Central and the ''Big Four'' (Cleveland, Chicago Cincinnati & St. Louis Railroad). The back shops at West Albany, New York were unable to keep up with repairs to rolling stock, so additional shops were established east of Buffalo at Depew (1892), Croton-on-Hudson (Harmon Shops, 1907), and Oak Grove, Pennsylvania (Avis Shops, 1902). The Harmon Shops were particularly important as locomotive power

3180-590: The Metrolink system—even though it is operated by Amtrak. This is why the reporting mark for CSX Transportation , which is an operating railroad, is CSXT instead of CSX. Private (non-common carrier) freight car owners in Mexico were issued, up until around 1990, reporting marks ending in two X's, possibly to signify that their cars followed different regulations (such as bans on friction bearing trucks) than their American counterparts and so their viability for interchange service

3286-693: The New York Central Lines. In the summer of 1935, the identification was changed to the New York Central System, that name being kept until the merger with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968. The Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway , also known as the Big Four, was formed on June 30, 1889, by the merger of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railway , the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago Railway and

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3392-450: The New York Central Railroad were optimized for speed on that flat raceway of a main line, rather than slow mountain lugging. Famous locomotives of the system included the well-known 4-6-4 Hudsons , particularly the 1937–38 J-3a's; 4-8-2 World War II–era 1940 L-3 and 1942 L-4 Mohawks ; and the 1945–46 S-class Niagaras : fast 4-8-4 locomotives often considered the epitome of their breed by steam locomotive aficionados ( railfans ). For

3498-462: The New York Central lines, resigned in 1909. Newman had been president since 1901, when he replaced Samuel R. Callaway (who had replaced Depew as president in 1898). In 1914, the operations of eleven subsidiaries were merged with the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, re-forming the New York Central Railroad. From the beginning of the merger, the railroad was publicly referred to as

3604-436: The New York Central's primary back shops until the end of steam in 1957. The Troy and Greenbush Railroad was chartered in 1845 and opened later that year, connecting Troy south to Greenbush (now Rensselaer ) on the east side of the Hudson River. The Hudson River Railroad was chartered on May 12, 1846, to extend this line south to New York City; the full line opened on October 3, 1851. Prior to completion, on June 1, it leased

3710-624: The Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls Railroad, and an extension east to Rochester opened on July 1, 1852. The railroad was consolidated into the New York Central Railroad under the act of 1853. A portion of the line is currently operated as the Falls Road Railroad . The Buffalo and Lockport Railroad was chartered on April 27, 1852, to build a branch of the Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls from Lockport towards Buffalo. It opened in 1854, running from Lockport to Tonawanda , where it joined

3816-437: The TCKR's relatively slow, heavy trains to exert too much pressure on the inner rail as they went through turns. Track rehabilitation costs would total $ 418,000 in the first year, when the railroad lost money, and $ 225,000 in the second year, when it hoped to break even. These were anticipated costs, as Dura-Bond had committed to operating the rail line for at least two years and could not sell it for at least five as conditions of

3922-642: The Tonawanda Railroad and Attica and Buffalo Railroad merged to form the Buffalo and Rochester Railroad . A new direct line opened from Buffalo east to Batavia on April 26, 1852, and the old line between Depew (east of Buffalo) and Attica was sold to the Buffalo and New York City Railroad on November 1. The line was added to the New York and Erie Railroad system and converted to the Erie's 6 ft ( 1,829 mm ) broad gauge . The Schenectady and Troy Railroad

4028-600: The Troy and Greenbush. Cornelius Vanderbilt obtained control of the Hudson River Railroad in 1864, soon after he bought the parallel New York and Harlem Railroad . Along the line of the Hudson River Railroad, the West Side Line was built in 1934 in the borough of Manhattan as an elevated bypass of then-abandoned street running trackage on Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. The elevated section has since been abandoned, and

4134-942: The Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad. At its peak the Turtle Creek Branch extended from Westinghouse's facilities in Trafford all the way through Saltsburg , and its primary cargo was not gas but coal. Passenger service to and from Pittsburgh and points west was also popular, first served by steam engine trains and later by a single car diesel vehicle known as the Doodlebug . Vehicles made stops in North Trafford, Blackburn, Saunders, Murrysville, Newlonsburg and Export. At its peak, an average of 1000 passengers each weekend would ride this rail line down to Pittsburgh, but passenger service eventually declined, ultimately ending in 1936. Coal shipments declined as well as mines closed, and businesses located along Old and New William Penn Highway became

