the east of the old Erie/NYS&W Susquehanna Transfer is undergoing expansion as new tracks are being installed within the confines of the yard adjacent to Resources terminal. Most of this traffic is auto racks, although there is a fairly busy soybean transloading facility on the premises as well. It’s not uncommon for the crew to make overtime, and there is the work to support it. In fact, on occasions, one of the daylight crews, either the WS-1 or WS-2 will venture east of the yard to North Bergen to handle some traffic Along these lines, the railroad receives a good amount of interchange traffic with CSX at North Bergen, at CP-3, adjacent to the CSX yard which parallels the NYSW at this location. The CSX daylight crew, symbol Y120, will almost every day, as part of their duties deliver cars to the railroad at either CP-3 or CP-5 in Ridgefield Park, NJ. They will also bring back any outbound freight to North Bergen where it will eventually be placed on trains to Selkirk for classification. In addition, the afternoon CSX yard crew, symbol Y220 will also deliver/pick up freight to the NYS&W, and it’s not unusual for BOTH crews to be on the NYSW property doing their respective interchange work. Add to that the normal radio chatter of WS-3, WS-4, and WS-5 and it becomes a challenge to hear your own crew on the radio. And as always, the SU-100 and SU-99 trains are pretty Westbound SU 99 under cloudy skies approaching Excelsior Mills Sept 14 2014 The WS-5 as noted earlier concentrates its work between Ridgefield Park NJ and North Bergen/Jersey City at the extreme east end of the railroad. And at the start of the New Year, a slight realignment of healthy in terms of tonnage on their runs, minus what traffic gets handed off to CSX and NS in northern NJ. If that traffic were to be added to the NYSW trains, the road trains would most likely be a 5-day a week operation. That hasn’t happened, nor is it expected to happen in the foreseeable future, but given the current traffic levels, what DOES run via the SU 99/100 is still a pretty healthy level of traffic overall. And speaking of the road trains, they are running, as always, on their standard schedule, with the 100 departing Binghamton on Sun/Tues/Thurs evenings, and then returning as the SU 99 the following afternoon/evening. The departure from NJ as the 99 is dependent on when the crew is rested per the Hours Of Service rules, but if all goes well, they generally are on duty at 4 pm out of the hotel and usually westbound shortly after arriving from the hotel and yard office. Before the road crew shows up, however, one of the afternoon yard crews (usually but not always the WS-3) will bring the power from the service tracks to the train at the west end of the MC tracks at Cross Street in Bogota NJ and drill out any cripple cars that cannot travel on the train for some mechanical reason, then assemble the entire train, do the pre departure brake test, and hand off the train to the road crew who then departs. Sometimes they are westbound by 430 pm, sometimes not. It depends on the work involved in assembling the train. As for the rest of the Southern Division, along with the WS-3, there is the WS-4, WS-5, and WS-6 all on duty between 230 pm and 5 pm. The WS-3 is the afternoon intermodal crew, meaning that they primarily work the CSX intermodal yard, drilling cars as needed for the following morning’s outbound Q003, or yarding the Thursday only Q002, among other duties. The WS-4 assembles its train, and then heads west (sometimes before, sometimes after the SU-99), and will work at Passaic Jct, 4th Ave Paterson (Trash), Midland Park (Kuiken Bros Lumber) before heading back to work Malt Products in Hackensack. 14 crews took place. The WS-6, known as the “Sparta turn” was abolished. In its place was a new job, named the SJ-1, based out of Sparta Jct. This job works Monday to Friday, on duty at 4 pm, and has an engine assigned and based there at SJ. It’s generally been the 3022, but occasionally one of the tunnel motors has done time there as well as one of the leased CSX and NS 4 axle geeps. The cars were dropped off and picked up by the SU 100’s and 99’s, usually at the siding track just west (by timetable, northeast geographically) of Sparta Jct. And as of press time, there is plenty of work to keep them busy. This brings up another item. As this goes to press in March 2015, there has been a modification to the SU 100/99 trains. The schedule is still the same, with the 100’s running east from Binghamton Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and the 99’s running west the following afternoon/evening, as noted above. With the harsh winter in upstate NY taking its toll, it has affected traffic on CSX as well as the NYS&W and other carriers in the region, notably in the Buffalo-Syracuse-Albany corridor of CSX. Usually, the SU 99 goes west with a block for interchange to CSX at Syracuse. However, owing to mother nature and congestion in general, some of you may have noticed the SU 99 running west with less than 20 cars out of Ridgefield Park, NJ. That’s because the CSX-Syracuse block is not traveling on the 99’s. Instead, the freight has been picked up by CSX, usually crew YY220 out of North Bergen, who then take the freight to South Kearny yard for inspection and addition to Selkirk bound trains. The last weekend of February had 109 cars for CSX to pick up, and previous moves involved 97 cars and 67 cars respectively. The Y220 normally delivers inbound freight as well as needed intermodal cars for the CSX Little Ferry intermodal terminal, so it’s not a stretch for the Y220 (of which I’m the regular engineer) to grab the cars and run them to South Kearny. How long this modification to freight traffic lasts is anyone’s guess, but will likely go on until the weather and congestion issues in upstate NY ease up. MOTIVE POWER UPDATE This area has been pretty active the past several months. I’m (Continued on page 15)
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