By Eric Berger

ARKVILLE, N.Y.–The Rip Van Winkle Flyer will not be waking from its slumber for fall or holiday season excursions on Delaware & Ulster Railroad this year due to ongoing track work, but managers of the Catskill Mountains heritage line are looking forward to resuming service next year.  Plans are also afoot to create a stationary dinner train that could expand use of the diner in the stainless steel Flyer consist and provide a new revenue stream.

“There’s nothing like the ambiance that you get in an authentic dining car, even if it’s not moving,” commented Todd Pascarella, executive director of Catskill Revitalization Corporation, which operates the railroad on 19-mile segment of the former New York Central Catskill Mountain Branch it owns — the old Ulster & Delaware Railroad until 1932 — along with Catskill Scenic Trail on the U&D roadbed between Roxbury and Bloomville.

Pascarella said they are working with a catering firm that will be taking over food preparation on trains and through the stationary dinner train concept. The streamlined passenger cars of the Flyer are to be parked on a new home track between the freight house and the mainline. “We are going to bring a ground line to that track that will provide power to the cars and enable us to offer a dining car experience even when it’s not running.”

The railroad has been closed since 2019. Plans to reopen this year have been stymied in part by rising costs since the track project, Pascarella said. “Right now, we are focused on the five-mile segment from Arkville to Halcottsville. These tracks have never been rebuilt and we are dealing with deferred maintenance issues that have been ongoing for 100 years. We just cannot start running trains until this track can provide a reliably enjoyable experience for riders, so though it is disappointing, we will have to wait until next year.”

Popular with tourists thanks to its scenic locale, the railroad is popular with many railfans thanks to its equipment. The big star of the line is Delaware & Hudson 5017, an Alco RS-36 which Chief Mechanical Officer Vic Stevens affectionately calls “my baby.”  Built in 1963, 5017 became the last Alco to operate on D&H in 1994, still adorned in the original blue and gray lightning stripe paint. The engine was retired and sold to DURR, arriving in 1996 with her classic paint scheme renewed. Stevens has done some work recently on the radiator and electrical system in anticipation of her return to service.

ABOVE: DURR’s Rip Van Winkle Flyer at the end of operable track in Roxbury, N.Y., on July 25, 2009. The Alco RS-36 is performing a runaround move to prepare for the return trip to Arkville. —Otto M. Vondrak photo

“She has been a very reliable engine through the years and she is ready to get back to work,” he said.

An EMD NW2 that serves as yard and backup power is a star in her own right. Technically, the switcher is DURR 116, but the paint identifies it as New York, Ontario & Western 116, one of the few survivors from a 1948 NYO&W order for 20 NW2s. Known as the “Old & Weary” long before its demise, NYO&W was built around the same time as U&D and connected with it at Kingston. It became the first major U.S. railroad to become fully abandoned in 1957 and remained a sentimental favorite of many area railfans long after its demise. Stevens said the engine “runs fine,” but he admits to being an Alco partisan.

“The difference between and EMD and an Alco is like night and day,” he said. “They run okay, but they load so slowly compared with an Alco.”

Still at the Arkville yard but currently out of service are a pair of Alco S-4s, the former Ford Motor 1012 in need of new wheels and ex-Chesapeake & Ohio 5106 with a bad axle. Stevens said 1012 is unusual in that Ford specified that its wheels be fitted with steel “tires” as was common with steam engines. Stevens said he cut his teeth with Alco switchers on his first rail job at Seaview Transportation in Rhode Island and is eager to get at least one of them running, when funding allows.

The last regularly scheduled passenger train ran on this line in 1954, with the through route to Oneonta severed by highway construction in in 1965. Conrail operated the last freight service on this line on September 26, 1976. Tourist carrier Delaware & Ulster Railroad began operations in in 1983, following the purchase of the former U&D tracks from the estate of Penn Central by the non-profit Catskill Revitalization Corporation in 1980. Tracks are in place from the county line at Highmount, through Arkville, to Roxbury, a total of nearly 18 miles.