With the aid of old timetables, I was able to track the history of the banner, and the trains it once represented. Though the train number changed a few times, for the majority of it’s life, the it was for a Sunday-only morning train from New York to Chatham.

Unknown – 1958: Train 1053, which made a stop at Boston Corners.
1958 – June 30, 1964: Train 905. Ghent was blacked out in 1959 when it was removed as a stop.
July 1, 1964 – November 30, 1968: Train 909.
December 1, 1968 – March 19, 1972: Train 9009. Number was changed after the Penn Central merger.
March 20th, 1972 – unknown: Eliminated stations were covered in black paint, and used for Train 9013, a Saturday and Sunday train.

Early photo of Grand Central’s lower level, showing two departure banners, and the cabinets the banners were stored in when not being used.

After purchasing the banner, I was slightly torn as to what I should do with it. Keep it as is, as a testament to what happened when Penn Central eliminated the Upper Harlem? Or should I restore it, to what it once was, showing all of the original stops? Part of what swayed my decision was that it was obvious that the writing underneath was not completely gone. You could just barely make it out under the black layer of paint, but it was still there. I decided to see how difficult removing the black would be, and to my surprise, it wasn’t that hard. With a little bit of elbow grease, I revealed a line once hidden under black – “Visitors not permitted through gate”:

I made my decision. I was going to restore this banner. I started next on the paint covering the station names… Ghent and Chatham are revealed:

The big reveal was, of course, getting the original destination at the top of the banner to show. Dover Plains has morphed into Chatham…

After revealing everything that was hidden in black, much of the paint was chipped and fading. Repainting was the final step of the restoration.

Although it still needs a little bit of work, for the most part, the sign is done.

Here’s a photo gallery of some of Metro-North’s dynamic and dashing diesels, most of which were captured within the past few weeks (although a few are favorites from last year) on the Harlem, Hudson, and Port Jervis Lines of Metro-North. Enjoy!

 
  
 
   
  
 
  
   
  
   
  
 
  

A very happy 184th birthday to the New York & Harlem Railroad, New York City’s very first railroad, chartered on this day in 1831. Started as a humble street railroad using horses for motive power, it eventually grew to reach Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, and Columbia counties, and is the origin of today’s Harlem Line.

We’ve posted many things about the history of the Harlem Railroad over the years, so if you’re interested in taking a walk down memory lane, be sure to check some of these old favorites out:

• The Streetcars of the New York & Harlem Railroad
• 180 Years of History – the Harlem Railroad
• Remembering the Upper Harlem Line, Part 1
• Remembering the Upper Harlem Line, Part 2
• Remembering the Upper Harlem Line, Part 3
• Postcards on the Harlem Line
• Timetables of the Harlem Line

Two Metro-North diesels meet near the Pleasant Ridge Road crossing in Wingdale, New York.

 
Left: An Alaska Railroad train bound for Fairbanks rounds the bend north of Nenana at sunset. Right: A Genesis pushes southbound on the Danbury Branch, kicking up leaves after departing Cannondale.

The only non-railroad photo to make the top 10, New York’s skyline as seen from the opposite side of the river in New Jersey.

  
Left: An M7 heads toward Manhattan, as seen from the Bronx. Center: A new BNSF locomotive gets some finishing touches at the GE plant in Fort Worth, Texas. Right: An M3 in rush hour service on a foggy fall morning.

A Port Jefferson train pushing west toward Huntington makes a station stop at St. James at sunset.

 
Left: An M7 on the Hudson Line, just south of Scarborough station. Right: A Thanksgiving morning Wassaic shuttle passes Towners, where the old Maybrook Line crossed over the Harlem.

Not all of my favorite photos made the cut, however. Here are some of my favorites from the year:

A PATCO train is a mere streak of light as it crosses the Ben Franklin Bridge into New Jersey.

 
Left: A photoshop edit of one of the Danbury Railway Museum’s steamers, imagining it as if it were operable. Right: A sunset in Brooklyn, from the platform of the Marcy Avenue subway station.

One of my first good photos taken with my drone camera – an aerial view of a train crossing the Moodna Viaduct.

 
Left: A sunset at Amtrak’s Hell Gate Bridge. Right: One of my favorite people shots of the year, Maria working the Upper Harlem Line at Tenmile River.

If you’d like to see more of my train photos, and you aren’t already subscribed, you can follow my instagram account here: http://www.instagram.com/mtaharlemline/

Thank you all for a wonderful 2014!

