| |
LENGTH: About 23 miles
PRESENT STATUS: Undeveloped.
CLOSED to the public.
STATUS DETAILS: This section
of the trail is not done and is still in private ownership.
An effort is underway to use federal and local matching
dollars to begin acquiring the rail bed. We hope that
with the success of the trail between Wassaic and Copake
Falls, the construction of this long segment of trail
will eventually be achieved.
Natural Features, Flora & Fauna:
To be determined.
LOCAL HISTORY
Hillsdale: The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, who lived in Austerlitz,
used the Hillsdale Station frequently. Hillsdale was the site of a 19th century
iron works, and after 1900, the town had a Sheffield Farms milk plant. After
the milk plant closed, it was used by a wholesale produce distributor.
Hillsdale had a cattle pen for shipping cattle by rail. Herrington's Lumber received
building supply products by rail until service ended in 1976. Hillsdale was an
important station for vacationers and weekenders from Columbia County and nearby
Massachusetts. Children traveling to summer camps in the Berkshires took special
camp trains and got off at Hillsdale. Copake Falls Station served the many camps
in West Copake.
Craryville: The site of a
passenger and freight station and a Borden's Milk plant.
It had a spur to Copake Lake for ice harvesting and a
cattle pen for shipping livestock to New York City slaughterhouses.
Vacationers going to cottages and the former Copake Country
Club at Copake Lake got off the train here.
Martindale: The site of a
passenger station.
Philmont: This town was named
for George Phillips who developed an industrial town
there including textile mills. "Swiss Farms" received
carloads of Canadian peat moss until the end of rail
service in 1976.
Ghent: The site of the junction between the New York
City Harlem Division and
Boston & Albany RailroadÕs Hudson-Chatham Branch.
Chatham: A major railroad
junction for the Boston & Albany Railroad's main
line and a terminal for the Harlem Division, the Boston & Albany
Railroad's Hudson-Chatham Branch, and the Rutland Railroad's
Bennington Branch. The town had a large railroad yard
and engine service facilities. Chatham is still a railroad
town in spite of the new weekenders and touristy redevelopment
taking place. Until the early 1950's, milk produced in
Vermont and shipped on the Rutland Railroad was transferred
to the Harlem Division for New York City destinations.
This former Boston & Albany Railroad main line is
a heavy-duty freight main line for the Conrail system
which was just acquired by the mega-giant CSX Railroad
Corporation. Amtrak also uses this railroad for its Boston-Albany passenger trains.
As many as twenty long, heavy freight trains a day rumble through the village.
Chatham has a yearly Railroad Heritage Festival at the firehouse located on a
vestige of the Harlem Division track. Chatham has converted about one mile of
former Harlem Line track running south from the village along Route 66 to a rail
trail. The trail goes through a residential part of the village. Residents use
it to walk to the Grand Union shopping center.
A large Blue Seal Feeds distribution center is located in the former Harlem Division
property at Chatham. Feed and grain from the midwest is unloaded from rail cars
and delivered to farms in the tri-state region by truck. This replaced direct
rail shipment to the small towns that lost rail services during the massive downsizing
of the regional rail system in the 1970's and 1980's.
DIRECTIONS
Parking and access yet to be determined. |
