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The crazy part is I live In Syracuse New York and I never knew passenger service existed

This was an awful video. Sloppy use of images, and disrespectful.

I didn’t know that part of Atlantic City.

All the unrelated pictures detract from the story. Also, "The lost souls...probably still haunt the Atlantic City area" is melodramatic garbage.

Another bridge accident in CRRNj on Newark bay in the 1950’s .

The world's first press-release and the worl'ds first inaccurate press-release; that's two long-standing traditions born from one event!

The never finish rail service! You did a pretty good job explaining what happened. The NBT station and lead from Walsh Transportation Center is now gone! Vote blue so we don't lose all of the AMTRAK and transit systems across the country!

Hear me out... The Diesel Powered Stadler Flirt is Technically still a doodlebug.

There actually have been proposals to bring back OnTrack in the form of a light rail and to extend the line northward to the airport. But also, Centro has recently announced plans to bring bus rapid transit to Syracuse, but it's still unclear at this point how exactly they're going to do that. I do think the removal of the I-81 viaduct downtown, the arrival of Micron, and the recent airport growth will all make a good case for either BRT or OnTrack.

Great historical video!

Fine video, well done!

Goat posted 🔥

Great video. Never knew about this one in my own damn state. On Track was the name of the slick, award winning newsletter for employees of Metro-North going back to the early 1980s.

Ontrack never made it to the Transportation center....the bridge was never built, too bad.

The nail in the coffin for Ontrack was not being able to build a bridge over Park St and connect to the Transportation center where Amtrak and many bus companies meet up at. Anyone familiar with the geology of Syracuse knows that the existing CSX mainline was the former NYC freight line that would later meet up on the passenger section which is the current I-690 roadbed. The freight line is actually built on a variety of fill material including swampland, marl and Solvay Waste. When they were doing test pilings for the new bridge, then Conrail/CSX immediately stopped it because it would negatively impact the integrity of the Mainline.

It's so sad that Onandoga could not make a go of this line. I took it just once to Armory Square, a fantastic active section of Syracuse. But the missing link with the Syracuse Amtrak Station, I think, was a key blunder. The difficulties they had with the bridge and CSX hopefully is not a foreshadowing of the problems the state is going to have with CSX when it comes to expanding Amtrak service and building back the two tracks removed from the Update CSX Mainline in the '60s, and increasing Amtrak top speeds to 90 to 110MPH. NY State definitely has the biggest guns, so not sure why any of this is such a hindrance to building good transit. A bunch of us in neighboring Rochester spent many years trying to bring back our subway which was abandoned in the 1950s to make room to bring the interstate through the middle of Rochester, which we now know was not such a great idea. And the city is in the process of removing the Inner Loop which is part of the Interstate running through the middle of the city. They still make RDCs, not in America of course, but the new RDCs are like a two-car TGV, of course running much slower, and running on electric overhead wires instead of diesel.

A great story to love! With new things I haven't heard of.

0:25 only dwarves know about it?

I rode OnTrack in 2005 from the mall (Carousel Center) to the end of the line. Completely by myself with the motorman on the RDC, had a great chat and rode up in the cab area taking pictures. He said for sports events with SU ridership was really good but it wasn't connected to the Amtrak station and it did go through Armory Square, it kinda skirted most of the bigger Syracuse population/shopping areas. I wish it had lasted because RDC's are a hoot to ride on.

The WW2 German V-1 was called a "Doodle Bug", by the British.

I know the Budd DMUs by their both diesel and electric Portuguese derivatives, the latter finding a home in Buenos Aires' electrified lines after retirement from Caminhos de Ferro Portugueses.

For the record: I'm from Western New York, and I say soda. Always have. The older generations, Amish, and people who live in the boondocks tend to call it pop. Honestly, Western New York is like a more scenic Ohio.

Whoever thought Syracuse (of all places) was a good place for a commuter railroad must've been smoking cr@ck. Of all the mid-sized cities in NY, Syracuse downtown has more parking lot spaces than Rochester, a nearby city twice it's size. the inconvenience of having to conform to a commuter rail schedule (one with only 10 hourly trains a day, yet!) was FAR outweighed by the convenience of just driving, knowing that there will ALWAYS be a space to park.

