In the early days of Rochester railroading, Genesee Junction was the name given to the interchange between the

West Shore Railroad The West Shore Railroad was a U.S. railway company active in the states of New York and New Jersey between 1885 and 1952. It was incorporated in 1885 to reorganize the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway, which had originally been inten ...

and the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad ( reporting mark PRR), legal name as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy," was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At its ...

in Chili, NY. However, after the PRR shut down its Rochester Branch following its merger with the

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 ...

, the name "Genesee Junction" moved west to the neighboring interchange between the West Shore (Penn Central by this point) and the

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the oldest railroads in North America, oldest railroad in the United States and the first steam engine, steam-operated common carrier. Construction of the line began in 1828, and it operated as B&O from 1830 ...

. This interchange, formerly known as West Shore Junction, has retained the name Genesee Junction to this day.

Notes

Genesee Junction, despite its status as a hamlet, has no roads or buildings save for those found in the Genesee Junction Yard. In fact, the yard, a three-track switching yard used by

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 ...

, the Livonia, Avon and Lakeville Railroad and 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 ...

, makes up the entire hamlet. In the years prior to 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 ...

break-up, the LAL was forbidden to interchange directly with the RSR due to a "paper barrier" created by Conrail's ownership of the yard that made direct interchange between the two shortlines all but impossible, allowing Conrail to act as the "middle man". When CSX took over the ex-CR lines in the Rochester area in 1998, they attempted to maintain this paper barrier. However, in the

Surface Transportation Board The Surface Transportation Board (STB) of the United States is an independent federal agency that serves as an adjudicatory board. The board was created in 1996 following the abolition of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and absorbed regula ...

decision for the split of Conrail, the LAL was granted trackage rights through the yard to directly interchange with the Rochester Southern and Norfolk Southern. This eliminated the paper barrier that had been created by Conrail. To this day, CSX still owns the yard, interchanging with the LAL; however, the LAL has trackage rights to Brooks Ave yard, where they can directly interchange with the RS. The only section of the PRR Rochester Branch still in existence today can be found in Genesee Junction. This stub of track, branching off CSX's West Shore Branch but owned by the RSR, services three online customers. The remainder of the PRR branch from downtown Rochester into the Southern Tier has become the

Genesee Valley Greenway The Genesee Valley Greenway is a rail trail in western New York's Genesee River valley. The trail stretches for along a former Pennsylvania Railroad right-of-way as well as adjacent land from the Genesee Valley Canal. The low grade path is ...

trail.

References

External links

The Greater Rochester Railfan Page

Genesee Junction Turntable
Geography of Rochester, New York {{MonroeCountyNY-geo-stub