4240-521: The Turtle Creek Valley to Murrysville. Service on the line began to Murrysville in 1891 and was extended to Export the following year. A branch along Lyons Run was built in 1892 or 1893, which ran 3.86 miles (6.21 km) from Saunders Station to Pleasant Valley. In 1917 the primary line was extended eastward from Export to the mines in Slickville. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company began operating

4346-588: The Turtle Creek railroad its penultimate name: The Turtle Creek Industrial Track. In 1980, Congress passed the Staggers Rail Act which deregulated the rail industry, permitting carriers to sell-off unprofitable lines. Subsequently, Conrail announced that it was looking to was looking to abandon several lines, and its Turtle Creek Industrial Track was among them. In November 1981, Conrail announced intention to abandon its unprofitable Turtle Creek Valley Line. At

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4452-657: The VKM BLS. Example for an "Einheitswagen" delivered in 1957: In the United Kingdom, prior to nationalisation, wagons owned by the major railways were marked with codes of two to four letters, these codes normally being the initials of the railway concerned; for example, wagons of the Great Western Railway were marked "G W"; those of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway were marked "L M S", etc. The codes were agreed between

4558-581: The Water Level Route, could complete the 960.7-mile trip in 16 hours after its June 15, 1938 streamlining (and did it in 15 1 ⁄ 2 hours for a short period after World War II). Also famous were the NYC's Empire State Express , which traveled from New York City through upstate New York to Buffalo and Cleveland, and the Ohio State Limited , which ran between New York City and Cincinnati. At various times, beginning in 1946 and continuing into

4664-571: The West Shore Railroad was later built on that location. The Syracuse and Utica Direct Railroad was chartered in 1853 to rival the Syracuse and Utica Railroad by building a more direct route, reducing travel time by a half-hour. The company was merged before any line could be built. Albany industrialist and Mohawk Valley Railroad owner Erastus Corning managed to unite the above railroads together into one system, and on March 17, 1853, executives and stockholders of each company agreed to merge. The merger

4770-531: The acquiring company discontinues the name or mark of the acquired company, the discontinued mark is referred to as a "fallen flag" railway. Occasionally, long-disused marks are suddenly revived by the companies which now own them. For example, in recent years, the Union Pacific Railroad has begun to use the mark CMO on newly built covered hoppers, gondolas and five-bay coal hoppers. CMO originally belonged to Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway ,

4876-458: The acquisition. A Norris family engineer summarized the company's key to its plan for turning the railroad to profitability, "Conrail needed a seven man crew to run the line. We do it with two men and a dog." In addition to the engineer's pit-bull, the TCKR employed 4 people, nominally two engineers and two brakemen. These employees would do everything including driving the trains, keeping the railroad's 1940s era locomotives running and maintaining

4982-409: The area and his company needed a reliable, competitive transportation alternative. They were faced with a choice: move their company to a new location served by rail, subsidize Conrail's existing operations, or purchase the railroad. After discussing their options, Dura-Bond decided to purchase the railroad outright, taking on other businesses along the line as paying customers. They renamed the railroad

5088-619: The better. Prominent New York Central trains: Trains left from Grand Central Terminal in New York, Weehawken Terminal in Weehawken, New Jersey , South Station in Boston, Cincinnati Union Terminal in Cincinnati, Michigan Central Station in Detroit, St. Louis Union Station , and LaSalle Street Station and Central Station (for some Detroit and CincinnatI trains) in Chicago. The New York Central had

5194-534: The canal. The full line opened July 3, 1839, extending the line further to Syracuse via Rome (and further to Auburn via the already-opened Auburn and Syracuse Railroad ). This line was not direct, going out of its way to stay near the Erie Canal and serve Rome, and so the Syracuse and Utica Direct Railroad was chartered on January 26, 1853. Nothing of that line was ever built, though the later West Shore Railroad , acquired by New York Central Railroad in 1885, served

