There is actually only one single track remaining from the LV's Tifft Terminal and yard.
the actual terminal itself was mainly a shipping terminal, where the LV loaded and unloaded its Great Lakes shipping fleet..
Open these two maps in seperate browser windows:
http://scotlawrence.smugmug.com/photos/ ... D75h-O.jpg
http://scotlawrence.smugmug.com/photos/ ... Drjp-O.jpg
then toggle between the two maps.
The map is about 1900, the aerial photo is about 2008.
the majority of what was once the LV terminal is now a wetland nature preserve.
the LV kept some of the trackage labeled "westbound and eastbound yard" on the map, up until 1976,
but the main "Tifft Terminal" itself, the shipping terminal, was probably out of use by the 1930's, if not earlier.
Quote below is from my "LV Maritime" page..mostly completed in 2008, but still not finished and uploaded..
sorry about that..I will get to it eventually!
Tifft Terminal in Buffalo, and the Great Lakes Fleet.
The Lehigh Valley Railroad worked its way north from the Pennsylvania coal fields and reached
Waverly, New York in 1867. (via its subsidiary, the Pennsylvania & New York railroad.)
Waverly was a strategic location because of the interchange with the Erie railroad, which allowed a direct route to Buffalo and the Great Lakes industrial region. At the time, the Erie was 6-foot gauge, and the
P&NY was standard gauge..this discrepancy in gauge led to the construction of
a coal transfer trestle at Waverly.
The LV relied on the Erie connection at Waverly for many years, even laying a third rail along the Erie
mainline so that LV coal hoppers could make the entire trip to Buffalo without changing cars..but even this
was unsatisfactory, because the LV had to rely on another railroad to get its coal to market..The LV needed
its own mainline directly to Buffalo! The LV pushed north then west out of Waverly, finally reaching Buffalo
on its own rails in 1892.
But even before the LV reached Buffalo on its own rails in 1892, it had already purchased and developed harbor facilities in Buffalo, for the shipment of coal via Great Lakes steam ships.
In 1881 the LV organized the "Lehigh Valley Transportation Company", which immediately began to build a fleet of lake steamers for the purpose of transporting coal, grain, and other freight from Buffalo out to other Great Lakes port cities, such as Chicago, Duluth, Milwaukee and other cities. The steam freighters acted as an extension of the railroad. Coal and other freight could travel via rail to Buffalo, then transfer to the LV lake freighters for shipment further west into the Great Lakes industrial region. Or travel the other way, by "sea" to Buffalo, then by rail to the east coast markets.
The first four ships were of wood construction, commissioned in 1881, and were named:
the Robert A. Packer
the Oceanica
the Clyde
the Tacoma
Business was so good that two more ships were added a year later, in 1882:
the Harry E. Packer
the Fred Mercur
Making a total of six wood ships in the fleet.
The wood steamers were retired between 1900 and 1911.
The fleet was expanded again in the late 1880's with even more ships,
this time of steel construction.
the E.P. Wilbur (later renamed Bethlehem)
the Seneca
the Saranac
the Wilkes-Barre
the Mauch Chunk
the Tuscarora
Making a total of six ships in the "steel fleet"..for a grand total of Twelve LV Great Lakes
freighters all together. all were steam powered.
More details on each ship can be found in the all-time roster below.
The LV's Buffalo terminal also rostered at least one Tugboat, the Kathrine T. Wilbur,
and a 98 foot coal lighter, the Batavia.
(it is not yet known if other tugboats served Buffalo with the LV.)
The Lehigh Valley Transportation Company and its Great Lakes fleet was very busy and sucessful up through World War 1, but ran into some trouble with the US Government beginning in 1912.
In 1912, The ICC passed the "Panama Canal Act", which declared railroad ownership of water-bourne
common carriers to be illegal, which included all railroad-owned shipping on the Great Lakes.
The Panama Canal Act stated that no railroad could directly compete with its own shipping line.
the LV argued, quite correctly, that its rails ended in Buffalo, and therefore could in no way be competing by rail with its own ships, and therefore the act should not apply to the LV.
The LV took the US government to court. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, ending in 1917.
the LV lost the case..not because they were wrong about not directly competing with their own ships, but because the Supreme Court ruled that the LV's participation in through-freight with other railroads that did serve the same ports as the LV ships, was reason enough to dismiss the LV's case.
the actual case summary can be read here: http://supreme.justia.com/us/243/412/case.html
This ended the LV's Great Lakes shipping in 1917.
-Scot Lawrence
Scot
