What could have been.........NYSW and the Old Erie?

[D.Carleton]

There is a subtle irony to all of this. Return with me now to the days when Big Blue had the Northeast in its death grip and Al Gore had not yet invented the internet. There was more-than-idle speculation that Suzy-Q would engage in a lopsided trade with CSX: The four GE’s would join the rest of their brethren at CSX and the ten SD60s, the only 710 powered locomotives then on the roster, would go to NYSW. All of this was contingent on Walter Rich making good on reviving the former Erie to Ohio and friendly connection with the former B&O. Now all these years later the former Erie is active, the GE’s are off the roster and Suzy-Q may be getting SD60s after all. It’s funny how these things work out.

[scottychaos]

There is a subtle irony to all of this. Return with me now to the days when Big Blue had the Northeast in its death grip and Al Gore had not yet invented the internet. There was more-than-idle speculation that Suzy-Q would engage in a lopsided trade with CSX: The four GE’s would join the rest of their brethren at CSX and the ten SD60s, the only 710 powered locomotives then on the roster, would go to NYSW. All of this was contingent on Walter Rich making good on reviving the former Erie to Ohio and friendly connection with the former B&O. Now all these years later the former Erie is active, the GE’s are off the roster and Suzy-Q may be getting SD60s after all. It’s funny how these things work out.

I dont understand what you mean by "Walter Rich making good on reviving the former Erie to Ohio"..
what needed to be revived? The stack trains ran on the Conrail southern tier main between Binghamton & Buffalo,
operated by the D&H Buffalo to Binghamton using the D&H traffic rights from 1976..
but there was no "reviving" to be done..since the line was always in continuous use..

Or are you referring to the Erie between Hornell and Meadville?
Were there plans in the works to use that route for the stack trains? I dont think I ever heard that..
but if so, Conrail still owned it..so how could they run there? NYSW had no control over that line at all..
and D&H could only run on the Buffalo-Binghamton route..not the Meadville route..
Conrail was never happy that the stack trains operated over their line Buffalo-Binghamton..but they had to allow it.
but they *didnt* have to allow them to run on the Meadville line..and they never did..
so im confused what you are referring to..can you elaborate please?

thanks,
Scot

[Steve F45]

i had remembered reading that walter rich was trying to get a direct connection with Chicago using the TP&W he had purchased and then other shortlines in between.

[D.Carleton]

Or are you referring to the Erie between Hornell and Meadville?
Were there plans in the works to use that route for the stack trains? I dont think I ever heard that..
but if so, Conrail still owned it..so how could they run there? NYSW had no control over that line at all..
and D&H could only run on the Buffalo-Binghamton route..not the Meadville route..
Conrail was never happy that the stack trains operated over their line Buffalo-Binghamton..but they had to allow it.
but they *didnt* have to allow them to run on the Meadville line..and they never did..
so im confused what you are referring to..can you elaborate please?

Yes, there were moves made as an attempt to finagle the former Erie between Hornell and Youngstown from ConRail. CR started pulling spikes and the parties involved went to court to stop them making the argument that if they wanted to lift the line then they should sell it to someone who would operate it. There were huge legal obstacles for such a maneuver and such maneuvers require huge amounts of cash. No sizable amounts of money ever materialized so it turned into a stalemate; CR left the line between Hornell and Corry in situ but no one came forward with the cash to operate it until after the merciful CR split.

Had Mr. Rich succeeded the NYSW would have garnered a larger haul of the run and CSX would have gained a competitive routing, at least mileage wise, with the former Water Level Route. The possibility of watching stack trains speeding through the likes of Jamestown and Salamanca was enough to set the heart of any Erie/EL fan aflame but alas, it was not to be. Should an SD60 make it into yellow jacket colors it will be a reminder of what could have been.

[dano23]

This is actually a good topic as it was mainly to develop a bypass past Buffalo. A seperate topic should be created to not bury this.

[charlie6017]

As Dano23 said..........sounds like a great topic! I merged the posts into this thread...

Charlie

[D.Carleton]

Oh boy, here we go. Oh well. Let me add this: All of this happened in the late 1980s/early 1990s. It was at this time Amtrak was suing the Boston & Maine to evict them off a portion of the route of the Montrealer by eminent domain going as far the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1992 the high court upheld the right of taking a railroad’s trackage by eminent domain and turning it over to another railroad, first known case of such. It did show that it could be done but not easily; bring copious quantities of cash. The NYSW was never awash in cash. NY State was not going to spend state resources to benefit a port in Little Ferry, New Jersey. And by the early 90s CSX and Norfolk Southern had begun their decade long game of “gotcha last” in what culminated in the expensive CR split. All of that said, and despite my four-cycle forbearance, I have always appreciated the clean lines of the SD50 and SD60 carbodies and look forward to perhaps seeing some in yellow and black.

[scottychaos]

Thanks for the history lesson!
this is an interesting bit of Southern Tier lore I must have missed!
but the timing is right..
I was an active railfan along the southern tier main as a teenager in Waverly all through the 80's..
but then I left for college in 1988..dropped out of active railfanning for 8 year or so, until I first got a computer in 1996..
so I completely missed this bit of drama!
thanks for the update..interesting stuff!

Scot

[charlie6017]

Back during the years that the Susie-Q ran the stacks, many of these were the Sea-land containers that CSX had ownership of, if I remember. Would that friendly connection with CSX have been at Youngstown or maybe Ravenna, where they crossed each other (I think one ran over top of the other)?

That could have been a nice deal for the NYSW, but who knows what would be today with that, given the CR split. Certainly, that line would have to have been pried away from Conrail because they would rather rip the track up than allow for competition!

Charlie

[Steve F45]

also, if nysw did become a larger player in the industry who know's if they would be around today? I mean if they became big, who knows if csx might have gobbeld them up entirely, CN, rail america or another company. There might not be a nysw today if this had all gone thru. Just something i've thought about.

[D.Carleton]

We could “what if” this thing to death. Again, I am convinced railroading what ifs are the leading causes of premature demise among railroad aficionados. That said there is another wrinkle to add. It was during this same era Guilford dumped the D&H and NYSW was named their interim operator until a fire sale could be arranged. NYSW did make a bid for the D&H but could not compete with the deep pockets of CP who wound up spending something like $25 million for the D&H and more to rehab the physical plant.

In those days there were no Warren Buffetts around openly (and financially) supporting the railroad industry. Today it seems like a no brainer that railroads can and do make money. Back then the “smart money” was riding the first wave of the tech boom. (Look how well that worked out.) Now, what if a financial firm had seen the light and backed Walter Rich in his bid for the D&H? Imagine the Suzy-Q to Montreal and the bridge line between NS and Pan Am Southern.

[lvrr325]

The way I remember that D&H thing going down is Rich offered more than the CP - but the court gave it to CP because CP had the money to then invest in the plant and improve it, where Rich's offer was cobbled up and borrowed from whereever he could get it and he'd have to borrow still more to fix up the track and so on.

I remember Guilford or someone making a play to come up with a Chicago route, but not Walter Rich. IIRC that one was dependent on the original NS effort to take over Conrail, and would have taken over the former NKP from Buffalo, which would have been made redundant if NS had the water level route. Dates to around 1985-1986. Seemed pretty far fetched reading about it. I forget if it was in Railpace, Rails Northeast, or both.