5300-448: The first letter of the reporting mark: A railway vehicle must be registered in the relevant state's National Vehicle Register (NVR), as part of which process it will be assigned a 12-digit European Vehicle Number (EVN). The EVN schema is essentially the same as that used by the earlier UIC numbering systems for tractive vehicles and wagons , except that it replaces the 2-digit vehicle owner's code (see § Europe 1964 to 2005 ) with

5406-578: The first two-thirds of the 20th century, New York Central Railroad had some of the most famous trains in the United States. Its 20th Century Limited ( Century ), begun in 1902, ran between Grand Central Terminal in New York City and LaSalle Street Station in Chicago , and was its most famous train, known for its red carpet treatment and first-class service. Its last run was made on December 2–3, 1967. In

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5512-413: The freight cars moving, stating that the cars "cost you money" when just sitting on a siding. This won praise from the customers; two that were interviewed after the first year Dura-Bond owned the railroad commented that service had improved dramatically. One noted that shipments which could be delayed over a week on the transfer track when Conrail owned and operated the line were arriving the same day under

5618-405: The freight facilities at Port Morris . From opening, it was leased by the NYC. The Geneva and Lyons Railroad was organized in 1877 and opened in 1878, leased by the NYC from opening. This was a connection between Syracuse and Rochester, running from the main line at Lyons to the Auburn Road at Geneva. It was merged into the NYC in 1890. In 1885, the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway ,

5724-554: The help of maneuverings related to the Hudson River Bridge in Albany. On November 1, 1869, he merged the railroad with his Hudson River Railroad to form the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. This extended the system south from Albany along the east bank of the Hudson River to New York City, with the leased Troy and Greenbush Railroad running from Albany north to Troy . Vanderbilt's other lines were operated as part of

5830-519: The home country may also be included. The Association of American Railroads (AAR) assigns marks to all carriers, under authority granted by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board , Transport Canada , and Mexican Government. Railinc , a subsidiary of the AAR, maintains the active reporting marks for the North American rail industry. Under current practice, the first letter must match the initial letter of

5936-450: The impact or the storms, however this request was denied as the damages were not determined to be of such severity and magnitude to exceed the ability of state and local agencies to deal with them. The flooding caused an extended outage of rail service, during which the only remaining customer on the line made arrangements to have rail cars sent to their facility via truck. The Regional Trail Corporation had long expressed interest in creating

6042-585: The intermediate cities of Albany , Buffalo , Cleveland , Cincinnati , Detroit , Rochester and Syracuse . New York Central was headquartered in New York City's New York Central Building , adjacent to its largest station, Grand Central Terminal . The railroad was established in 1853, consolidating several existing railroad companies. In 1968, the NYC merged with its former rival, the Pennsylvania Railroad , to form Penn Central . Penn Central went into bankruptcy in 1970 and, with extensive Federal government support, emerged as Conrail in 1976. In 1999, Conrail

6148-490: The lifetime of its railroad; all of them were diesel-electric switchers . The two smaller locomotives were used only for intra-yard switching. These were a 300-horsepower 44-ton Whitcomb Co. switch engine that the company had owned prior to buying the railroad and a comparable General Electric 50-ton switcher which later took over this 44-toner's duties. To operate the length of the railroad, Dura-Bond needed more powerful locomotives to haul trains of up to 10 fully loaded cars up

6254-548: The line in 1891 and purchased it outright in 1903. It assigned names to these new branches of its expanding rail network. The portion which ran downstream from Trafford on the right bank of the Turtle Creek waterway would be dubbed the East Pittsburgh Branch and was leased back to the Westinghouse Company, which operated its Interworks Railway on the tracks until a flood control project on Turtle Creek broke apart

6360-456: The locomotive as a different 1000 h.p. model. Engine 550 saw "occasional duty" hauling trains up and down the line, while TCKR 462 was "the primary workhorse of the railroad". When the Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad finally ceased operations, Engine 462's days of service did not end; before the tracks were removed this locomotive was relocated westward to Dura-Bond's Duquesne facility. When Dura-Bond purchased Engine 462 in 1982 it also acquired

6466-435: The lumber company Weyerhaeuser , which had long been the railroad's biggest customer. When it first started operations in 1982, the company estimated it would be hauling 500-1000 cars per year at first and would eventually have to haul "about 1500 cars a year" to turn a profit, and "would like to haul more like 2000" if the economy picked up. Subsequent reports do not indicate that goal was ever met. In 1991 about 500 cars/year

