Where ALCOS tough it out Western New York & Pennsylvania’s vintage locomotives keep former Erie and Pennsylvania trackage alive by Karl Zimmermann estern New York & Penn- In corporate heritage, the (best known as elk country) sylvania” is an admirably Western New York & Pennsyl- and contains the railroad’s most “ explicit geographic locator vania combines pieces of the despised or (depending on your for the railroad that runs Erie Railroad (part of the Jersey point of view) intriguing charac- Wthere — serving a fetching City-Chicago main line, plus a teristic: the nearly 5-mile, 2.6 per- region that is mostly sylvan and rural. branch to Oil City, Pa.) and the cent climb to Keating Summit for However, the name doesn’t hint at the rail- Pennsylvania Railroad (the midsection northbound tonnage. This is the stomp- road’s heritage, nor at its biggest claim to of the north-south Buffalo Line from Har- ing ground of (and raison d’être for) fame: an all-Alco diesel roster 19 locomo- risburg, Pa.). WNY&P’s Buffalo Line control WNY&P’s “big Alcos,” those rangy six-axle tives strong (including the products of begins at Driftwood, Pa., where it takes over locomotives that today are surely an endan- Alco subsidiary and later successor Mon- from Norfolk Southern, and covers 89 miles gered species. (The railroad’s eight “big” treal Locomotive Works). You’ll find Cen- to Machias Junction, N.Y.; Buffalo & Pitts- units were actually built north of the border turies large and small, with lengthy owner- burgh Railroad runs the line’s top 45 miles by Montreal Locomotive Works, rather than ship histories. The youngest was built in into Buffalo proper. The WNY&P’s south- by American Locomotive Co. in Schenecta- 1975, the oldest in 1957. All burble in that ern end of this route winds through the dy, N.Y.) This backbreaking grade no doubt distinctive Alco voice. mountains of north-central Pennsylvania accounted for Norfolk Southern’s eagerness to unload the Buffalo Line, and even the big Alcos can handle only 11 or 12 loads per unit upgrade, a constraint that sometimes requires setting out cars at Emporium, Pa., and doubling the hill. For devotees of Alcos, or of gutty mountain railroading, the place to be is the single-lane bridge spanning the tracks at Keating Summit. Stand there and listen. No train from the south can sneak up on you, since the chant of multiple Centuries is a raucous, throbbing symphony, performed as the locomotives dig into the twisting, backbreaking climb. A STORIED PEDIGREE Compared to Keating Summit, the rest of the railroad is a piece of cake, which is fine with Carl P. Belke, the railroad’s chief Alcos roam Western New York & Pennsylvania’s ex-Pennsylvania trackage (above, at Eldred, operating officer, and the balance of the Pa.) and ex-Erie rails (right, leaving Hornell, N.Y.). Above, Karl Zimmermann; right, Ken Kraemer company’s roughly 70 employees. © 2012 Kalmbach Publishing Co. This material may not be reproduced in any form 38 Trains JUNE 2012without permission from the publisher. www.TrainsMag.com Western New York & Pennsylvania L A K E O N T A Affiliated railroads R I O Connecting lines BH B&H Rail Rochester BPRR Buffalo & Pittsburgh FGLK Finger Lakes RSR NEW YORK ONTARIO NS LAL Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Buffalo LAL Lakeville NS/FGLK Geneva NS Norfolk Southern BPRR Silver Springs OCTL Oil Creek & Titusville Wayland RSR Rochester & Southern NS BH E NS Machias Jct. R I Hornell BH Hammondsport E E Salamanca North Olean L A K Falconer Bath To Allentown and Erie Jamestown Cuba NS New England Corning NS BPRR Olean Wellsville NS Corry Eldred Ashtabula Farmers Valley Turtle Point Port Allegany To Seagertown Union City Keating Summit Chicago Meadville Titusville BPRR Western New York & Pennsylvania OCTL P E N N S Y L V A N I A BPRR Emporium Rouseville Chairman Eugene H. Blabey II. Scott A. Hartley NS Utica Oil City North Driftwood Franklin BPRR BPRR NS Driftwood To Harrisburg well as the rest of its system, from Norfolk Youngstown DuBois Southern, except for the 42 miles between 0 Scale 50 miles N To Pittsburgh Corry and Meadville, which the short line To Pittsburgh © 2012 Kalmbach Publishing Co. owns outright. TRAINS: Rick Johnson NEW YORK Western New York & Pennsylvania is the offspring of a well-established New York shortline family. The patriarch is the tiny Li- PENNSYLVANIA WESTERN NEW YORK & vonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad, which PENNSYLVANIA can trace its roots back to 1850. It runs a wholly owned subsidiary, the larger (by Basically, the railroad resembles a low- occasional service to pick