I got a chance to check out one of these new machines, and must admit they are quite cool. Slim and light compared to the previous TIMs, these new machines are essentially tricked-out iPhones running special software. Wrapped in a blue Metro-North case, the TIM contains an LED barcode scanner (used for scanning the barcode on IDs of delinquents that have neither tickets nor money) and a swipe for credit cards. The special software installed on the phone not only allows conductors to sell tickets, but it also “locks down” the iPhone, preventing it from downloading apps, reading email, and all the other things you wouldn’t want a conductor to do while on duty.

The new Metro-North TIM and printer

Similar to the previous TIM, the new TIM connects wirelessly to a printer that can be hung from the belt. This printer provides the customer with a receipt for the ticket they bought. It also provides the conductor at the end of the day a receipt that lists how much they’ve sold, and further breaks that down into cash tickets sold (which needs to be turned in to Metro-North), and how much was sold by credit.

While the majority of Metro-North riders are conditioned to purchase their tickets before boarding, there remains several stations on the Danbury and Waterbury Branches that do not have platform ticket vending machines or ticket sellers. It is there that the new TIM will likely be most welcome. But for those people that race to catch a train and aren’t able to purchase a ticket before boarding, being able to use a credit card is a great convenience.

The new TIM features an LED barcode scanner, and a swipe for credit cards

Though much of the fanfare regarding the new TIM focuses on the ability to accept credit cards, it is worth mentioning that the new technology can help out quite a bit when it comes to customer service. One of the main complaints I hear are that customers on trains stuck in delays are not provided with enough information as to what is going on. What most don’t realize, however, is that conductors are often not given information about what is happening. In fact, Metro-North’s text alert system often provides customers with information that crews don’t even know. Because the new TIM is essentially a cell phone, the potential is there to use it to notify conductors about issues – information that can then be relayed to the customers over the train’s PA. Whether the technology will be used in this fashion remains to be seen, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

Of course, one must remember that this is only a pilot program. However, I imagine that once the system’s inevitable bugs are worked out, credit card enabled TIMs will soon be popping up on more lines and trains.

The new TIM’s blue protective case, bearing the Metro-North logo

The ticket software is conveniently accessed through this icon of an M7

Three screens of the new TIM – A message sent to the conductor, the screen selling tickets, and a screen showing the phone’s “lockdown” – preventing the iPhone from doing the things most people do with iPhones ]]> https://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/11/10/meet-tim-metro-norths-new-credit-card-enabled-ticket-issuing-machine/feed/ 0 https://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/18/sunsets-and-long-exposure-photography-on-the-rails/ https://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/18/sunsets-and-long-exposure-photography-on-the-rails/#comments Fri, 18 Jul 2014 19:13:43 +0000 http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/?p=9668 Over the past few weeks I’ve spent my evenings exploring the rails, photographing at one of my favorite times of the day – sunset. While one generally loses the illumination of the sun’s rays, you gain a multitude of colors in the sky… and to me, there is just something magical about that.

In terms of night photography – or at least, what railfans tend to think about night photography – one usually uses artificial lights to illuminate a posed, unmoving train. Though it seems to be the en vogue thing to do these days, I see little reason to do so other than “because we can.” Most seem to do it for the novelty, or because all the “cool kids” are doing it. Many that take part look to evoke the work of O. Winston Link, arguably the best night railroad photographer ever (though Jack Delano, whose photographs I featured last week, was also an accomplished night photographer – it was never really his “claim to fame,” however). Unfortunately, most fall flat in their endeavor to “be like Link.” While I can see the merits of photographing steam trains at night (the lower light allows one to capture sweeping plumes of smoke from the engine), I see little reason to do it with modern trains. After dark I find it far more fun to capture not the train itself, but the train’s movement, and its environment.

Because of the low ambient light, long exposure photography allows one to record the movement of the train, rendered as blurs of light. In order to get a proper exposure, your camera shutter is open for longer – in some cases for 15 seconds or more (thus a stable resting place, preferably a tripod, is required). Done right, any moving object in the frame shows up as a blur, or a streak. Modern electric trains, like Metro-North’s M7s and M8s, with their shiny and smooth exteriors and LED lights lend themselves to this, becoming graceful blurs. Instead of artificial light, one uses the “natural” (or as natural as the light off a cityscape could be), and the intense colors of a sunset to evoke a completely different mood. Since I don’t really have a post lined up for this week, I figured I’d share some of my recent photographs taken at sunset, or at night… and maybe convince some of you that there is fun to be had after dark, far away from the now all too common “night photo sessions.”

The sun fades, and the colors of sunset slowly begin to appear on the Upper Harlem Line in Dover Plains.

An imposing graffiti-covered support for the Hell Gate Bridge at sunset.

