Working rail roads and their tracks.

[ArlyA]

Nice pic!
------------------------------
The morning sky on Sunday exploded in color as this ore train was tied down at Collingwood waiting to be dumped later in the day. Duluth, MN - November 23, 2025

 

[ArlyA]

Machines that make track switch cleaning a breeze. Superior WI. December 1st 2025.

 

[kenmbz]

Well, not working so much anymore. Quite a few trains ran along the Delaware at one time to transport from canals to inland manufacturing. This one on the NJ side.
The PA side is now just a tourist train route.

Lambertville: Then and Now - Site 19 - Pennsylvania Railroad Depot - Lambertville Historical Society

By the 1870s Lambertville was a major stop on the Belvidere-Delaware Railroad, which had trains going north to Belvidere, south to Trenton, and east to

lambertvillehistoricalsociety.org

Below from this weekend, river to the left, canal to the right (a bit overgrown now)

Factories were to the right (now restaurants and apartments. Wood mill to the left which closed recently. But hasn't milled in a long time, just acted as a warehouse for Finkles. Which has it's own interesting history. Tracks on the left below.

 

[MossRoad]

The Canadian Pacific Holiday Train came through last week. We did not go to try and see it this year because it's usually 3-4 hours late. Friends of ours saw it but only because they had friends up-line from them telling them it was 45 minutes EARLY! So they ran out and grabbed a video of it.

Someday we'll see it in person.

Here's a link to its schedule. It's supposed to run from Nov 19 through Dec 21, so check the schedule to see if it's coming near you.

https://www.cpkcr.com/en/community/HolidayTrain

 

[MossRoad]

Here's some video from youtube from this year's train.

 

[WinterDeere]

Well, not working so much anymore. Quite a few trains ran along the Delaware at one time to transport from canals to inland manufacturing.

You may remember better than me, since you're still there and seeing them everyday, and I'm relying on childhood memory. But considering the amount of work that went into building them, those canals had a relatively short useful lifespan.

Nothing like many European cities, where the canals enjoyed hundreds of years of continous use, to pay for their construction. I think PA's and NJ's Delaware River canals were built in the early 1830's, and then completely replaced by the railroad by the early 1850's, and left to deteriorate for many decades before re-opening as a tourism site in the 1960's.

You have to wonder if the folks that funded that project would have even bothered, if they knew it would be nearly totally-obsolete in just 20 years! Hand-digging 60 miles of canal on both sides of the river, with consistent depth at something like 75 feet average width (narrower with bulkheads in town), and all of the locks and everything that went with it, must have been an enormous undertaking. There were no steam shovels available at that time, they came along 10 - 20 years too late for that project.

I just checked the dates:
PA Delaware River Canal opened, Philly to Easton: 1832
North PA railroad opened Philly to Easton: 1852

 

[ArlyA]

The American Mariner and the Joseph L. Block with CEFX 1009 and LS&I 1005— with Naomi Carrier at LS&I Ore Dock. Marquette MI. More of a boats n train shots here.

 

[ArlyA]

An aerial view of the PRR roundhouse in Crestline,OH., September 6, 2002, looking to the north. Compare this photo with the [1947 aerial photo]

 

[MossRoad]

Compared to recently....

 

[GrandpaSmurf825]

Roundhouses and turntables have became a thing of the past. Turntables were high maintenance but necessary in their day when steam was king. Wye tracks are hardly any maintenance comparatively and when power needs to be turned only the lead unit needs to face the direction of travel. There are very few turntables left anymore. Cool photos from when it was a booming place up through now where it's just rubble.