Finger-Lakes Railway

FINGER-LAKES RAILWAY

The Keed.

Finger-Lakes U-boat #2301 at Geneva, a GE U-23b.

My September issue of Trains Magazine has a giant article on the nearby Finger-Lakes Railway shortline.
Finger-Lakes is the fallout of Conrail’s giving up on lines that radiated out of nearby Geneva, N.Y.: the Lehigh-Valley main, and New York Central’s old Auburn line.
The old Lehigh-Valley Buffalo-Extension was largely abandoned, which is a shame, because it was an excellent railroad — good for 60+ mph running; and no cities to bottle things up.
But a few segments remain, like a short portion into nearby Victor operated by Ontario Central (a shortline), and a small segment south of Geneva toward Ithaca that served the old Sampson military-base. (The segment doesn’t actually go as far as the military-base.)
New York Central’s old Corning-line, the Corning Secondary, is still extant — Lyons to Corning via Geneva — but operated by Norfolk Southern. That line continued on to Williamsport, Pa., but south of Corning is mostly Tioga-Central (abandoned by Conrail). Finger-Lakes has trackage-rights on the Secondary.
The article clears up a few things. The Auburn was indeed the first railroad across the state into Rochester, but was built in two segments: the Syracuse & Auburn in 1838, and the Auburn & Rochester in 1841.
The entire line became the Rochester & Syracuse in 1850, but was superseded by the Rochester & Syracuse Direct Railroad in 1853; now the CSX Water-Level.
The Direct railroad conquered two topographical obstacles the Auburn avoided: namely the huge Irondequoit Creek defile, and the vast Montezuma Swamp north of Cayuga Lake.
the Irondequoit Creek defile, the outlet of the Genesee River previous to the ice-age, required a long fill. And a lot of the Water-Level across Montezuma Swamp is still on pilings.
For a long time I thought the Auburn-Road was constructed as one line, and the “Direct” was a bypass of that line built by New York Central. But not so.
When formed, NYC included both the Auburn and the Direct.
Finger-Lakes also operates a segment of ex-Pennsy, the old ex-Northern-Central line from Elmira (and Williamsport) to Canandaigua and later Sodus Point.
But all Finger-Lakes operates is a short segment to Watkins Glen, plus a segment to Penn Yan — all from Himrod Junction where the Corning Secondary intersected with the Pennsy line.
The Pennsy line is long abandoned — in fact, I’m surprised the Penn Yan segment is still extant, since it was very torturous.
Watkins Glen has a salt-mine; Finger-Lakes serves that.
North of Penn Yan the ex-Pennsy line is abandoned, as well as south of Watkins Glen.
The line continued north to Newark, where it becomes extant again, although operated by the Ontario-Midland shortline. The Ontario-Midland ends at a junction with the old NYC Hojack Line (the old Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville), and no longer goes to Sodus Point; where Pennsy had a large coal-wharf for loading lake steamships. That wharf is long-gone.
Years ago I rode Ontario-Midland excursions to Newark with Alco power.
I also have ridden Finger Lakes excursions east of Geneva, Shortsville to Canandaigua, and Shortsville to Geneva. The one east of Geneva was interesting, in that it crosses a long fill and trestle that skirts the north end of Cayuga Lake. Apparently NYC thought this was worth doing.
Trains out of Shortsville are torturously slow; particularly to Canandaigua; about 10 mph.
But Finger-Lakes uses four ex-VIA coaches for excursion service (though unheated), and has many of their locomotives painted up in the old NYC lightning-stripe scheme. Including GE U-boats.

“Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that went bankrupt in about two years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world.

“NYC” equals New York Central railroad. NYC had three lines across New York (four if you count the Peanut — ex Canandaigua & Niagara Falls, which NYC came to own). The Water-Level was the mainline, and the Auburn and Hojack were secondary.

“Norfolk Southern” and “CSX” are the two railroads that divided (and bought) Conrail, successor to the bankrupt Penn-Central and a number of other eastern railroads, including Lehigh-Valley.

“Alco” is American Locomotive Company in Schenectady, N.Y. Alco was a long-time builder of steam and diesel railroad locomotives. But they couldn’t compete and went out of business. As such Alco locomotives are rare and revered.

“VIA” is the Canadian Amtrak.

The locomotive pictured has the “old NYC lightning-stripe scheme.”

“GE U-boats” are General-Electric’s early entry in the utility road-switcher railroad-locomotive market. “U” stands for “utility;” the number is the horsepower (e.g. 20 = 2,000; 23 = 2,300); and the “b” or “c” stands for the number of wheels in the motor-truck: “b” = four, and “c” = six.