Yesterday, I had the pleasure of biking the recently opened Lehigh Linear Park which follows the former LV main line through southern Monroe County. Despite wind gusts to over 40 mph, we biked westward from Mendon Center, all the way to the Genesee River and across the recently renovated bridge to the Genesee Valley Greenway, then back to Mendon Center, a roundtrip of about 30 miles. The new trail has an ample layer of fine gravel and dust, plus a separate, designated trail for equestarians. Unfortunately, some of the horse riders felt it was acceptable to traverse the bike/hike trail, resulting in digging up the newly laid trail plus the usual piles of horse manure. Aside from that, the trail has very good signage and the path is excellent. At Rochester Junction, I noticed that someone has been cleaning up the site of the long gone passenger station(burned in '73), removing dirt and weeds exposing the old platform. An old signal box at the Junction Road crossing has been painted pine green with the LV logo and "Rochester Junction" painted in red, black, and white.
The last time I visited the site of Rochester Jct. was maybe four years ago. The platform was clearly there, and you could pick out the remains of the interlocking from the Rochester branch to the Lima branch by noting the placement of relay cabinets and other leftover hardware. Nice to see that the area is getting cleaned up a bit!
-otto-
