{"id":27119,"date":"2025-06-30T12:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T12:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/27119\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T12:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T12:39:12","slug":"arcade-and-attica-railroad-has-nys-only-steam-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/27119\/","title":{"rendered":"Arcade and Attica Railroad has NY&#8217;s only steam engine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ARCADE, N.Y. \u2014 Emerging from its winter home at the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aarailroad.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Arcade and Attica Railroad<\/a>, Steam Engine 18 is ready for another season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s like a breathing animal,\u201d said Patrick Connors, chief mechanical officer of Arcade and Attica Railroad. \u201cIt pants and hisses. And when it&#8217;s traveling down the track, it just demands attention.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s also just demanding, according to Patrick. He says trains typically have two names. Betsy being of of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><b>What You Need To Know<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Steam Engine 18 is currently the only one running in New York state<\/li>\n<li>You can take a ride on weekends at the Arcade and Attica Railroad<\/li>\n<li>The fireman scoops one ton of coal each trip\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cNothing that we can say on the air,\u201d Patrick smiled.<\/p>\n<p>But the team here loves her.\u00a0 A and A has been 18\u2019s home since 1962.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, she\u2019s carried more than two million passengers. She\u2019s back for her first full season after a year-long rebuild.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was the most extensive repair that this engine had seen, probably since it was built in 1920,\u201d Patrick said.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the team is Connor\u2019s son, Patrick.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I wake up in the morning, I don&#8217;t think, \u201cOh, I gotta go to work on Saturday,\u201d Patrick Jr. said. \u201cYeah, I&#8217;m going to the station \u2014 and I&#8217;m happy to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Patrick is a part-time worker at the A and A. He holds a variety of positions, but today he\u2019s the conductor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI learn something new every day,&#8221; said Patrick Jr. &#8220;Believe it or not, when you work on stuff that&#8217;s this old, every day you learn something new about that. You didn&#8217;t know yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Patrick\u2019s dad tried to keep him off the railway.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was kind of resentful towards that,\u201d Patrick Jr said. \u201cI always enjoyed railroading, primarily because I grew up going to work with my dad every day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Like so many, there\u2019s just something that draws us to these machines.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee the smoke coming out of it, you hear it chugging and especially the whistle,\u201d Patrick Jr. said.<\/p>\n<p>From near and far, some take a ride to get that nostalgic feel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just like trains,\u201d said Douglas Sernoffsky of Wales. \u201cWhen I see them, I like to count the cars.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Others ride to celebrate a milestone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCause I love trains,\u201d said Paxton Leach-BanDorn, who was celebrating his 7th birthday.<\/p>\n<p>Others climb aboard because they\u2019re just big fans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;ve been here five other times,\u201d Luke Conschafter of Akron said.<\/p>\n<p>Folks take the two-hour ride, that wouldn\u2019t be possible without fireman Michael Shears.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI shovel about a ton of coal for this trip,\u201d Shears, whose full-time job is at MOOG said.<\/p>\n<p>This is &#8220;just his Sunday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, it\u2019s not just throwing coal in,\u201d Shears said. \u201cIt\u2019s about the coal placement, it\u2019s a balance game between water and pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Shears must listen and watch, to get the upwards of 400 passengers, up and back safely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s very rewarding, I get the train to go up the hill, and all the passengers are behind you,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>After all, it\u2019s the journey, not the destination that makes this so memorable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere&#8217;s something bigger,&#8221; Patrick Sr. said. &#8220;What&#8217;s it&#8217;s like an exciting adventure. Where does the track lead you? And there was a point in this country where you could get on a train in any small town and end up in any other small town.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here are some interesting facts. Some of the tracks in use date back to the 1880s. The coal burns at 1,200 degrees. So on mainline trains, crews have been known to put pizza, eggs and even bacon on the shovel and cook it over the coals.<\/p>\n<p>Excursions run every weekend from Memorial Day Weekend until the last full weekend of September. In October, the Steam Engine will be on an extended schedule that includes two trains each day on the weekends to take in the fall foliage.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARCADE, N.Y. \u2014 Emerging from its winter home at the\u00a0Arcade and Attica Railroad, Steam Engine 18 is ready&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,23596,23598,7448,23597,17546,7366,11361,405,403,17050,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,879,52,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284],"class_list":{"0":"post-27119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-app-good-news","10":"tag-app-in-the-community","11":"tag-app-top-stories","12":"tag-breanna-fuss","13":"tag-buffalo","14":"tag-community-news","15":"tag-good-news","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-new-york-state","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-newyork","21":"tag-newyorkcity","22":"tag-ny","23":"tag-nyc","24":"tag-rochester","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-united-states-of-america","28":"tag-unitedstates","29":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","30":"tag-us","31":"tag-usa","32":"tag-vod"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114772362175384548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}