White Pass & Yukon’s Catskill Cars

In 1881, the Ulster & Delaware R.R. constructed a 14-mile narrow-gauge branch line from Phoenicia, New York, into the resort area of the Catskill Mountains. It was called the Stony Clove & Catskill Mountain R.R. Two years later, the narrow-gauge branch was extended another seven miles, the seven-mile extension called the Kaaterskill Railroad. The rolling stock of these two lines included four coaches that would have a remarkable future.


Two of the coaches were built in 1881, and the remaining two more were built in 1883, all four built by Jackson & Sharp Co. These cars included Miller platforms (and couplers) and special-order windows that were wider than the standard Jackson & Sharp design. As luck would have it, they were equipped with Westinghouse brakes.


A photo of a standard Jackson & Sharp coach is included to compare the corresponding standard and non-standard J&S platforms and windows-widths.


In 1899, the branch line out of Phoenicia was widened to standard gauge. The narrow-gauge locomotives and rolling stock were sold off to F.M. Hicks & Co., a Chicago railroad equipment dealer. Here is a train loaded with narrow-gauge coaches and combines on their way from the Catskill Mountains to Chicago. The four little coaches appeared to have a grim future.


But fate intervened. The headquarters of F.M. Hicks & Co. was located six blocks from the headquarters of the newly completed White Pass & Yukon Route in Chicago. In 1900, Hicks sold to the White Pass a locomotive which had formerly operated on the Kansas Central R.R.