A few of our trips took us to the diminutive Lehigh & Hudson River, and all ALCO road based in Warwick, NY. At the time their roster consisted of two RS-3’s and nine Century 420’s. The bridge line line ran from a connection with the New Haven at Maybrook, NY to Easton, PA where it interchanged with the Reading and Lehigh Valley amongst others, a distance of about 90 miles. Here on September 9th in 1971 we see C-420 #21 in front of the Warwick engine house. C-420’s # 21 and #22 were the first of this model built by ALCO for anyone.
Earlier that same day we were rewarded with a shot of the daylight L&HR freight led by C-420 #28 and two sister units leaving southbound for Warwick from the New Haven connection at Maybrook, just west of Poughkeepsie.
Fate was not kind to the L&HR, as three years later on May 8th in 1974 the famous New Haven bridge over the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie suffered a major fire, and 90% of the railroad’s overhead traffic from east of the river vanished that day, never to return.
A good account of the fire can be read here at: http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/pbpj741.Html
The welder quoted was correct in that the bridge has never reopened, and the L&HR was folded into the Penn Central after close to 100 years of independence.
