In 1889 the Delaware and Hudson Railroad purchased the Adirondac Company’s Railroad. The origins of the Adirondac Railroad began with a plan to bring a railroad to the iron mines located in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State.

         The Adirondack Branch began at Saratoga Springs and extended approximately 54 1/2 miles  north to the hamlet of North Creek. In 1941, the federal government, through an agency called the Defense Plant Corporation began to acquire land from North Creek to Tahawus. ( pronounced locally as Ta-Haws, they drop the U )At Tahawus, the National Lead Co, now NL Industries, was mining titanium ore, ilmenite. At this time, the ilmentite was being trucked to a loading tipple at North Creek. The D&H was contracted to haul the ore. This new 29 mile section was called the Sanford Lake Branch

         The United States government owned the line, National Lead maintained it and the D&H  hauled the ilmenite. From Saratoga Springs to Tahawus the line rose from an elevation of 300 feet to an elevation of 1,440 feet .

           Passenger service to North Creek ended in the summer of 1956. The line itself, north of Corinth and the International Paper mill,  to North Creek , was abandoned in 1989.

           Because the mine and railroad serving it  were located inside the Adirondack Forest Preserve both became a environmental rallying cry issue.The Federal government wanted to sell the rail line to National Lead.The sale was protested and litigation followed. The sale proposal was eventually abandoned

 NL Industries then abandoned the  still producing mine rather than face years of court costs. In the long run it would be cheaper to import  the ore.

           On my layout, the Village of High Creek represents  the village of Tahawus at the northern end of the combined branches. Trains enter the valley through the Newcomb tunnel, pass through the Blue Mountain tunnel and loop south trough the Sanford tunnel to connect back to the north-south line at Stllwater Siding.

         From Saratoga Springs to Tahawus,  the line  passed farms and pastures, paper mills and mines, and hundreds of small businesses. It served and connected the people and industries of the New York State’s Adirondack Mountains for over a century.