albany

July 30, 2012

A 1918 Guide to New York City, and Hudson River Steamboats

By now, you readers are all well aware of my problem. I love old printed (and usually railroad-related) materials. Timetables, brochures, posters… you name it. Although I love having the real thing in-hand, most times I’m quite content to have just digital copies – which is part of the reason SmartCat came about. Somehow, I came across a website this weekend that I had never been to before – it is called the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. The site pretty much operates in the same vein as SmartCat – historical artifacts, digitized and available to everyone for free over...

Welcome to the Hudson Line

As riders of Metro-North, we are quite familiar with the Hudson River. It serves as an important dividing line of the system – west-of-Hudson service, operated by New Jersey Transit, and the more familiar east-of-Hudson service which is comprised of the Harlem, New Haven and Hudson Lines. For those that still use Metro-North’s website for scheduling, acknowledging on which side of the river you fall is still a necessity. Besides providing a dividing line for Metro-North, the river has always been an important part of the landscape of New York. Boats on the river have been commonplace for hundreds of...

Chatham: Revisited

I’m not exactly sure why, but I have a strange affinity for the village of Chatham. Although it is an adorable place, rather quaint, I wonder what exactly it was like when the railroads ran through here. You might see a freight train, or a passing Lake Shore Limited, but none of them stop. Chatham once serviced the New York & Harlem Railroad, the Boston & Albany, and the Rutland – all of which are long gone. And thus the place is a little bit of a curiosity to me. The many suburbs along the Harlem – Bronxville, Hartsdale, Scarsdale,...