Pennsylvania Railroad's Elmira Branch

bwparker1 wrote:

lvrr325 wrote:I suspect a non-union shortline running two-man crews might have been able to make it go with subsidies to bring the track up to shape. Perhaps give them Phelps Jct. to Himrod Jct. with the line to Rushville. That would give it a fairly decent traffic base and two possible interchange points.

What RR's interchanged at Phelps Junction? Back in that day at least...

New York Central "Auburn Road" and the PRR Elmira branch.

Today the FGLK runs over the NYC, and a tiny spur still exists from Phelps Junction south on the old PRR, to serve a customer.

Scot

scottychaos wrote:

bwparker1 wrote:

lvrr325 wrote:I suspect a non-union shortline running two-man crews might have been able to make it go with subsidies to bring the track up to shape. Perhaps give them Phelps Jct. to Himrod Jct. with the line to Rushville. That would give it a fairly decent traffic base and two possible interchange points.

What RR's interchanged at Phelps Junction? Back in that day at least...

New York Central "Auburn Road" and the PRR Elmira branch.

Today the FGLK runs over the NYC, and a tiny spur still exists from Phelps Junction south on the old PRR, to serve a customer.

Scot

Thanks Scot, so if it was still intact, Hall, Seneca Castle, Stanley, etc. would still have the rail access.

I only suggested including the PRR as far as Phelps Jct. to give one more customer and provide a second access point for interchange, given it's only about five additional miles. Keeps your railroad fluid if there's a derailment or washout, but could always be abandoned with the stub that exists today given back to Conrail or Finger Lakes.

Which, were such a road to survive it could have been a contender for takeover of the Geneva Cluster or be taken over itself by Finger Lakes.

Retaining the connection to Phelps would make sense if PRR had spun off the Elmira Branch to a shortline, or if NY had acquired the line. Penn Central was accurately described as a bowl of noodles back in its day, and they were desperate to relieve their property tax burden. Dumping the 5 miles of track you describe probably saved PC thousands of dollars per year. And if the line had survived intact into Conrail, they would have severed the line for same reason... and/or to make sure that no competing connection ever developed. (The Falls Road is a good example of the latter.)

With it or without it, there's no competition, it would connect to Conrail at both ends. Even if you presume everything else happens the same, a Finger Lakes connection in 1995 leads only to Conrail. Only when Conrail is split up does a Finger Lakes connection allow for potential interchange to CSX and NS at the same time.

lvrr325 wrote:With it or without it, there's no competition, it would connect to Conrail at both ends. Even if you presume everything else happens the same, a Finger Lakes connection in 1995 leads only to Conrail. Only when Conrail is split up does a Finger Lakes connection allow for potential interchange to CSX and NS at the same time.

Exactly right.

Notice too that the first severing of the line took place in 1973, which is over 20 years before FGLK. Even if they initially had spun that trackage off to a shortline, it may very well have gone down the drain before FGLK was ever created and before the CR split. And just having the line in place when FGLK came about is no guarantee it would survive - look at the Penn Yan to Bellona segment which sits dormant even now. When you get right down to it, there is really not much of anything there no matter WHO is serving or could have been serving the line.

BR&P wrote:

lvrr325 wrote:With it or without it, there's no competition, it would connect to Conrail at both ends. Even if you presume everything else happens the same, a Finger Lakes connection in 1995 leads only to Conrail. Only when Conrail is split up does a Finger Lakes connection allow for potential interchange to CSX and NS at the same time.

Exactly right.

Notice too that the first severing of the line took place in 1973, which is over 20 years before FGLK. Even if they initially had spun that trackage off to a shortline, it may very well have gone down the drain before FGLK was ever created and before the CR split. And just having the line in place when FGLK came about is no guarantee it would survive - look at the Penn Yan to Bellona segment which sits dormant even now. When you get right down to it, there is really not much of anything there no matter WHO is serving or could have been serving the line.

With the large washout just north of Silgan Plastics in Penn Yan, you'll never again see rail service in Bellona.

scottychaos wrote:

bwparker1 wrote: What RR's interchanged at Phelps Junction? Back in that day at least...

New York Central "Auburn Road" and the PRR Elmira branch.

Today the FGLK runs over the NYC, and a tiny spur still exists from Phelps Junction south on the old PRR, to serve a customer.

Scot

Phelps Jct. used to be protected with absolute signals, although I do not know if it was remotely controlled by a dispatcher or an automatic interlocking. Under Conrail, station sign 'PENN' was located at Phelps Jct., presumably because that's where the Auburn Road crossed the PRR.

Phelps Jct. was a automatic interlocking in its final days.

A friend of mine took photos in March, the rails have been pulled up from Loree Rd north to Bellona Station Rd:



I always wondered the same thing about Hall, never got to see a train there. I seem to vaguely remember seeing traffic at Bellona Station a long time ago, certainly remember there being an actual crossing there before the tracks were completely overgrown.

terms-d wrote:

BR&P wrote:

lvrr325 wrote:With it or without it, there's no competition, it would connect to Conrail at both ends. Even if you presume everything else happens the same, a Finger Lakes connection in 1995 leads only to Conrail. Only when Conrail is split up does a Finger Lakes connection allow for potential interchange to CSX and NS at the same time.

Exactly right.

Notice too that the first severing of the line took place in 1973, which is over 20 years before FGLK. Even if they initially had spun that trackage off to a shortline, it may very well have gone down the drain before FGLK was ever created and before the CR split. And just having the line in place when FGLK came about is no guarantee it would survive - look at the Penn Yan to Bellona segment which sits dormant even now. When you get right down to it, there is really not much of anything there no matter WHO is serving or could have been serving the line.

With the large washout just north of Silgan Plastics in Penn Yan, you'll never again see rail service in Bellona.

Well if those empty lumber centerbeams were still stored there, than the FGLK would have had to rebuild in order to retrieve them at some point!

Didn't those lumber centerbeam cars move out a few months back?

Matt Langworthy wrote:Didn't those lumber centerbeam cars move out a few months back?

I think it was a couple years back. Last 24-36 months.

I believe that the last cars in storage north of PY left there in the early Spring of 2014 -- a month or so before the Silgan washout.

Poppyl

From what I heard, while Conrail did occasionally go to Bellona Station, it was so overgrown it could not be hi-railed and they beat the crap out of the relatively new paint on one of the GP9s to run up in there the first time.