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| On this beautiful Saturday morning, #765 gets ready for her trip today along the former Erie Railroad (now NS Southern Tier Line) to the "Glass City" of Corning, NY, all ready to go with a full load of coal and water along with two nice American flags up front! |
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| Now out on the Southern Tier Line, we pass by the Buffalo-Depew Amtrak Station which is located on the CSX (Ex-Conrail/Penn Central/New York Central) Water Level Route. When waiting for a train on that platform, you can usually see trains running on this mainline as well! |
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| Riding by many corn fields sprinkled with power lines, now out in the "middle of nowhere", actually this is still Lancaster, NY. |
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| At Darien Center, NY, we cross NY Routes 77 and 237. |
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| A big farm in Darien Center. Darien Center is also home to the Darien Lake Amusement Park located just north of here. |
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| Along Old Buffalo Road in Darien Center, we see what will be a very common theme throughout the route of this train today, RAILFANS, and lots of them! Yes, I admit to being one of them myself, and I'll be out with all these people tomorrow, but for today, I'm a passenger!!! |
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| Now in Attica, NY, we pass the old Erie RR freight depot, now used by Norfolk Southern. Attica is also home to a maximum security state prison! |
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| The baseball diamond and football field at Attica High School. |
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| Passing by a farm in Attica. |
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| Some hills near Warsaw, NY. |
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| As we got closer to Letchworth State Park in Portageville, NY, there was a much greater concentration of railfans there to witness history with a steam locomotive about to cross the mighty Genesee River for the first time in 30 years! |
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| Yep, good luck finding a parking space at this part of Letchworth State Park! This lot is right next to the gorge we're about to cross over! |
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| Inside Letchworth State Park, where you get a million dollar view of the gorge which the Genesee River runs through. This is looking down towards the many dozens of railfans who came to the park to get one of the final views of a steam locomotive crossing this bridge as NS has already begun site work on a new bridge to replace this one. |
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| A wide-angle view of this amazing river and gorge!!! |
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| Another view of the railfans and the river! We're having a ton of fun today on the Erie Limited! Thanks for coming here to see us!!! |
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| Another wide-angle view of the mighty Genesee River! |
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| Two must-haves when railfanning, a tripod and a Coleman fold-out chair (I have both and they come in very handy out in the field)!!! |
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| Soybean fields in Portage, NY, now east of Letchworth State Park. |
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| Passing another farm this time in Dalton, NY. |
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| Passing many railfans on NY Route 70 in Canaseraga, NY. |
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| Burns Road in Arkport, NY. |
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| Passing a laundromat in a building built to look like a train station on Loder Street in Hornell, NY. |
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| Fans look on at the old Erie Railroad Hornell Passenger Station. |
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| Now passing the Alstom plant in Hornell with some Port Authority Transit Corp subway cars outside on shop trucks. |
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| More subway cars! Alstom is also the company that built the Amtrak California Pacific Surfliner cars! |
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| Crossing over the Canisteo River at Hornell. |
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| Some new signal equipment at the Hornell Yard. |
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| Something you don't see everyday, a caboose!!! |
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| The "boxed lunch" served today from a local Subway restaurant in Hornell. It consisted of a half turkey sub, bag of Lays potato chips, a chocolate chip cookie and a bottle of water (not shown). The radio is a Yaesu FT-270R 2 meter ham radio that is the gold standard for railfanning (I'm also a ham)! That gray box my phone is plugged into is Mophie portable iPhone charger, it came in very handy since the GPS in the phone drains the battery very quickly and the Maps app on the phone was helping to show us all where we were as we headed towards Corning. |
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| Riding along the mighty Canisteo River!!! |
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| To take a line from the movie National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, "It's not going in our backyard Russ, it's going in our living room", yes, I'm sure many of these trees will end up in countless living rooms this Christmas, this tree farm is located in Erwin, NY. |
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| Now riding along Interstate 99/U.S. Route 15, at Painted Post, NY getting close to Corning. |
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| Crossing the Cohocton River at Painted Post, the bridges in the background connect I-99 with I-86, the Southern Tier Expressway. |
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| Crossing over I-86 at Painted Post, Downtown Corning is near here. |
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| This is the Bath Secondary track connecting with the Southern Tier Line at Painted Post. |
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| Now at the Corning stop, I decided to stay onboard and photograph car interiors and the turning of the train on the Corning Secondary. This is an interior view of the car I rode to get here, the Hollywood Beach! |
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| A view looking towards the back of the train from the dome section of the Wabash "Jackson Square" dome car. |
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| This track is the Corning Secondary Track that leads away from the Southern Tier Line at CP-Corning. This track, along with another at nearby CP-Gibson come together as the Corning Secondary and head up to Lyons, NY between Rochester and Syracuse where this line will connect with the CSX Rochester Sub (Conrail/NYC Water Level Route). To facilitate the turning of the train, we would continue east past CP-Corning to CP-Gibson, then begin a backup move onto the Corning Secondary there. |
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| Old Glory flying above the Crystal City VFW Post on Baker Street in Corning! |
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| This is the other leg of the Corning Secondary that will merge with the Southern Tier Line at CP-Gibson, the road we're traveling under is N.Y. Route 414. |
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| The two connecting tracks of the Corning Secondary merge here. We backed up through CP-Gibson to get to this point. The track heading back to CP-Corning in this photo is going over Post Creek and the road in the background is N.Y. Route 414 which seemed to be a hot spot for railfans wanting to get photos during the train's turning. |
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| Now back at CP-Corning having completed the turning of the train, we now just have to back down to our loading site to pick up the passengers who went to the Corning Museum of Glass, and we'll be on our way back to Buffalo! Though "Big Conrail" has been gone now over 15 years, it's nice to see the "Corning" label still in the Conrail font on that metal shanty. |
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| The former Delawrare, Lackawanna & Western Railroad passenger station which was located near the loading site for the train at Corning. Once we leave here, we'll be heading home! |
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