two railroad-bridges

Pictured are the two railroad-bridges we walk under to get to the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA.
The small shopping-mall we park at is west of the railroads; the YMCA is east.

The Keed.

The two railroad-bridges.

The one closest is no longer used, and the one farthest is the Auburn-Road, still in use.
The Peanut left Canandaigua too; apparently north of these bridges. Both are ex-New York Central, although the Peanut was originally Canandaigua & Niagara Falls, an independent.
The railroads did not technically split Canandaigua, since the Auburn came in from the east, and left to the north.
The Peanut left to the northwest.
The Auburn bridge is operated by shortline Finger Lakes Railway.
The Peanut is long-abandoned.
As far as I know, the Auburn is the first railroad across the state, or at least the first into Rochester; built in the 1830s.
Which explains why the first abutment is still stone — it’s probably the original Auburn-Road alignment. (We walk the south sidewalk next to those abutments — it’s in the picture.)
Everything north of Canandaigua is abandoned, although a stub-ended portion out of Rochester was still in use a few years ago to service industries.
From Canandaigua east the Auburn is now Finger-Lakes, the county-subsidized operator that bought the line from Conrail. The line north (the bridge is part of it) is still in use, but stub-ended at Canandaigua-Wine.
That section to Canandaigua-Wine went right past the palatial offices of the mighty Mezz. I once pointed out the storied history of the line to Junior (he had no idea).
The Auburn was first because it skirted all the physical challenges, some of which were met by later rail-construction that became the Water-Level’s main stem.
Biggest challenge was the Irondequoit Creek defile east of Rochester. The Water-Level crosses it on a long fill, but the Auburn misses it completely.
The Erie-Canal also had to go around that defile.
The Auburn was kept open, because NYC could use it as a bypass when the Water-Level was blocked.
But that bypass became moribund, and a large portion was abandoned.
Stub-ended segments were kept open to service industries, but eventually abandoned too.
Now all that’s open is the large segment east of Canandaigua, and within Canandaigua.
—Which is now operated by Finger Lakes Railway to continue rail-service to industries that had rail-service.
The Canandaigua & Niagara Falls (later Peanut) was originally built as a way of getting Pennsylvania coal to the Niagara Frontier. It was originally built with a six-foot gauge, to match the Erie it was getting coal from.
Coal was probably coming up the Northern Central, which originally only went to Canandaigua.
When Pennsy got it, the coal-outlet to the Niagara-Frontier became moribund, as Pennsy extended its line to Sodus-Point on Lake Ontario; where it could transload coal into lake ships from a giant pier they built.
The C&NF came under the control of NYC, where the prez of NYC (a Vanderbilt) referred to it as a “peanut” compared to the mighty Water-Level.
The Peanut thereafter drifted into obscurity; most of it abandoned in the ‘30s.
The tiny segment from Canandaigua to Holcomb remained in use servicing an Agway farm-supply, and its affiliated grain-elevator, in Holcomb.
But it was eventually abandoned too during the ‘70s, and the Agway recently torn down.
Much of the alignment of the Peanut remains. We once walked a part of it with Jack-a-Bill’s kids. It goes over hill-and-dale and twists and turns: a rural line. It delineates the pastures.
Those abutments were apparently rebuilt in 1920. There also is a railroad-bridge over the the old 5&20 in Canandaigua with only a 10-foot six-inch clearance (south side) that has decapitated semis.

The Keed.

West Avenue railroad-bridge.

The Auburn (Finger-Lakes) over the main north-south drag through Canandaigua is a grade-crossing with traffic-lights.

“Junior” was George Ewing Jr., the head-honcho of the Messenger Newspaper (the mighty Mezz) in Canandaigua, where I once worked. He was a son of George Sr., the owner of the paper who bought it in 1959.

The so-called “Water-Level” is the New York Central’s mainline across New York State. It became part of Conrail, and is now part of CSX. It was called “Water-Level” because it didn’t have any mountain-grades.

The “Erie” is the Erie Railroad across southern New York State. It connected to affiliated railroads in northwest Pennsylvania that sourced coal. (The Erie was originally six-foot gauge.) —Erie is now part of Norfolk Southern.

“Jack-a-Bill” are my brothers Jack and Bill. Jack lives near Boston and has two kids. Bill lives in northern Delaware, and has one kid, an only son, Tom (Agent 44), a railfan like me. I had a mentally-retarded brother (Down syndrome) who always pronounced “and” as “a;” i.e. Jack-a-Bill.