Selkirk Yard

[RON DEFILIPPO]

Really enjoyed a trip to Conrail's Selkirk, NY yard last Friday. We
started at the east end (CPF SK) where the NY rte. 9W bridge affords a
good view. Looking to the east, you can se the Boston line going
straight east, the West Shore line diverging south and the Albany Br.
(D&H connection) diverging north. By observing the positioning of the
switch points, you can pretty much anticipate the next move. (BTW
binoculars are a must for thorough injoyment of activities in this
sprawling yard and its approaches). For example we were almost about
to leave when we noticed the crossovers on all tracks were lined to
completely cross the road from the Albany Branch. A trio of CP engines
pulled a long train of stacks and mixed freight. We saw other all
kindsm of In addition, we saw 4 Boston route trains and 3 West shore
route trains in about 2 hours. They included everything from stacks to
tri-level auto racks to a unit coal train. Norfolk Southern power was
frequently intermixed with Conrail power.
The next public road bridge to the west offers good views of
the east (downhiil) side of the hump where two U33C's were sawing by
each other with long cuts of cars off the clasification tracks which
they were reassembling into trains for various destinations. You can
also see the yard bypass track and eastbound power coming to claim
their trains originating at Selkirk. Its a good place to enjoy flat
switching while still capturing the through jobs.
The next public bridge is great for the motive power fan. It
crosses the engine terminal which often contains foreign power. We saw
NS, NYS&W, CN, UP and C&NW (but Conrail power is the most numerous.)
You can also enjoy the constant procession of cars being shoved over
the hump by old road units with slugs. With binoculars you can better
observe the hump crest and tunnel under the hump as well as power going
in and out of the terminal.
The last public bridge to the west affords sweeping views of the
yard and SP interlocking at the western approach. You can often see
trains waiting at SP to get a spot in the yard as well as the hump
switchers tying on to the trains on the arrival tracks (which were
almost completely full on the day of our visit.) We saw several more
trains here including a stack train, rack train, coal train, and mixed
freight, mostly over 100 cars.

Ron
---
ş 1st 2.00 ş Certum quod factum