A friend recently passed along an old issue of Passenger Train Journal (September 1983) that includes an article titled “Last Fare from Sayre” by David Monte Verde and Jim Crosby. The article describes a cab ride from Sayre to Buffalo on an Apollo 1 train (and return to Sayre on an LV-2) that the two authors took in late January 1976. An entertaining and informative article, but some of the article text has me wondering if my understanding of how the Apollo and Mercury trains were interchanged to and from the N&W at Buffalo may be incorrect.
The article states that AP-1 (at least on this particular trip) “arrived at Tiff Terminal, Lehigh’s yard in Buffalo”. The authors also state that they were then “quickly ushered over to LV-2” for their return trip to Sayre, and that as they “prepared to leave Tiff, N&W’s leg of AP-1 went roaring past with high-nose EMDs in charge.”
I was under the impression, based on what I’ve read in many of the various LV books, that the Apollo and Mercury trains were handed off to and picked up from the N&W at or near Tifft Jct., and thus did not pass through Tifft Street yard. Could someone that might be familiar with operations around Buffalo sort this out for me?
(Excellent article, by the way, with a couple pictures of the LV in central NY that I’d not seen before. The near 9-hour trip from Sayre to Buffalo was reportedly attributed to a 10 mph slow order for the first 10 miles west of Sayre, a meet at Cayuga with a Geneva pickup with a coal train, and a “14-inch piece of rail broken out at a switch point” near Batavia, which resulted in a lengthy delay while the section gang made repairs. The right-of-way was also reportedly littered with recently derailed cars from an LV-2 train at Van Etten Jct., a COJ-32 train at milepost 289, and an AP-1 at Manchester. Kind of a sad picture of a classy railroad now struggling just to keep going, but despite all the problems, still “movin’ the goods”!)
The article states that AP-1 (at least on this particular trip) “arrived at Tiff Terminal, Lehigh’s yard in Buffalo”. The authors also state that they were then “quickly ushered over to LV-2” for their return trip to Sayre, and that as they “prepared to leave Tiff, N&W’s leg of AP-1 went roaring past with high-nose EMDs in charge.”
I was under the impression, based on what I’ve read in many of the various LV books, that the Apollo and Mercury trains were handed off to and picked up from the N&W at or near Tifft Jct., and thus did not pass through Tifft Street yard. Could someone that might be familiar with operations around Buffalo sort this out for me?
(Excellent article, by the way, with a couple pictures of the LV in central NY that I’d not seen before. The near 9-hour trip from Sayre to Buffalo was reportedly attributed to a 10 mph slow order for the first 10 miles west of Sayre, a meet at Cayuga with a Geneva pickup with a coal train, and a “14-inch piece of rail broken out at a switch point” near Batavia, which resulted in a lengthy delay while the section gang made repairs. The right-of-way was also reportedly littered with recently derailed cars from an LV-2 train at Van Etten Jct., a COJ-32 train at milepost 289, and an AP-1 at Manchester. Kind of a sad picture of a classy railroad now struggling just to keep going, but despite all the problems, still “movin’ the goods”!)
