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Rip Van Winkle Railroads By William Helmer Canajoharie & Catskill RR Catskill Mo
Rip Van Winkle Railroads By William Helmer Canajoharie & Catskill RR Catskill Mountain Ry Otis Elevating Ry Catskill & Tannersville RY Dust Jacket 1970, SECOND Printing 1971. 146 Pages
In the history of American railroading, forty years of operation seems a brief span indeed. The student of transportation can rapidly calculate that just so many years separate the introduction of steam railroading into the United States from the completion of the first transcontinental line. This period, from the STOURBRIDGE LION'S cautious journey over the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company's light trackage to the rowdy celebration around the head-to-head locomotives at Promontory Point, is but the opening act in the drama of American railroading. The account which follows covers an identical number of years, but chronicles no such momentous events. It does not even contain the memoirs of a single corporation; the railroad projects are separated in time by almost half a century. Yet all this activity galvanized an entire New York State county, exploited the picturesque Catskill mountain range and terminated at a single Hudson River port, Catskill.
These forty years offer a fine insight into two exciting eras in American transportation history -the feverish pioneer railroad epoch and the golden age of narrow gauge. The Canajoharie & Catskill underwent all the tribulations of the earliest trial-and-error, hit-or-miss kind of operation characteristic of the new mode of communication and succumbed; the Catskill narrow gauge lines experimented with the light railway and failed. The C. & C. lived out its brief life as a freight carrier; the later lines courted passengers almost exclusively. Both served their time and then vanished. Nevertheless, in their struggle for survival, they serve as models for what was best - and what was worst -in American railroading.
Although the stories presented here are as complete and as accurate as I can make them, there are tantalizing questions remaining. The surviving records of the Canajoharie & Catskill are scarce and scattered, arousing curiosity not only as to the everyday operating problems of the railroad, but about the critical deliberations of its beleaguered officials. Apparently all of the company's books and papers have been lost or destroyed. Fortunately, the more recent carriers are represented by some company documents resurrected from a Catskill garage. Yet even these are fragmentary.
The person interested in America's past must deplore the too-casual discarding of old pictures, minute books, maps, diaries, letters, timetables and other railroad memorabilia. Much of value has been lost, but some undoubtedly remains, hidden or forgotten in the nooks and crannies of our domestic and business structures.
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