Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley (1970)

Company History: The CACV was established in 1970 when the Delaware Otsego shortline group bought the line from Cooperstown Junction to Cooperstown, New York from the Delaware & Hudson. DO named the company after the original C&CV which had merged into D&H in 1903. In addition to freight service, CACV ran tourist trains behind a former Virginia Blue Ridge 0-6-0 until 1974. After that, diesels took over the tourist runs. Freight traffic began to fade in the 1980s and CACV suffered a runaway at the hand of vandals who released the brakes on a block of stored boxcars belonging to St. Lawrence Railroad. The cars wrecked at the bottom of a hill along the banks of the Susquehanna River. The last freight train ran in 1987 and aside from the occasional storage move, the CACV sat idle for the next nine years. In 1996, Delaware Otsego sold the line to the Leatherstocking Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. After many volunteer hours hacking away vegetation and restoring some iffy roadbed, the Society resumed tourist train service on the line.

Successor/Parent History: The National Railway Historical Society (NRHS) is a non-profit organization established in 1935 in the United States to promote interest in, and appreciation for the historical development of railroads. It is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and organized into 16 regions and 170 local chapters located in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The NRHS sponsors the popular RailCamp summer orientation program in partnership with Amtrak and the National Park Service, offering high school youth hands-on experience in the railroad industry.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.