'Booaard!!

 

In a forgotten, mysterious nook high in the mountains of New York lies an unparalleled time capsule: an intact, 19th century narrow-gauge railroad snaking its way through streamside glens and mountain clefts.

In the alternate reality of this story, New York's legendary Catskill Mountains had a geographic counterpart somewhere to the west or north. Through their craggy heights wove a railroad whose renown would soon come to rival that of Colorado's San Juan Extension, or Pennsylvania's East Broad Top. Today, the Hillendale Railway is difficult to trace, but easy enough to imagine as its story begins to unfold over these pages.

The Hillendale Railway is my garden railroading endeavor - my meanderings, efforts, and blunderings. In fiction, it's a thoroughly modern railroad circa 1898.

If you asked a history book, the Hillendale was a robust, rural 3' common carrier with the charm requisite of narrow gauge, but enough money to be a pretty modern railroad at the time. The railroad's character is loosely based on and heavily inspired by the railroads of the Catskills, a handful of rugged mountain lines that together, transformed the area into a resort paradise, and bolstered the economies of agrarian towns. Those railroads were standard-gauge and narrow-gauge, and like the prototype Kaaterskill Railroad and Catskill Mountain Railway, the Hillendale is three-foot gauge, but in size and activity, as well as some of its modern plant, has a bit more of the bustling, mainline flavor of the arterial Ulster & Delaware.

A train of unknown origin and purpose stands at Yew Corners station in this 1900 view.

In the Hillendale's prime, an age before automobiles, you could catch a short crack passenger train with sumptuous parlor cars that would ascend to the heights of Hillendale's mountains, bringing city-goers to country sights in summer and supplies to locals in winter. In more recent times, the Hillendale survives as a sort of living heritage site - a historic tourist route with a robust interpretive program.

Did you think it outlandish that you could catch a historic train scheduled expressly for birding walks? Or ride behind double-headed 1800s ten-wheelers bedecked in Baldwin's finest olive green and gold, belching steam to the stars beneath a mica-encrusted night sky? If you thought such things were improbable, you'd be of a majority - but then, you'd never have heard of the Hillendale Railway.

The Hillendale is a fairly sparsely detailed garden railroad as far as structures are concerned, so it's easy enough to pretend it's one year or another. Lately, though, I've been focusing on cultivating an 1890s-1905 aesthetic, establishing that as the chief period for my model-making. I've fallen in love with the Eastlake patternings of wood coach interiors of the time, and the soft and rich tones afforded locomotives, carriers of adventure to far-away places in lands of dreams.

The Hillendale, in one way or another, has always been a massive part of my life, and its backstory constantly changes. This is its current incarnation. Welcome to the northeast’s secret narrow-gauge mecca: where steam specials still thunder on the slim high iron. I hope you enjoy the ride.

~

- The Superintendent

Hillendale Railway Company