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6572-415: The mark, which consists of an alphabetic code of two to four letters, is stenciled on each piece of equipment, along with a one- to six-digit number. This information is used to uniquely identify every such rail car or locomotive, thus allowing it to be tracked by the railroad it is traveling over, which shares the information with other railroads and customers. In multinational registries, a code indicating

6678-587: The mid-1930s, many railroad companies were introducing streamlined locomotives; until the New York Central introduced the Commodore Vanderbilt , all were diesel-electric. The Vanderbilt was the NYC's first streamlined steam locomotive. The railroad hosted the streamlined steam-powered Rexall Train of 1936, which toured 47 states to promote the Rexall chain of drug stores and to provide space for company conventions. The steam-powered Century , which followed

6784-707: The mid-1950s, the Century and other NYC trains exchanged sleeping cars in Chicago with western trains such as the Super Chief and the City of San Francisco . The cars, which contained roomettes , double bedrooms and drawing rooms , provided through sleeper service between New York City and Los Angeles or San Francisco ( Oakland Pier ). Despite having some of the most modern steam locomotives anywhere, NYC's difficult financial position caused it to convert to more-economical diesel-electric power rapidly. The Boston and Albany line

6890-416: The new local ownership and management. Despite the positive reviews and the efforts to expand the railroad's customer base, the number of shippers reported on the line was at its highest when it first began operations and would decline slowly over the next three decades. A preliminary report indicated that the newly acquired short-line had 10 customers, which, together with Dura-Bond, would total 11 patrons of

6996-610: The night of June 16–17, 2009, a powerful storm struck western Pennsylvania causing flash flooding along many streams and creeks, including Turtle Creek. Flooding in the borough of Export was particularly bad; its mayor commented that he had not seen water so high since the 1960s. In addition to damaging Dura-Bond's main facility, the water washed out five feet of the embankment that the Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad rested on. Dura-Bond reported approximately $ 1 million in uninsured losses in addition to $ 1/4 million in losses to its railroad. Governor Ed Rendell requested federal aid to deal with

7102-444: The owner of a reporting mark is taken over by another company, the old mark becomes the property of the new company. For example, when the Union Pacific Railroad (mark UP) acquired the Chicago and North Western Railway (mark CNW) in 1995, it retained the CNW mark rather than immediately repaint all acquired equipment. Some companies own several marks that are used to identify different classes of cars, such as boxcars or gondolas. If

7208-405: The owner, or more precisely the keeper of the vehicle. Thus each UIC member got a two-digit owner code . With the introduction of national vehicle registers this code became a country code. Some vehicles had to be renumbered as a consequence. The Swiss company BLS Lötschbergbahn had the owner code 63. When their vehicles were registered, they got numbers with the country code 85 for Switzerland and

7314-447: The project with low interest revenue bonds. The purchase price of the line would be $ 125,000, but this relatively low number reflected something all of the parties in the deal knew: the track was in very poor condition. Dura-Bond secured a bank loan to help pay the additional costs that it knew would soon come. The newly purchased short-line railroad began operations on June 6, 1982, and experienced 12 derailments in its first month. Since

7420-481: The railroad included the New York and Harlem Railroad, Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway , Canada Southern Railway , and Michigan Central Railroad . The Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad was chartered in 1869 and opened in 1871, providing a route on the north side of the Harlem River for trains along the Hudson River to head southeast to the New York and Harlem Railroad. Trains could head toward Grand Central Depot , built by NYC and opened in 1871, or to

7526-415: The railroad name. As it also acts as a Standard Carrier Alpha Code , the reporting mark cannot conflict with codes in use by other nonrail carriers. Marks ending with the letter "X" are assigned to companies or individuals who own railcars, but are not operating railroads; for example, the TTX Company (formerly Trailer Train Company) is named for its original reporting mark of TTX. In another example,

7632-406: The railroad's bridges. Norris attributed part of the drop off in business to the closure of Pittsburgh-based steel mills. The railroad was kept running despite falling short of its initial goals of expanding its shipping business. This was partly out of the need to ship materials to the railroad's parent company, but something less tangible may have also factored in. When his company first purchased

