I saw on todays Trains News Page that the former locomotive shop at Colonie burned. It was unoccupied and had been for sale by the owner (Guilford) for several years.
It's basically Albany, just a little NW of the city. I remember going through Colonie when it was a real burb many years ago.
Will look through what images I might have before the fire plus I'm looking to get a OK to obtain photographs from the fire itself.
Found this from WTEN: Demolition Begins at Rail Yard in Colonie (updated: March 22nd, 10:00am) The old D&H rail yard in Colonie is coming down this morning after a fire swept through the building yesterday. In the past few hours a few flames have sparked back up and fire crews have returned to the scene. Once all of these hot spots are put out, demolition efforts will continue and the building will come down. Demolition work began around 1:00am this morning. Crews pulled down several unstable sections of the building immediately for safety reasons. Flames first broke out Sunday afternoon at the rail yard located in the Town of Colonie at 950 5th Street. Seven volunteer fire units responded to the scene. It took crews about 13 hours to put out the fire. Firefighters haven't determined a cause, but they believe local teens use the building as a hangout spot. The building has previously been used by Train Engine Construction and may have housed dangerous chemicals. Some nearby residents have been evacuated from their homes. Stay tuned to NEWS10 and logged onto wten.com for all of the latest information on this story as it becomes available.
From WNYT: Colonie warehouse blaze considered suspicious Updated: 6:11 p.m. ET March 24, 2004 March 22 - Crews are back on the scene of an old warehouse fire in Colonie. The structure that used to be the D&H rail yard warehouse rekindled Monday morning. It was quickly put out. The old building caught fire Sunday afternoon. It has sat empty for years. A fire in 2001 destroyed much of it. Questions are being raised as to whether the building contains asbestos. Tests need to be done. Crews will demolish part of the building's west side Monday. Police say some teens were seen in the area before the fire started Sunday. It's being considered suspicious.
Guess I'm not surprised. Have heard of too many incidents where this was the truth. Bummer. Boxcab E50
I just heard from WXXA-TV and they will be sending me some images from their coverage of the fire that I will post on the DHVM soon and link some of those images back to here.
Wouldn't you know it, I ran out of space tonight so I can't get the fire photographs uploaded into the DHVM currently. Never fear though, we have RailImages and I have upload them there for now. Here is one from Brad Peterson: and here is one from WXXA-TV (Fox23):
In looking at photos so far, it appears to be a mostly, if not all (?), brick structure. What exactly was burning? Painted surfaces? Some sort of residue? I suppose that the next step will be it's declared a hazard, and immediately torn down? Boxcab E50
My understanding is it lost so much structure it already feel down in places and they were forced to knock the rest down shortly afterwards.
That is a shame. I remember how I felt when a volunteer fireman torched (Arson) the Port Jervis, NY Erie roundhouse. That building was filled with old Erie and EL documents. I visited the Colonie shops only once. Here are a few pics from within taken on June 16,1990. A E8 getting restored or something. One for signalguy! [ 27. May 2004, 17:01: Message edited by: Don Rickle ]
From "Timesunion" An ignominious end awaits a Sematech of last century Colonie -- D&H locomotive shop, 92, once a rail technology leader, about to become rubble after fire By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer First published: Sunday, March 28, 2004 The Delaware & Hudson locomotive shop, which spans the breadth of four football fields and was the site of world-class innovations in railroad mechanical engineering, succumbed last week after decades of terminal neglect. It was 92. Nobody came to mourn Thursday as steel teeth on the scoops of five large backhoes stood poised to begin tearing into its skin of weathered red brick corpse and knocking down its skeleton of rusty steel. Crews awaited the formality of a demolition permit, which likely will come in a few days, Colonie building inspection officials said. A fire that burned its wooden roof last Sunday and loosed the backhoes like a pack of hungry dogs was merely the latest indignity. This is an obituary for a once-grand, historic building. But it also is a last hurrah for a bygone era that ran on sinew and steam, when a thick cloud of coal dust powdered the Capital Region. "It's sad to see a piece of Americana like that come down," said Richard Stack, general manager of the Albany Port Railroad. Stack worked 18 years with the D&H, including three at the Colonie yard in the late 1970s. "In its heyday, that was a state-of-the-art facility," he said. Located on a 160-acre parcel along the border with Watervliet, a few blocks off Broadway near the Watervliet Arsenal, the sprawling locomotive shop was built in 1912. The complex was the Sematech of its day. At its peak in the early 1920s, it employed more than 2,500 people. Several important technical advances were developed here: the first welded locomotive boiler, the first roller-bearing rods for locomotives, uniflow design cylinder castings that permitted high-pressure operation and experimental concrete rail cross ties. Conceived and designed by railroad innovator and D&H President L.F. Loree, the Colonie yard was also the first self-contained back shop for maintenance, construction and research and development. The site contained a roundhouse, powerhouse, car shop, planning mill, truck shop and other structures in addition to the gargantuan locomotive shop. "There was nothing else like it in the eastern United States. It was a powerful symbol of the golden age of railroads in this area," said Richard Barrett of Colonie, a railroad historian who has written about the D&H complex in rail buff newsletters. While locomotive mechanics worked in grease and oil in Colonie, the D&H's 8,000 clerical and white-collar workers sat behind desks in the railroad's headquarters at the majestic Marcus Reynolds-designed D&H building, which is now the State University of New York's central administration building, on Broadway at the foot of State Street. Across town, the New York Central Railroad employed 7,500 at its West Albany shops, and American Locomotive Co. provided a steady paycheck for thousands more in Schenectady. "The D&H complex in Colonie was one of the arteries that supplied coal to industrial America," Barrett said. At the Port of Albany, D&H rail cars laden with anthracite coal from Pennsylvania were loaded onto barges, which fed hungry coal boilers in homes and factories up and down the Hudson River and beyond. The boom years for coal were eclipsed a half-century ago, causing the demise of the once-mighty D&H. Guilford Transportation, based in Massachusetts, took ownership of the Colonie complex from the bankrupt D&H in the early 1980s. For the past decade, the company has tried to sell the property without success. The forlorn, weedy lot is a hangout for teenagers who like to build small fires, which may have ignited the building, fire officials speculated. In 1994, members of the Mohawk & Hudson chapter of the National Railway Historical Society were notified by Guilford officials that they had to remove a half-dozen vintage locomotives and rail cars they were restoring inside the complex. Those pieces of antique rolling stock have been moved to Glenmont, but the group's dream of transforming the derelict D&H site into a $20 million rail museum lost steam. "It was inevitable that the D&H locomotive shop was going to be knocked down. It's indicative of a lack of interest in railroad history in the Capital Region," said Tim Truscott of Albany, an officer of the local railway chapter who helped spearhead the aborted drive to restore locomotives as the centerpiece of a museum. In Barrett's analogy, the destruction of relics of the time when railroads were king is akin to clearing out toys in the attic and sending them to the landfill. "We might not play with toys in the attic for years, but there was a comfort in knowing they were always there," Barrett said. "Now, when we decide to go take a look, they'll be gone." All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2004, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.