I know one way to improve the Pascack Valley line is to buy Battery Electric KISS trains from Stadler (similar to what Caltrain has), as well as to add a lot more passing sidings, and rebuild many of the stations to be ADA compliant as well as being able to serve up to 6-cars in length. The new trains would have separate doors for different platform heights, and would operate exclusively on the Hoboken Division lines out of Hoboken due to the height of the cars not able to use the tunnel into Penn Station.

When I was younger, I used to on little trips to the Destiny USA mall, and I always wondered what the station was outside of the mall, I originally thought Amtrak owned it, its a shame Ontrack didnt work out it wouldve been a neat little operation.

i am from Syracuse.

SYRACUSE NEW YORK MENTIONED 🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣

As an upstate New Yorker, we are severely underrated for trains.

Well, if yer gonna talk about a flash in the pan like this, you also going to talk about the Lyons NY Amtrak station and how thats been affecting folks like the Finger Lakes Railway?

There's an "Upstate New York?" Wow, just when I thought I'd learned the names of all 50 states, you go and tell me about a new one. Dang.

As someone who was there, this is full of incorrect information. You got the basics about he dated right and where the cars went (kind of) but you left out a ton, mixed up names, the Conrail bridge was damaged during ground work for the new bridge. And how it got started is completely false, that’s not at all how it came about, it was originally much larger in scale but Centro was the agency that killed OnTrack. Frank was furious the train was mopping the floor with his buses. Bob C had NOTHING to do with starting it nor did he attend SU. Bob showed up around year three and on his first day got arrested for hiring a call girl that turned out to be a cop. The cars belonged to the county, that’s a whole other issue but still part of it. You completely failed to mention the Maplefest trains, hockey trains, ballonfest trains, as well as others. The excursion trains were paid for in full by the CNY Chapter and that’s why the DLW fake E-8 was on most of them. You also have nothing about who was there running the service, it was One NYSW person and that was Bob for the most part. Another guy was the Budd car engineer a couple of days a week during the summer and fall. The chapter manned the orange express trains as part of the arrangement with the county and railroad. I even have the original proposal from Delaware Otsego Corp to the county and state that Walter Rich handed to me. Sorry to rain on it but you are clearly not from the area and this video seems like what railfans essentially thought OnTrack was, not what actually was and happened.

I have been fascinated by OnTrack ever since I learned about it and it was so great to see it get a proper video on TH-cam. Well done!

Bring it back but extend it to Oswego and run regular service to jamesville extend to Binghamton run all day service. Add extra local trains from Utica to Rochester making extra stops via 2 extra tracks let HSR (maglev) do intercity service 2 intersecting lines in Syracuse

My dad is from Syracuse, think I saw this in it’s dying days

0:06 Here in Western New York, we do call it Soda. I don’t know where you’re getting your info!

Private freight operators is my number 1 opp fr

Awesome video, never knew about this little "commuter" line. It sucks it never expanded cause Syracuse could surely use it

6:15-6:20 and that is why I hate CSX and freight railroads in general, they think they're the kings of the industry just to leave us to drive. Hopefully this can be fixed in the future

Glad that I could help with this! I feel much more frequent service to other suburbs (on NYSW and CSX trackage) would have helped this commuter service stay afloat as well. I also didn't know that Pullman Bilevels were used for some of these services, as shown in 2:42, and I also appreciate the appearances of two engines with the #4 in them at the same station location (Amtrak #4 and NYSW #4004).

What a fantastic episode! Great job.

Bro really hates the line west of Montclair

15:17 didn’t that kinda sound like a gp40s K5LA?

0:40 S P E E D

NJT now is just dollar store Amtrak

2:36 That's the old ex-IC station at Springfield..... Amtrak has never stopped there. They currently use the ex-GM&O station several blocks away and soon will be moving to their all-new multi-modal bus and rail station currently under construction.

Just wanted to thank you for this great video. The first train might have been using E units and the rainbow fleet. I love the B32-8WH units.

W collab

nahhh bro. You missed a Metro North GEEP that was running on the Morris and Essex Lines today! ( saw it in school)

This BIT guy sounds like a nerd