7738-505: The railroad's only customers. In 1968 the owner of the Turtle Creek Branch, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, merged with New York Central Railroad and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad to form Penn Central , which declared bankruptcy only two years later. A new company, Conrail, was formed to take over the freight lines of the short-lived Penn Central; it renamed its "Branches" as "Industrial Tracks", giving

7844-506: The railroad, Wayne Norris admitted nostalgia played "a small role" in his decision to buy and operate it. His words shed further light on this: "I was born and raised here in Export. I remember steam engines rolling through here. The trains were a part of our lives..I'm proud to be running a piece of Turtle Creek Valley history... Coal gave this borough its name... I'd read somewhere that a community suffers psychologically when it loses its rail service, and I believe there's some truth in it." On

7950-399: The railroad. These were Beckwith Machinery, Building Components, Delmont Builders, 84 Lumber, Export Tire, Gateway Packaging, J&M Machinery, Long Mill Rubber, National Aluminum and Weyerhaeuser. A total of 9 shippers were reported for the TCKR later in 1982 and 1983. This had dropped again to 7 by 1984, 5 in 1991 and 4 in 1996. In 2009 this number had dwindled to just 2: Dura-Bond itself and

8056-576: The railways and registered with the Ministry of Railways , Government of India . New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad ( reporting mark NYC ) was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midwest , along with

8162-727: The railways and registered with the Railway Clearing House . In India, wagons owned by the Indian Railways are marked with codes of two to four letters, these codes normally being the initials of the railway divisions concerned along with the Hindi abbreviation; for example, trains of the Western Railway zone are marked "WR" and "प रे"; those of the Central Railway zone are marked "CR" and "मध्य", etc. The codes are agreed between

8268-470: The rather indirect Rochester and Syracuse Railroad (known later as the Auburn Road ). To fix this, the Rochester and Syracuse Direct Railway was chartered and immediately merged into the Rochester and Syracuse Railroad on August 6, 1850. That line opened June 1, 1853, running much more directly between those two cities, roughly parallel to the Erie Canal. The Tonawanda Railroad , to the west of Rochester,

8374-624: The reporting mark for state-funded Amtrak services in California is CDTX (whereas the usual Amtrak mark is AMTK) because the state transportation agency ( Caltrans ) owns the equipment used in these services. This may also apply to commuter rail, for example Metrolink in Southern California uses the reporting mark SCAX because the equipment is owned by the Southern California Regional Rail Authority —which owns

8480-519: The same purpose. The Auburn and Syracuse Railroad was chartered on May 1, 1834, and opened mostly in 1838, the remaining 4 miles (6.4 km) opening on June 4, 1839. A month later, with the opening of the Syracuse and Utica Railroad, this formed a complete line from Albany west via Syracuse to Auburn. The Auburn and Rochester Railroad was chartered on May 13, 1836, as a further extension via Geneva and Canandaigua to Rochester , opening on November 4, 1841. The two lines merged on August 1, 1850, to form

8586-480: The single track in Trafford, Murrysville and Export made it possible for a TCKR locomotive to run around a train parked at any of those places, allowing it to detach cars from the train and push them to their individual recipients. Once deliveries had been made, the process would be reversed, as the short line's locomotive would gather and return empty cars to be towed back to Trafford where they would be picked up again by Conrail. The TCKR's staff promised to work to keep

8692-445: The south bank of the new canal. A bridge was built southeast of downtown, roughly where the old main line crossed the path of the canal, to keep access to and from the southeast. West of downtown, the old main line was abandoned, but a brand-new railroad line was built, running north from the NYC main line to the NYC's former Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad , allowing all NYC through traffic to bypass Rome. Steam locomotives of

8798-532: The state of New York and one of the first railroads in the United States . It was chartered in 1826 to connect the Mohawk River at Schenectady, New York to the Hudson River at Albany, providing a way for freight and especially passengers to avoid the extensive and time-consuming locks on the Erie Canal between Schenectady and Albany, New York. The M&H opened on August 9, 1831, with its first steam locomotive,

