The narrow gauge railroads steamed through the rocky glens and into the high peaks of the Catskills during its most romantic era, the late 19th and 20th centuries. When tourists flocked from all over the world to the Kaaterskill are made famous by Rip Van Winkle, James Fenimore Cooper and the paintings of Thomas Cole and Asher Durand.
The grand hotels of the Kaaterskill- the Catskill Mountain House, Hotel Kaaterskill, and the Laurel House- as well as the many smaller hotels and boarding houses which dotted the region, thrived throughout the summer seasons. The steamboats of the Hudson River Day Line and the Catskill Night Line, and the trains of the river ports of Hudson and Catskill.
And the narrow gauge railways were the little engines that could. That could negotiate the precipitous ravines and hillsides as standard gauge railways could not, and they could do so at a fraction of the construction and operating costs, thus connecting the mountaintop with the major transportation networks along the Hudson River. (copy Black Dome Press Corp.,1011 Route 296, Hensonville, NY, 12439.)
When the end had for the Mountain Railroad business, the two best locomotives No.1 and 2 were shipped to New Jersey. Eventually in 1926 they were scrapped. But there’s the No.1 as she rounded one of many sharp curves on the route, near Laurel Hill Station in 1910.