Old C+T Railway Cache Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Size: 
(regular)
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A walk along the remains of the old Catskill and Tannersville railway. The cache is a medium sized lock-n-lock. Follow the blue markers on the horse trail from the Scutt Rd. parking area until you see a unmarked trail with a telephone wire overhead, follow that trail to the cache. A Geowoodstock trackable for the FTF!
The Old C+T Railway cache is hidden along an unmarked trail which is the remnants of the Catskill and Tannersville (Huckleberry) Railway. The Catskill & Tannersville, a three-foot narrow gauge railroad built by the Beach interests, was less than a mile long linking the Otis Elevating Railway at the Catskill Mountain House to the Kaaterskill Railroad at Kaaterskill. From 1893 through the 1898 summer season, the Catskill & Tannersville was operated as part of the narrow-gauge Kaaterskill Railroad by the Ulster & Delaware. When the Ulster & Delaware standard-gauged the Kaaterskill in 1899, the Catskill & Tannersville was forced to extend its own narrow gauge rails to Tannersville. For the period from August 15, 1899 until the Catskill & Tannersville's demise at the end of the 1918 season, two parallel lines operated between the hamlets of Kaaterskill and Tannersville. The trail that parallels this trail to the southeast is the old Kaaterskill railway railbed which leads to South Lake. You can see that they were very close to each other.
The Catskill Mountain Railway didn't always have the Catskill & Tannersville to connect the Otis Elevating Railway to Tannersville. Instead, the Kaaterskill Railroad served that purpose, as it was the same gauge as the Otis Elevating and the Catskill Mountain Railway; three feet, and connected by a shorter C&T from the Otis Summit Station, too. But the C&T was also present in the area, and was very close to the Kaaterskill. In fact, the two lines were so close that the C&T ran trains on the KRR from 1893-1898. This stopped when the Ulster and Delaware standard-gauged the Kaaterskill Railroad in 1899, and the connection was no more. So the CMR president solved that problem by lengthening the C&T to Tannersville in 1899.
It was built on a tight budget, and used 3-foot gauge so it could interchange freight cars with the Otis, and because it was cheaper. It only had two locomotives in its roster, both eventually being replaced by outside-frame engines. This railroad was known to some as the Ulster & Delaware's annoying narrow-gauge competitor; it did offer an alternative route, but this "alternative route" was right next to the U&D, and most of the C&T stations were right across from the U&D stations. There were downfalls to using this railroad, and that included the fact that the railroad barely ever ran on time. This was probably due to the frequent stops to let passengers get out and see the Kaaterskill Falls, the Mountain Laurel in full bloom, and even to pick blueberries, which the locals called "huckleberries", hence the railroad's nickname, and was probably enjoyed by the fellow passengers.
The railroad was somewhat profitable, and managed to survive for quite a while, but one thing it couldn't stay away from was bankruptcy. It went bankrupt in 1918, and was torn up and sold for scrap, along with the rest of the Catskill Mountain Railway system in 1919.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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