E-L / Penn Central connection at Corning (NY)

[Ron S.]

In Larry DeYoung’s book ‘Erie Lackawanna in Color, Volume 2: New York State’, there’s a photograph (page 74) taken by the late Harry Scholz of an E-L detour train "on the Penn Central connection at North Corning".

The caption goes on to read “the EL mainline is in the background, and the SD45 #3618 waits to assist the next westbound in the runaround move”…

Something just doesn’t seem right to me here…I suspect that the E-L unit is actually on Penn Central trackage here (parallel to the Corning Branch main track) and that the E-L mainline is to be seen even further in the background, in the very top right hand corner of the shot? Am I correct?

In summary, can anyone tell me EXACTLY where Mr. Scholz would have been standing when he shot this move?

Regards,

Ron Stafford

[lvrr325]

The way I read it, the EL main is the trackage way in the background at right.

[railbird steve]

he was standing on the high street bridge-the tracks in the photo were taken up round 1979. conrail ran ensy(?) into gang mills(e-l) yard to ex nyc-p-c yard till i think 88 or so when it abandoned the corning secondary wellsboro pa to jersey shore .i might not be right on the dates cause i was in the marines at the time -i used to watch trains round there as a kid! pc had 2 yards in corning e-l had a yard in gang mills that n.s. is using now . conrail abandoned baker st yards early 80s only a 3 tracks left to this once busy yard.

[charlie6017]

Welcome to the forums, Railbird Steve!

Charlie

[Matt Langworthy]

he was standing on the high street bridge-the tracks in the photo were taken up round 1979. conrail ran ensy(?) into gang mills(e-l) yard to ex nyc-p-c yard till i think 88 or so when it abandoned the corning secondary wellsboro pa to jersey shore .i might not be right on the dates cause i was in the marines at the time -i used to watch trains round there as a kid! pc had 2 yards in corning e-l had a yard in gang mills that n.s. is using now . conrail abandoned baker st yards early 80s only a 3 tracks left to this once busy yard.

You're correct about everything except your first sentence. As I recall, the PC tracks in the photo were taken up in 1981, when CR abandonned a short section of the Corning Secondary in the city to make way for an expansion at Corning Glass. It should also be noted that the rails were moved from the former Erie ROW to the abandonned DL&W roadbed circa 1984 to make way for the Route 17 relocation/bypass project. At any rate, welcome aboard from a fellow Southern Tier native- lived in Elmira till I was 7 and then grew up in Hammondsport.

[Kevin.D]

That was all Amo Houghton's doing, what with his family's connection to Corning Glass.

When they were building the new connections between N Glass, Glass, and E Glass, they had to use a shoofly for the NYC that cut through the fill forming the western leg of the wye. On cutover day, they pulled the shoofly out of the cut, bulldozed the gap in the fill shut, and then assigned a set of light engines (SD types) to move back and forth across it to compact it once the gap in the track was down, doing any additional jack tamping as it settled. A few years later, c.1983-84 is when the alignment east of E Glass was shifted over to the DL&W ROW to make room for the expressway to use the Erie ROW.

I think it was a bit before 1981, though, as I recall a 1980 accident involving a train that was backing into Baker St yard via the new east leg, before the west leg was completed. Engines ran into a cut of cars or something.

[Matt Langworthy]

I'm pretty sure the tracks were abandonned in 1981. The work on the interchange may have started before then, but I can distinctly recall seeing at least 1 ENSY train at the Pulteney Street crossing in the spring of that year.