 
Colorful skies over Metro-North stations in the Bronx – Tremont and Melrose.

The sun sets over the Hudson River, near New Hamburg.

 
Sunset over the Northeast Corridor, near Sherwood Island State Park in Westport, Connecticut.

A pink sky over Amtrak’s Hell Gate Bridge.

The headlight of an M7 reflects against the waters of the Hudson River at Dobbs Ferry.

The fun part of later hour photography is the motion blur, like this shot at Melrose station…

…or this one at the Saugatuck River Bridge…

…and even this one at Harlem-125th Street.

The low-light of a subway system makes long-exposure photography easy, like these two examples on Chicago’s Blue Line.

While a tripod is best, a nice fence or support in which to rest your camera also works, as seen here on this Chicago L platform.

A Brown Line train and a ferry boat are just mere streaks of light as they pass over the Chicago River. In this instance, the camera’s shutter was open for 20 seconds.

Let the light of the city shine in the ultimate version of long exposure photography. In this case, the Chicago skyline. The tracks of the Ogilvie Transportation Center are just visible at right.

 
 
  
   
 

Meanwhile, Metro-North crews were hard at work this weekend in numerous places around the system. On the upper Harlem Line, busing was in effect as crews worked at the Pleasant Ridge Road and Chippawalla Road crossings in Wingdale. The Pleasant Ridge crossing has been a difficulty for well over a month now, requiring trains to stop and warn before entering the crossing, and proceeding at reduced speed through it. Hopefully after this work, everything will be getting back to normal. Crews started work on the crossing Friday evening, and worked almost nonstop through the weekend to get it back in order for regular service at about 4 AM this morning.

Busing continues today during off peak hours to allow further work to be done.

 
  
   
 
Metro-North crews work at the Pleasant Ridge Road crossing in Wingdale, on the upper Harlem Line.

In a more light-hearted move, Giulietti has also announced the beginning of a Heritage Unit program for Metro-North. Such programs have been highly successful and well liked on other railroads, most notably Norfolk Southern. While discussing the subject, Giulietti asserted, “we need to restore pride to Metro-North. The railroad systems here in New York City were at one time the best in the world, though unfortunately that is not the case today. We definitely need to look forward, but at the same time there is no better way to restore pride than to remember our roots.”

The new Metro-North New York Central locomotive on the upper Harlem Line earlier today.

Metro-North’s locomotive 220, which was sent out for work several weeks ago, has returned in a new paint scheme resembling that of the New York Central. “This is the first of hopefully several locomotives in heritage schemes. Many years ago Metro-North had a New York Central themed FL9, and so we opted for a different scheme than that previous locomotive.” Unfortunately, there is no timetable for future heritage locomotives. According to Giulietti, “as locomotives are sent out for repair, they will likely return to Metro-North with some new paint.”

The versatile RDC was an all stainless steel, self propelled railcar that could be operated as a single unit, or multiple cars could be coupled into one longer train. While they operated on all sorts of runs, it was common to see them on lines with fewer passengers, and in commuter service where there was no electrification – like the Upper Harlem Line.

 
Budd-built cars operating on the Harlem Line – at left, an RDC at Dover Plains, at right an SPV-2000, also in Dover Plains. While the RDC was highly successful, the supposed successor SPV was hardly so – acquiring the less-than-flattering nickname “Seldom Propelled Vehicle.”

Here’s the last few ads with Ragan’s art, all advertising the RDC:
 
  
  

Ragan’s art successfully made the RDC look rather dreamy. Realistically, the RDC, with its stainless steel body, was somewhat attractive. By today’s standards, the inside does look a bit dated though. Here are a few Budd promotional photos of the RDC:

 

Top: A New York Central RDC-3. This model featured seats for 48 passengers, and room for baggage and mail. Bottom: Passengers board a New Haven RDC.

 
Left: Construction on the inside roof of an RDC. Right: An RDC in action.

The first RDC’s were offered in four different models, numbered 1 through 4. The RDC-1 was for passengers only, and seated 89. The RDC-2 seated 70 passengers, and had a 17 foot baggage compartment. The RDC-3 combined passenger seating with baggage and mail, it accommodated 48 passengers, a 17 foot baggage compartment, and a 15 foot mail apartment. The RDC-4 carried no passengers, and had a baggage compartment measuring 31 feet, and a mail apartment 30 feet long. Ever curious what the first four versions looked like? Here are the schematics, which were published by the Budd Company in a 1953 promotional booklet called “RDC Comes of Age.”

 
 
 

Improving non-stop? I will never again laugh at that MTA tagline!