up company mileage) B&H Rail Corp., a part of which er-case “t”, with a looping hook on the ballast at the Mapes-Machias quarry. was historically the Bath & Hammondsport. crossbar’s left serif. At the crossbar’s east In addition to its Class I connections, Western New York & Pennsylvania, by con- end is Hornell, N.Y., where WNY&P con- WNY&P interchanges with the Buffalo & trast, is a stepchild, a limited liability com- nects with Norfolk Southern’s ex-Erie Pittsburgh at Salamanca, N.Y., and Corry, pany in which LA&L has a 51 percent inter- Southern Tier Line from Binghamton, Pa. Even though both railroads’ trains call est; it’s also the youngest of the bunch, N.Y., to Buffalo. (Canadian Pacific has at Driftwood, B&P can interchange only dating from April 2001, when it began op- haulage rights on NS, but currently gener- with NS there. The WNY&P actually ends erating a piece of the ex-Erie Southern Tier ates little business for WNY&P.) The west at North Driftwood, a few miles from the Extension between Hornell and Corry. Nor- end of the “t” is Meadville, Pa., where B&P interchange, creating a so-called “steel folk Southern had inherited this line with its WNY&P connects with NS’s Meadville barrier.” WNY&P is also blocked from in- purchase of Conrail, then sold it (for $1) to Line, which once created a shortcut for terchanging with the B&P at Machias Junc- the Southern Tier Extension Railroad Au- NS coal trains originating in Pennsylvania tion, in this case by a “paper barrier” — thority, which leased it back to NS, which in and destined for power plants in New contractual rather than physical. turn subleased it to WNY&P for 30 years. England and central New York. The Buffa- Completing WNY&P’s 330-mile net- Through a series of acquisitions and lo Line is the t’s vertical spine, intersecting work is the 45-mile, mostly ex-Erie Oil leases, Western New York & Pennsylvania the crossbar at Olean, N.Y., the railroad’s City branch, connecting with the Oil extended its reach west to Meadville in operating hub. The route’s northernmost Creek & Titusville Lines at Rouseville, Pa. 2002, added the Oil City branch in 2006, 25 miles from Olean to Machias see only WNY&P leases the Oil City branch, as and leased the Buffalo Line the following Before WNY&P: Erie’s Pacific Express (left) calls at Meadville, Pa., in 1951; brand-new E8 No. 833 survives today on New York & Greenwood Lake. Coal empties leave PRR’s Buffalo Line (right) at Driftwood, Pa., in 1955, bound for the mines. Left, J. William Vigrass; right, Philip R. Hastings 40 Trains JUNE 2012 Overhead Norfolk Southern coal traffic prompted restoration of WNY&P’s ex-Erie route, though the trains were suspended in 2012. Alex Mayes year. This latter is a well-ballasted, welded- bridge route between Meadville and the needs of customers and connections, rail, 40-mph railroad, kept that way by NS, Southern Tier, hosting NS coal trains and, WNY&P in late 2011 was running like this: while the ex-Erie line has been upgraded we hoped, other overhead traffic. We were a Roughly every other day, a Driftwood Turn, to similar standards through a combina- long railroad, some 190 miles from Mead- the “DFT,” heads south from Olean to deliv- tion of private investment and a series of ville to Hornell, with virtually no local traf- er cars to NS at South Driftwood and pick local, state, and federal grants totaling $38 fic. Still, we had to maintain the line to high up from NS at North Driftwood, plus million. Before its rehabilitation, more standards.” The other NS traffic didn’t mate- switch customers at Turtlepoint, Port Alleg- than half of the ex-Erie line had been out rialize, however, although Blabey credits NS any, and Emporium, Pa. Three other jobs of service for more than a decade (Conrail for taking a good look at the possibilities be- also typically originate at Olean, under sym- ended through service in 1991) and was fore concluding that its own ex-Nickel Plate bols more indicative of their call time than slated for abandonment. Road line out of Buffalo was a better option. function. Train OL-1 runs to Farmers Val- Adding the Buffalo Line boosted the ley, Pa., triweekly and to Hornell as needed, ASSEMBLING A RAILROAD WNY&P’s size 40 percent, and prompted a handling work trains on the off days. Train The initial vision for the Western New shift in traffic patterns. All trains now oper- OL-2 is the Olean yard job, ranging about York & Pennsylvania came from William ate as turns out of either Olean or Mead- 12 miles east to Cuba, N.Y., and 14 miles D. Burt, a transportation consultant. Burt’s ville, returning home each night.