The Terminal Railway of Buffalo was a part of the

New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected New York metropolitan area, gr ...

system southeast of

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...

. It built the Gardenville Branch or Gardenville Cutoff, allowing through trains to bypass Buffalo. The cutoff has since been abandoned in favor of other parallel lines.

History

The Terminal Railway was chartered on June 12, 1895 to connect the

main line at Depew () southwest through Gardenville to the NYC's

Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, established in 1833, and sometimes referred to as the Lake Shore, was a major part of the New York Central Railroad's Water Level Route from Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, New York, to Chicago, Illinoi ...

at Lackawanna (). The line, intended to ease congestion in Buffalo, opened on September 20, 1898. When originally built, the southwest end only provided direct access towards Buffalo, merging with the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern at the

West Seneca Yard West is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance langu ...

. A connection was soon built allowing for through

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

traffic without turning at the yard. A connection was also built, in or soon after 1923, from the northeast end at Depew north to the New York Central's

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 ...

(). This allowed trains on the West Shore, which paralleled the NYC main line, to also use the cutoff. The Terminal Railway was merged into the

on December 22, 1914. The line passed into the hands of

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 ...

in 1968 and

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 ...

in 1976. By 1995 the line was gone south of 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 ...

( Western New York and Pennsylvania Railway) crossing at Ebenezer (), abandoned in favor of the PRR's West Seneca Branch and the

Lehigh Valley Railroad The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad in the Northeastern United States built predominantly to haul anthracite, anthracite coal from the Coal Region in Northeastern Pennsylvania to major consumer markets in Philadelphia, New York City, and ...

's Lehigh and Lake Erie Railroad. North of Ebenezer the branch continued to serve local traffic from a connection with the old PRR line to the NYC lines at Depew, but that has been cut back to a short section near Ebenezer. The 1998 breakup of Conrail assigned the remaining section to Pennsylvania Lines

LLC A limited liability company (LLC) is the United States-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of a ...

, a subsidiary of

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...

. The connection to the West Shore at Depew is now owned by New York Central Lines

, a

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 ...

subsidiary, and is used to move trains between the old NYC main and West Shore lines.

References

* *Greg Jandura
Coming by the Bay
{{DEFAULTSORT:Terminal Railway Buffalo Defunct New York (state) railroads Predecessors of the New York Central Railroad History of Buffalo, New York Railway companies established in 1895 Railway companies disestablished in 1914 1895 establishments in New York (state) 1914 disestablishments in New York (state)

History

See also

References