T he NYSW generally carries rubbish, fondly known as discarded building structures, from Northern New Jersey to Binghamton, New York. It also transports bricks, corn syrup and lumber, and, on occasion, I have seen them transporting new cars past my house, which is on the most congested part of the railroad in Bergen County, NJ. Earlier in its inception it was a single track passenger line, from Jersey City to Stroudsburg, PA. There is talk of it becoming part of a light rail system from Hackensack to Hawthorne, NJ because of the lack of cross county rail lines. So far that hasn’t started. A railroad faces many challenges getting its freight and passengers from point A to point B, but none more daunting and uncontrollable as the weather, snow in particular. Drifts can form as high as the top of a car, ice forms in the flangeways at crossings and in switches. Given the makeup of track, with ballast, ties, and rails, it would take at least a foot of snow to completely cover the track. When an area gets a large amount of snow that the plowblade on the engine can’t clear, it sometimes becomes necessary for the railroad to bring in special equipment to move it off the track. Enter the snowplow. On the Susquehanna most of the need for plowing occurs on the Northern Division between Binghamton and Syracuse, 3 Utica and Binghamton and along the Southern Tier from Binghamton to Port Jervis. There is the occasional Southern Division snowfall that requires a plow also. The Susquehanna owns three plows and a Jordan spreader, and keeps them in Binghamton, Utica and Little Ferry. Once the snow has stopped falling, the railroad decides if it is necessary to send out a special X train with a plow. The crew consists of an en(Continued on page 4)
4 Publizr Home