NEW YEAR'S EVE

The day before the start of a new year...

Amtrak's Steel City Express rolls through town on its way to Washington, D.C.

The train is lead by P42 156, the Phase 1 Heritage unit.

Two men talk in the empty lot of Tony's Garage. Soon, both mechanics will be headed home for a quick nap before heading out for the New Year's celebration.

New Year's parties mean food -and lots of it! The west end of Hillsdale Yard is full of reefers headed to Johnson Foods.

The Domino's Pizza truck crosses the bridge into town. New Year's eve is also a day for college football games, and few things go with football like pizza!

CHRISTMAS IN HILLSDALE

The Union Cold Storage truck leaves town after delivering ice to the local stores. Holiday parties use lots of ice!

The mailman makes his deliveries on Main St. Holiday mail, including catalogs and business fliers, make this the busiest time of the year for the Post Office.

The Post Office isn't the only one who's busy; a UPS truck makes its way into town, with packages for delivery.

Two friends exchange pleasantries -and gift ideas. Last-minute shopping is always part of the season!

And what would Christmas be without Santa! Here, he visits the parking lot of Hillsdale Yard, greeting a lucky group of kids. His "sleigh" of presents is a red pickup! Reindeer under the hood instead of horses?

THE 80'S PT17: EARLY AP&W INTERMODAL

The 80's brought about the increase of intermodal traffic through southern Pennsylvania, as the new AP&W had the best transcontinental route between Chicago and the East Coast ports of New York, Baltimore, and Trenton, N.J...

The AP&W also had the best route from Kansas City. Train KCT-35 (Kansas City - Trenton) rolls TOFC (Trailer On Flat Car) traffic east to Trenton behind an ex- Frisco SD40-2 and an EMD SD60 Demo unit.

Among the trailers are a number of UPS 40' drop bottoms. Note also the XTRA Lease 45' and the JB Hunt 48' trailers.

A Availco Preferred Pool and a Vermont Railroad 45-footers share space on a flatcar.

45' trailers from Missouri Pacific and Florida East Coast. This 1986 train is four years after the MoPac was acquired by the Union Pacific. The next flatcar has a 48' Schneider National trailer sharing space with another UPS 40' drop bottom. The combined 88' length of the trailers fits on the 89' flatcar with about a foot between the trailers!

 More 48' Schneider National trailers, including a rare white one (a second-hand unit?). Note that these trailers are on a spine car with 48' platforms. The 80's saw the introduction of spine cars to handle longer trailers and containers, as the AAR (American Association of Railroads) set a 89'  length limit on single-unit cars. As seen in the previous photo, only one 48' trailer or container can fit on an 89' flatcar, so articulated spine cars were -and still are- the solution to longer trailers and containers. Plus, with only enough deck space for the trailer wheels, the spine cars save a lot of weight versus conventional flatcars.

A Transamerica 45' trailer shares a flatcar with a UPS 40' trailer. Next is a 48' JB Hunt trailer on a Front Runner -a single-unit spine car which featured single-axle trucks at each end.

A string of UPS' ubiquitous 40' drop bottoms, riding on a ten-unit Impack spine car. The AP&W was one of the railroads which dabbled in spine cars during the 80's. and the Impack car was purchased in both 5-unit (50) and 10-unit (10) configurations, with 45' capable units. With the A unit's reversed orientation on the end of the car, this allowed it to carry a 48' trailer, as seen at the end of the train with a 48' Schneider trailer. While the 10-unit cars did well, when one went out of service for maintenance, that was ten less trailers to haul! Plus they were hard to fit inside of the shops, due to their nearly 500' length! The Impacks lasted through the 90's, but were all retired by 2000; with 48' and 53' trailers, only every other unit could be used, plus they weren't equipped to handle containers.

As-yet un-renumbered Frisco 955 shows off the Mandarin Orange and white paint scheme, as well as the roof-top rotating beacon and nose-mounted gyralight; all designed to improve the visibility of the unit -especially at grade crossings. When paint schemes for the new company were being drawn up, one featured this pattern, but with brown substituted for the orange. The 90's "Desert Storm" paint scheme actually used a similar pattern, but with brown and tan instead of orange and white, with white ends.

EMD1 is one of the four SD60 demonstrators built in 1984 to promote EMD's newest creation. The quartet worked all across the seven railroads that would become the AP&W, but with merger details to be worked out, it would be two years before any would be ordered. The first 25 SD60s for the new. company would arrive in the fall of 1986, just months after the merger was finalized.

THE 80'S, PT16

More of Hillsdale in the 80's...

The west end of Hillsdale Yard, before the addition of the converted container maintenance shop, which was added during the mid-90's.

Outside the yard office, several guys gather by a GMC motorhome, preparing for a weekend getaway to the lake. The fishing was good in those days, but the increase in boat traffic has taken its toll in recent years. Fish don't like noisy jet-skis!

A big tow truck is parked at the end of the access road. From time to time, the big truck owned by the railroad need servicing off-site, and this rig did the honors, taking them to a shop outside town, Said shop has since been taken over by Tony Moltello, and still services medium and heavy duty trucks.

And speaking of tow trucks... Marla tries to talk her way out of a parking ticket, but the not only is the cop on the scene, but so is the tow truck, with driver at the ready! Looks like she'll have to pay both the ticket and towing fees!

Shift change; daylight crew heads home in the evening. Today, most of these men would be wearing safety vests and jackets, but in the 80's there was less of a concern about crew visibility, especially shop workers.

Workers start up freshly re-painted SW1500 350. It is ex-AP 170, built in 1966, and recognizable by both the all-weather windows on the cab and the spark arrestors  on the stacks. Note that, even in the 80's, the railroad required safety vests when working around the tracks outside the confines of the shop.
Next week we'll wrap up the 80's with a look at an 80's TOFC train.

THE 80'S, PT15; MORE TRUCKS

More of Hillsdale in the 80's...

An old International Harvester CargoStar hauls a load of coiled steel. There was once a machine shop in town, but it was a casualty of the 1983 recession. A stamping plant took over in 1984, making metal gaskets for Volkswagon, but the 1988 closure of the New Stanton plant spelled the end of that operation. Today, the facility operates as TC's Tool & Die Co.

When Kenworth introduced the T600 in 1984, it was an instant best seller. Here, one pulls a new 48' XTRA Intermodal trailer from the storage lot.

Another T600, this one with a sleeper, pulls a 48' trailer for National Van Lines.

Yet another T600 day cab, in contract service with the Post Office, heading to the distribution center. The Post Office used 40' trailers into the 90's, although contract carriers used longer trailers.

.A Peterbilt cab-over rolls a 48' Rail-Bridge container out of town. The 48' domestic container began the intermodal revolution, as finally the railroads had a container that could match the capacity of over-the-road trucks; being able to double-stack them meant that the railroads could move them more efficiently than the competition. Note that J&S Trucking is still beside KFC. The move out of town came in 1992.

Today, J&S Trucking is visited by a Smith's Transfer semi, as the driver walks from the office back to his truck. Unfortunately, Smith's Transfer would go out of business in 1988.

Three 80's icons are seen here; a 40' Conrail "Trailvan" trailer, pulled by a Mack model R tractor, and a Cadillac Seville with the infamous "chopped trunk".