8904-569: The steepest section of the track, reported to be a 2 percent gradient section in Murrysville. For this the company used a 600 h.p. 99-ton switch engine known by as its roster number as "TCKR 462" and a heavier switcher known as "TCKR 550". Dura-Bond listed TCKR 550 as a 110-ton 1200 h.p. model in an official filing with the Surface Transportation Board , while the 5th edition of Edward Lewis' American Shortline Railway Guide listed

9010-489: The time several businesses relied on it for shipments, including Dura-Bond, an Export-based protective coating company owned by the Norris family. Wayne Norris then sized up the company's situation: "Losing this line would be inconvenient for the other companies, but it would be devastating for us". He noted that Dura-Bond needed to move large steel products too big and heavy to ship by truck, a number of truck strikes had occurred in

9116-544: The total train miles reported per year are consistent with the "three to five trains per week" cited in the 1991 documentary. The drop-off in miles logged as a result of the June 2009 flood is apparent. Regular train service halted in June 2009, and after a three-month pause, a final 64 train miles were recorded in October. Employee work hours continued to be logged each month through July 2010. Reporting mark In North America ,

9222-459: The track. They also had the skills and equipment to re-rail minor derailments, as well as replace damaged rail ties using only hand tools if need be. As many as three round trips per day were possible on the line, and Dura-Bond believed that trains of up to 10 cars could be safely transported. Trains running 3-5 times per week, averaging 4 cars per train, would come to be described as typical. A routine daily shipment began with Conrail dropping off

9328-575: The tracks in 1962. The Lyons Run Branch was used to transport coal from the mines in Pleasant Valley; it was retired in 1950 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike was extended over part of its path the following year. The section which ran up the main stem of Turtle Creek from Trafford through Export was called the Turtle Creek Branch; of the three branches it would have the longest history as an active rail line, which would culminate with its service as

9434-437: The trains were limited to a maximum of 10 miles per hour (16 km/h), these were not necessarily as dramatic as the word "derailment" can imply but were still disruptive enough for Dura-Bond to quickly hire a contractor to perform two months' worth of track repair on an expedited basis. In addition to its general state of disrepair that came from decades of neglect, the track was also too steeply banked around its bends, causing

9540-665: The tunnel north of 35th Street is used only by Amtrak trains to New York Penn Station (all other trains use the Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad to reach the Harlem Line ). The surviving sections of the West Side Line south of 34th Street reopened as the High Line , a linear park built between 2009 and 2014. In 1867, Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired control of the Albany to Buffalo -running New York Central Railroad, with

9646-455: The watershed. Conversion of the railroad proceeded in phases, with a portion being completed in 2017 and the remainder in 2019. A few sections of TCKR track remained in place after this rail trail section was completed. About 1.5 miles (2.4 km) of the railroad track was not part of the original sale to Westmoreland county. A portion of this lies at the end of the line in Export, where Dura-Bond maintains its facilities. The other major segment

9752-504: The west side of the Hudson River. On September 9, 1876, the company was merged into the railroad, but in 1876 the terminal at Athens burned down and the line was abandoned. The primary repair shops were established in Corning's hometown of Albany along with a classification yard and livestock pens on 300 acres of land (known as West Albany). Facilities included locomotive shops, freight and passenger car shops, and roundhouse terminals. These were

9858-458: Was also merged into the railroad in 1855. It had been chartered in 1834 and opened in 1837, providing a line between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. It was leased to New York Central Railroad in 1853. Also in 1855 came the merger with the Lewiston Railroad , running from Niagara Falls north to Lewiston . It was chartered in 1836 and opened in 1837, without connections to other railroads. In 1854,

9964-399: Was approved by the state legislature on April 2 and, on May 17, 1853, the New York Central Railroad was formed. Soon the Buffalo and State Line Railroad and Erie and North East Railroad converted to 4 ft  8 + 1 ⁄ 2  in ( 1,435 mm ) standard gauge from 6 ft ( 1,829 mm ) broad gauge and connected directly with the railroad in Buffalo, providing

10070-401: Was broken-up, and portions of its system were transferred to CSX and Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), with CSX acquiring most of the NYC's eastern trackage and NS acquiring most of NYC's western trackage. Extensive trackage existed in the states of New York , Pennsylvania , Ohio , Michigan , Indiana , Illinois , Massachusetts and West Virginia , plus additional trackage in portions of

