1974 NYSDOT abandoned railroad inventory

[nessman]

Abdandoned RR inventory compiled in 1974... great stuff here.

http://tinyurl.com/v6cs7

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of John Payne
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 11:35 AM
To: ELH&TS Mailing List
Subject: (erielack) Abandoned rights of way in New York

Hi,

While doing some research this morning I stumbled over these at the New York State Library online and thought to share it with those who might find it of interest. If you click on this link, it will bring you to a result of the search I did there. It covers abandoned railroad rights of way in the various NYDOT regions across the state. Line items #6 through #16 cover these. Regions 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 would cover those of the DLW/Erie/EL material, line items 12, 11, 10, 8, and 7 respectively. There is interesting commentary, some maps, descriptions of what was abandoned, structures, lists of grantees of land, and other information. You can download the Adobe PDF's for later review. It supplied some historical info. These are all dated 1974.

John Payne
Milford, Connecticut

http://tinyurl.com/v6cs7

[Brad Smith]

That will keep me up late for several nights to come!

There was one passage reguarding the then upcoming abandonment of the Holcomb to Canandaquia "Peanut Line" that stated there was a bridge near Holcomb that the crews refused to cross. Some crew members would cross the bridge in advance of the train while the ones left behind would send the unmanned train slowly over the bridge and follow behind once it had cleared!

[Mark_K]

Thanks. These are great. I've had the hardcopies for ages, but the PDFs are so much more convenient.

Is the large overview map available as well? I didn't see it.

[Cactus Jack]

Ok, I can't seem to get anything other than a reference to a pdf document, what is the procedure to get to a particular pdf ?

[Mark_K]

Ok, I can't seem to get anything other than a reference to a pdf document, what is the procedure to get to a particular pdf ?

You might need to enable pop-ups in your web browser preferences.

[Otto Vondrak]

Clicking on the links opens a new window where the PDF loads into. If that doesn't work for you, right click on the link and "Save Target As..." and you can save the PDF file anywhere on your hard drive.

-otto-

[RussNelson]

I want to make these documents more accessible. I have downloaded all 11 regions, and have OCR'ed the text and pulled out the images. I will be turning them into a reasonable set of web pages. In the meantime I've uploaded the raw HTML documents to http://russnelson.com/inventory/

Region 1 is in good textual shape but needs the maps uploaded.
Regions 2 and 3 are lightly edited. Regions 4 through 11 are HTMLized versions of the raw text.

In time I'll want you to report errors. For right now, please ignore them.

[Otto Vondrak]

I can't seem to find the original document we were discussing... is it no longer visible to search?

[RussNelson]

They're here:
http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/scandoclinks/ocm70660447.htm

[Schooltrain]

What a find! I wonder if there is a publication like this anywhere in the state bureaucracy (or elsewhere) for all of those lines abandoned after 1974. One that comes to mind immediately is the Hojack from Oswego to Wolcott and from Webster to Niagara Falls. Obviously, there are many, many more.

[nydepot]

Probably not. My understanding is that this was more a labor of love by a NYS employee who loved railroads than some official task mandated by some committee.

Charles

What a find! I wonder if there is a publication like this anywhere in the state bureaucracy (or elsewhere) for all of those lines abandoned after 1974. One that comes to mind immediately is the Hojack from Oswego to Wolcott and from Webster to Niagara Falls. Obviously, there are many, many more.

[Mark_K]

Probably not. My understanding is that this was more a labor of love by a NYS employee who loved railroads than some official task mandated by some committee.

Charles

The 1974 inventory was largely compiled by a Fred Abele who worked, I believe, for the real property division of NYDOT's rail bureau. Not sure of its official name at the time. Mr. Abele, now deceased, maintained a personal file of NY State rail lines from which a portion of the survey was derived. Some of the railroads listed in the file are rather obscure. In the inventory, one of the iron mine narrow gauges -- there were at least three (!) -- at Burden (Linlithgo), NY is sourced from said file.

[RussNelson]

Haha! That's pretty funny, because here I am, trying to recuscitate the inventory to help me with my personal file of rail lines in New York State. I think I'd have liked Fred!

[Mark_K]

Haha! That's pretty funny, because here I am, trying to recuscitate the inventory to help me with my personal file of rail lines in New York State. I think I'd have liked Fred!

I think I would have too. He died in 1985 at the relatively young age of 68 or 69.

I'm sure you've seen this by now:

http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/mssc/process/

It doesn't house his personal file of NY rail lines, but has some good information on abandoned trackage nevertheless.

[avonrailfan62]

The poster who referred to the NYC "Peanut Line" crew letting the locomotive cross the trestle (between Holcomb and Canandaigua) un-manned sounds very familiar to the situation on a trestle on the LV between the Rochester Junction and Lima which was in very poor condition in the final years. All but one of the LV crew would get out of the locomotive, cross to the opposite side of this trestle, and let the locomotive cross un-manned out of fear of collapse. Then again it was reported that most of the tracks between Rochester Junction and Lima were in the mud prior to abandonment by Conrail. Interesting to note that as I recall the LA&L showed interest in purchasing the LV line from Lehigh Station Rd. in Henrietta to Lima.