Does anybody know the status of the B & P (Ex-B&O nee BR&P) Springville trestle near Gowanda, NY?
I thought I read around ten years ago that the line had been abandoned and the tracks removed. I found a reference on YouTube from two years ago that they had been planning to convert the old roadbed into a “Rail-Trail” but those plans fell through and as of two years ago they were discussing re-railing the line. Huh?
Well, this really piqued my curiosity so I went to Google Earth and looked at Street & Satellite views and I could see NO images that did not show rails. One Street View showed some grade crossing signals that looked new.
So, was the line actually restored or are all those images old, out of date and shot before the tracks were pulled up?
Is this actually on the B&P (which doesn’t go to Gowanda) or on the Buffalo Southern or NY&LE? The latter (which is headquartered in Gowanda) got a grant from New York State DOT in 2016 to rehabilitate trackage between South Dayton and Cherry Creek (which Cattaraugus County apparently thought was a boondoggle) – I don’t know the area, but it stands to reason this might be involved.
Aha ! So, it might’be been rehabbed then! The trestle WAS on the B&P but it might’ve been sold to someone else since.
According to my fading memory, the B&P was getting tired of doing maitenance on the line and began routing their through trains ove the much longer Norfolk Southern line. The NS alternative had much better track so that running times were almost as good as the route over the Springville trestle.
Take a look at the current B&P ‘interactive map’ and see how that relates to where the trestle alignment runs. If you can ‘mark up’ a postable map, indicate the trestle location together with the current route of the various ‘other’ lines near Gowanda so we can tell what’s what.
look at the STB website FD 36389 (Decision 50349) 8-5-20
If you are looking at the former EL/NY&LE - Senator Pat McGee Trail… Erie and Cattaraugus Counties ought to be called Dumb and Dumber with New York state as a leading supporting boob.
Not abandoned, no NITU Status and New York State throwing money at it. What a circus.
O.K. My bad. I guess the Springville Trestle really is abandoned. Not sure when that happened. I had the Springville Trestle confused with the former B & P trestle at Gowanda, NY. I thought the two were one and the same - they are not.
The rails on the trestle at Gowanda are still very much in use.
If NYSDOT is throwing the kind of money at this that MC indicates, there ought to be contract documents showing prospective disposition of the rail and other metal in the track clearly visible as late as 2017…
Yes, I found that YouTube video earlier. If you scroll down and read some of those comments, that one guy made it sound like they were discussing rehabbing the line but I don’t know how accurate that info really is.
Does anybody know? Maybe it was merely wishful thinking on the part of the person that posted that.
But it also remains to be seen what a lot of influence (read, money and then some) can do, regarding the state’s fine new snowmobile trail right-of-way that no longer enjoys a real existence as what it has survived as…