The Charlotte Running Track, locally known as the Charlotte Runner or the Charlotte Branch, is a

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of track, it is the lead ...

-controlled branch line located in

Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...

. The track is roughly in length, beginning at control point 373 on CSX's Rochester Subdivision and snaking north through the residential and industrial sections of Rochester's west side before turning to the west in Charlotte onto what was the Hojack Line, terminating just to the west of

Rochester Gas and Electric Avangrid, Inc. (formerly Energy East and Iberdrola USA), is an energy services and delivery company. Avangrid serves about 3.1 million customers throughout New England, Pennsylvania and New York in the United States. History In 2008 Iberdrola S.A ...

's Russell Power Plant in

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

History

The Charlotte Branch was built in the 1880s by the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad, and passed through ownership by the New York Central Railroad,

Penn Central The Penn Central Transportation Company, commonly abbreviated to Penn Central, was an American class I railroad that operated from 1968 to 1976. Penn Central combined three traditional corporate rivals, the Pennsylvania, New York Central and the ...

and Conrail before CSX acquired the line as part of the Conrail breakup in 1999.

Trackage

The Charlotte Runner branches off of the CSX main at CP-373 via a wye that allows access from either the west or the east. Heading north, the line passes under Interstate 490 before reaching a switch that leads to the Falls Road Industrial Track, the lone remaining remnant of the

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busine ...

Falls Road Secondary in Rochester. Just past this switch, another split on the line heads east to the former

New York Central The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midw ...

mainline trackage, which is no longer used due to the lack of customers following the closure of the Kleen Brite chemical company in 2004. Meanwhile, the Charlotte Branch continues to the north toward Kodak Park. North of Driving Park Avenue, the Charlotte Runner parallels the

Rochester and Southern Railroad The Rochester and Southern Railroad , a subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming Inc., is a class III shortline that runs from the city of Rochester in Monroe County to Silver Springs, NY. The RSR started in 1986, when the B&O sold off its Buffalo a ...

. The two lines follow one another into Kodak Park, the gigantic industrial complex run by

Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...

and maintained via an intra-plant railroad. Just north of West Ridge Road, the KPRR interchanges with both tracks. The RSR and the Charlotte Runner then turn to the northeast for a stretch before the RSR turns to the north while the Charlotte Runner continues northeast, following the path of the

Genesee River The Genesee River ( ) is a tributary of Lake Ontario flowing northward through the Twin Tiers of Pennsylvania and New York (state), New York in the United States. The river contains several waterfalls in New York at Letchworth State Park and Roch ...

. Just before the Genesee empties into

Lake Ontario Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The Canada–United Sta ...

in Charlotte, the line turns west onto the former Hojack Line. The track continues to the west for just under two miles before coming to an end at Dewey Avenue after crossing the

Lake Ontario State Parkway The Lake Ontario State Parkway is a limited-access road, limited-access Parkways in New York, parkway along the southern shore of Lake Ontario in Western New York in the United States. The western end of the highway is at a partial interchange ...

, roughly a half mile after the switch to the power plant.

Statistics

Though much more important in previous years ''(see

Usage The usage of a language is the ways in which its written and spoken variations are routinely employed by its speakers; that is, it refers to "the collective habits of a language's native speakers", as opposed to idealized models of how a languag ...

for more info)'', the Charlotte Runner is still a vital piece of CSX's trackage in Monroe County. There are four online customers on the line, one of which is the largest CSX customer in the Rochester area.

Customers

Current

*Marshall Boxes, Rochester *Comac Builders Supply, Rochester *

, Rochester *

International Paper The International Paper Company is an American pulp and paper company, the largest such company in the world. It has approximately 39,000 employees, and is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. History The company was incorporated January 31 ...

, Rochester (aka "the box shop" to CSX crews)

Former

*Plywood Plastics, Rochester * RG&E Russell Station, Greece (plant decommissioned in 2009 – currently in demolition)

Interchanges

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Railroad classes, Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of trac ...

, Rochester *Rochester Switching Services, Rochester (formerly the Kodak Park Railroad which has been outsourced to a subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming Industries)

Mass Transit

*None (However, the line is in proximity to the

Port of Rochester A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manchest ...

, where the terminal for the ferry that traveled between

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

and Rochester from 2003 to 2005 is located)

Usage

Despite being a branch line, the Charlotte Runner has seen its share of mainline traffic over the years. Until 2009, long coal trains made their way to the Russell Station every month, the line also carried coal trains that went to RG&E's BeeBee plant located near High Falls in downtown Rochester. These trains would travel the length of the runner and, after crossing onto the Hojack portion of the line, would travel east on the Hojack (as, at this time, the Hojack was intact for a short distance to the east of the Charlotte Runner), crossing over the Genesee River on a swing bridge that dates back to the days of the RW&O, and returning to the city on the

Rochester Running Track Rochester may refer to: Places Settlements England *Rochester, Kent *Rochester, Northumberland United States * Rochester, Illinois * Rochester, Indiana * Rochester Township, Cedar County, Iowa ** Rochester, Iowa, an unincorporated commun ...

. The plant and the line were closed within two years of each other and, by 1998, the Rochester Runner and the Hojack east of the Charlotte Runner were abandoned and removed. The swing bridge, the final remnant of this portion, was decommissioned in 2012 by order of the US Coast Guard. Following the closure of the BeeBee plant, volume along the Runner significantly decreased due to the lack of coal trains for the BeeBee. This amount was reduced even further after RG&E shut down Russell Station in 2009, leaving Kodak as the only major customer on the line. CSX continues to make use of the former Hojack trackage up to Russell Station for car storage, bringing up Kodak trains to the West Yard between Lake Avenue and Greenleaf Road to run around power or perform further switching duties, rather than tying up traffic on Ridge Road and Ridgeway Avenues near Eastman Business Park.

References

{{Reflist CSX Transportation lines Rail infrastructure in New York (state) New York Central Railroad lines