10176-459: Was chartered April 29, 1833; as the railroad paralleled the Erie Canal, it was prohibited from carrying freight . Revenue service began on August 2, 1836, extending the line of the Albany and Schenectady Railroad west from Schenectady along the north side of the Mohawk River, paralleling the Erie Canal, to Utica . Of the ten early railroads bordering the Erie Canal, the U&;S was the most profitable. It

10282-402: Was chartered in 1836 and opened in 1842, providing another route between the Hudson River and Schenectady, with its Hudson River terminal at Troy . The Lockport and Niagara Falls Railroad was originally incorporated on April 24, 1834, to run from Lockport on the Erie Canal west to Niagara Falls ; the line opened in 1838 and was sold on June 2, 1850. On December 14, 1850, it was reorganized as

10388-448: Was chartered on April 24, 1832, to build from that city to Attica . The first section, from Rochester southwest to Batavia , opened May 5, 1837, and the rest of the line to Attica opened on January 8, 1843. The Attica and Buffalo Railroad was chartered in 1836 and opened on November 24, 1842, running from Buffalo southeast to Attica. When the Auburn and Rochester Railroad opened in 1841, there

10494-482: Was completely dieselized by 1951. All lines east of Cleveland, Ohio were dieselized between August 7, 1953 (east of Buffalo) and September 1953 (Cleveland-Buffalo). Niagaras were all retired by July 1956. On May 3, 1957, H7e class 2-8-2 Mikado type steam locomotive No. 1977 is reported to have been the last steam locomotive to retire from service on the railroad. But, the economics of northeastern railroading became so dire that not even this switch could change things for

10600-410: Was finalized to sell most of the railroad to Westmoreland County for the appraised value of $ 863,000. Dura-Bond president Wayne Norris acknowledged that continuing to operate the railroad would result in "a lot of flood related costs", noting a general trend of water flowing into the Turtle Creek valley more rapidly than in the past and attributing the increased runoff to increased suburban development in

10706-433: Was headed by Erastus Corning , future president of the consolidated New York Central. On May 7, 1844, the railroad was authorized to carry freight with some restrictions, and on May 12, 1847, the ban was fully dropped, but the company still had to pay the equivalent in canal tolls to the state. The Syracuse and Utica Railroad was chartered on May 11, 1836, and similarly had to pay the state for any freight displaced from

10812-564: Was impaired. This often resulted in five-letter reporting marks, an option not otherwise allowed by the AAR. Companies owning trailers used in trailer-on-flatcar service are assigned marks ending with the letter "Z", and the National Motor Freight Traffic Association , which maintains the list of Standard Carrier Alpha Codes, assigns marks ending in "U" to owners of intermodal containers . The standard ISO 6346 covers identifiers for intermodal containers. When

10918-465: Was no connection at Rochester to the Tonawanda Railroad, but with that exception there was now an all-rail line between Buffalo and Albany. On March 19, 1844, the Tonawanda Railroad was authorized to build the connection, and it opened later that year. The Albany and Schenectady Railroad bought all the baggage, mail and emigrant cars of the other railroads between Albany and Buffalo on February 17, 1848, and began operating through cars. On December 7, 1850,

11024-535: Was switched out from steam to electric at that point as trains approached New York City. The generally level topography of the NYC system had a character distinctively different from the mountainous terrain of its archrival, the Pennsylvania Railroad. Most of its major routes, including New York to Chicago, followed rivers and had no significant grades other than West Albany Hill and the Berkshire Hills on

11130-485: Was the reported haul; circa 1996 it was again nearly 500; in 1999 it was about 700 cars per year. Between those years Wayne Norris commented that his railroad was making enough money to pay for its basic maintenance, but not enough to replace a locomotive. (The railroad had paid $ 44,000 for its primary locomotive in 1982 and charged shippers $ 250 per car when it began operations that year.) In 2009 an engineering survey indicated that only 150 cars per year were traveling over

11236-619: Was then called the Turtle Creek Valley Railroad with the hopes of exploiting the natural gas fields in Murrysville . At its westernmost point, the line began in East Pittsburgh where it dovetailed into Andrew Carnegie 's Union Railroad and then ran eastward along the right bank of Turtle Creek to a junction near SZ tower. In Trafford , it intersected the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad before proceeding farther up

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