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By the time of the PV&T purchase, the D&H’s Colonie shops were a mere shadow of themselves, being used for nothing other than car storage (including pioneering NYC motor #6000 and the surviving NYC T-class motor, which were stored there for the Mohawk & Hudson chapter of the NRHS) and for running repairs on the D&H’s motive power.

Alco maintenance was almost immediately rebased to the TdM shops in Iberville, PQ and when the BAR joined the system all of the D&H’s DL17s were transferred to northern Maine, so – aside from being used to assemble some of ILWs locomotives when the main ILW factory was busy – the shops stood empty for several years after that.

In 1996, though, the BAR started to string wire over the railroad from Schenectady down to Sunbury, PA, and the Colonie shops were right there sitting basically unused and with only “a little bit” of work they could be reused as the AC backshop.

The next few years first saw a bustle of activity as the D&H rebuilt the shops, then took on all the work of maintaining D&H South’s collection of AC motors. This ended up pushing all – except the two NYC motors, which after several years of “move them or lose them” hints and threats that they’d end up in Canada with the historic fleet, were sold to the Danbury Railroad Museum and shipped off to their new home in Connecticut – of the stored equipment out into the weather until the owners either moved them elsewhere or abandoned them (at which point they were shipped up to ILW for eventual restoration or rebuilding.

These shops remain busy, but now have time to occasionally do restoration projects for northeastern railroad museums.