Frontier Yard-A brief look

What a day to work on a railroad. I stopped by the Frontier Yard today as I haven't been there in quite a while. Even though nobody has mentioned it, I wanted to check to see if the hump was in action. It wasn't while I was there.

At the time I was there today, it was about 10 degrees and light snow. I was able to catch two eastbound crew changes. The interesting thing is that a piggy back trailer was second in the line up....Polor Ice Cooler with a polar bear on it. Trains should be approaching Syracuse by now.

Current temp is 7 degrees.

I heard an eastbound train horn in East Rochester around 4 PM but I didn't see the train itself. Maybe it was one of the trains you saw... or maybe not! I sure don't envy those crews on a blistering 10 degree day in upstate NY.

I was in there with Q627 about 2am Tuesday morning. I noticed that there were more storage cars in the Group 6 section than a month ago. Mostly auto racks, bulkhead lumber cars, and quite a number of Hooker tank cars.

This yard has become no more than a storage yard auto racks and containers. The hump has not been upgraded with new controls and still retains the 1950's nyc controls that do not function anymore thus making it useless. We have not heard of any news to use this as a classification yard again. As I recall they are doing classification at other yards in the system to save money and laid off a bunch of employees here. Interesting thought that this once state of the art yard may go the way of the one it replaced gardenville.

Frontier is still strategic for CSX business. All furloughed employees were recalled. A fair amou8nt did not return after finding other employment. This past year CSX hired over 30 new hires at Buffalo alone. At a "Town Hall" meeting held in November at Dewitt. The Div. Super. stated that while 3 years ago they said they would never hump cars at Frontier. Increases in traffic and business has forced their hand, plans and budgeting has supposedly been alloted for a limited upgrade, sometime this year 2012. But as I have said o, so many times before. When the construction contractors start digging, then I'll actually believe it.

“Interesting thought that this once state of the art yard may go the way of the one it replaced gardenville.”

Well, that’s what happens in all fields, steam was replaced by diesel, long distance passenger trains were replaced by jet aircraft, analog computers were replaced with digital computers, and telephone operators were replaced with automated phone switches, etc. etc. the list is endless.

We might want to stop technological progress, but we probably cannot.

BTW, Frontier yard replaced about 5 yards in the Buffalo area, not just Gardenville Yard.

My Father took my Mother over to see the future Frontier Yard while it was under construction when they were “dating” (does anybody use that term anymore?) way back in the 1950’s.

I bet (and hope) Frontier Yard comes back with some upgrades, but maybe not to its previous capacity.

Cheers, Kevin.

It is interesting to note that Frontier Yard escaped the axe about 30 years ago, when Conrail was looking to consolidate operations in the Buffalo region. There had been a proposal to bypass Frontier in favor of Bison Yard (which was built in 1962) but CR's management ultimately chose to keep Frontier and remove most of Bison. The real irony is that NS has revived Bison (as a flat switching yard) in the post CR-era while Frontier has been downgraded by CSX.

Frontier is still very active with flat switching in both the North and South yards. And while the Hump has been in active for almost 3 years. Not a single rail has been removed. Buffalo's strategic position in the rail industry has changed greatly over the past 35 years with mergers and major changes in the regions economic/industrial base. Rochester Yard has been doing some of the classification work. But as economic conditions improve and traffic increases, Rochester Yards capacity is being challenged. Not to mention the bottleneck created when road trains stop to work. Like I said, we'll have to see what the masterminds of CSX have instore this next year.

Buffalo has lost nearly 85% of the trackage it once had including mains yards and sidings. Conrail's pulling of many so called useless or duplicate lines did not help either. At least buffalo rail traffic has remained steady even gaining few new customers. Where I lived in west seneca prr also had two smaller yards that did interchange with the gardenville at ebenezer junction. All long gone in the 70's . Bison yard is a shell of its former self but atleast there is something there railroad related.

Nice to see Frontier's gettin' it's groove back!

I was Driving over Harlem Rd. bridge today & the thing that stood out the most was all the wide open space & rusty track in the class bowl.

Haven't been there in a month. In what manner is Frontier, "getting it's groove back"?

It doesn't look any different (more/less busy) than it has for many, many months. Little to no activity other than changing road crews and the locals.